This ain't one of 'em! (realfishbbaitcompany.com photo)
What are the top baits responsible for catching the most Texas ShareLunker bass?
A writer from the Lubbock (TX) Avalanche-Journal newspaper broke down the ones anglers who’ve caught ShareLunker bass have said they’ve used. So here we go:
> There have been 19 largemouths weighing 13 pounds or more caught in varying bodies of water across Texas during the ongoing 2010-11 Toyota ShareLunker season that runs through April 30, and there were 33 entered in the 2009-10 campaign.
> There have been a number of anglers who didn’t wish to disclose what type of bait they were chunking…. But the ones who did reveal some interesting trends when it comes to what big bass will inhale.
> The top overall bait is the ubiquitous worm and similar Senko, which has been responsible for eight entries in the past two seasons.
> The second-most appealing lure for ShareLunkers the past two years is the jig.
> The No. 3 bait is a tie with six between the…lizard and the tried and true crankbait.
> The next most-utilized bait for ShareLunkers might surprise you, but it really shouldn’t, especially considering it’s a staple of the hefty largemouth’s diet. A live sunfish…all [three entries] from O.H. Ivie Reservoir. Another live offering, the waterdog, which is the larval form of the tiger salamander, is responsible for another ShareLunker entry.
> Many largemouth anglers prefer [fishing] artificials, but considering the 18.18-pound state record was caught by a crappie angler dipping minnows, maybe it’s not a bad idea to fish with some of the real thing every once in a while.
> The swimbait and brush hog were used to each produce a pair of ShareLunkers.
> Surprisingly, the spinnerbait has only been acknowledged to have produced a single lunker entry the past two seasons.
2 Comments
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Brian
May 3, 2011 at 10:18 am
For a while I tracked all the stats from the ShareLunker program, and compiled data from the first 400+ reported catches. On that much larger sample size, the lure breakdown was:
>soft plastics – 45%
>jigs – 21%
>spinnerbaits – 11%
>livebait – 10%
>crankbaits – 10%
If you broke soft plastics down into sub categories, that resulted in :
> pl. lizards – 35%
> pl. worms – 24%
> craw worms – 14%
> fluke/sluggo – 6%
> creatures/senko/centipede – 4.5% each
> Carolina rig plastic – 4%
Some ineteresting questions come to mind based on this data:
> If live bait is such a “sure thing” for trophy bass, how come only 10% of all ShareLunkers are caught on it?
> Same thing with giant trout baits and swim baits. Shouldn’t they be disproportionately represented?
> Are the bait types used to catch these giant bass directly proportional to their use among everyday anglers? In other words, what gets thrown the most, catches the most.
> Is it any surprise that slow and quiet drop baits (worms and jigs) catch about 2/3 of all ShareLunkers as opposed to the “power” baits?
Chance C.
May 3, 2011 at 10:56 am
I have always wondered why we don’t use live bait a lot more in Texas. In Florida many of the larger fish comes off shiners. When I went in Florida we used shiners and it was a blast. When you got a bite it was always “hold on” because it could be a big one. We also had 3-4 poles out that increases your chances a lot more.