How my first bass of the year cured my swimbait allergy | Trip Reports

My first largie of the year…

Swimbaits are not my thing. The soft plastic baits featuring paddle tails are popular choices for fresh and saltwater fishing, with the unique kicking action enticing fish all of kids to bite.

Allegedly.

I say that because, for one reason or another, I have an allergy to using swimbaits. Despite throwing them a decent amount, I rarely catch anything. That’s true for largemouth, smallmouth and striped bass.

In what is mystifying to non-anglers, confidence in your gear and bait often proves essential to a successful day on the water. Part of that is because you usually only gain confidence with a bait that’s catching fish. But I also suspect that when using confidence baits you simply end up fishing more accurately and efficiently, leading to more catches.

Whatever the reason may be, I had zero confidence in swimbaits, despite the fact that they are a favorite pick of anglers for many of the fish I go after.

The one exception is the Eurotackle EPF Swim, but at its tiny size of 1 inch, I don’t really count it as the same type of bait.

Anything bigger, and I run into trouble.

So with temps soaring to the 60s on a recent Sunday morning, I decided I’d head over to The Park and try to catch my first largemouth of the year. But I wouldn’t be bringing a full suite of rods and baits. Instead, I took my 8-foot medium-heavy spinning rod and decided to only use a 2.8-inch Keitech swimbait on a ballhead jig.

My plan was simple: cover as much water as possible in an hour to see if I could finally build some confidence with the one bait that has frustrated me the most. If I didn’t catch anyting, so be it.

The fishing was slow to start. With limited time, I chose one side of the lake and started working my way around it, and nothing was biting at first. Fortunately my mood was unaffected given the beautiful spring-like weather.

I continued to work my around the lake, hitting up my favorite spots with a few casts before moving on. But still nothing.

Approaching the final stretch on a peninsula, my hope of a catch was nearly gone, and I was getting ready to swear off swimbaits for good. Making matters worse was that I’d never had success at the few spots I had left to fish.

But at the second-to-last casting area, I tossed my Keitech past a submerged log off a point, and as I reeled it in past the laydown, THUMP. Finally, a 12-inch largemouth had taken the bait.

The bass in The Park get a lot smaller than this one…

I quickly pulled him in and snapped a few photos, releasing him back to the lake with a smile on my face. It was another skunk avoided, another species crossed off the list for 2024, and one of my first proper swimbait catches.

At the very next spot, another area where I’d regularly struggled, I received an even heavier bump on my Keitech, but the fish pulled off in a matter of seconds.

No matter. The second bite was almost as important as the first, proving that the one catch was not a fluke.

At long last, I’d built a little confidence with paddletails, just enough that I made the plan to stick with them on my next trip to The Park.

SONG OF THE TRIP

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