Buzz Bait: How to Fish It, the Trailer Hook, and When It Beats a Frog

A buzz bait is a topwater on a bent wire, like a spinnerbait’s frame: a propeller blade on the upper arm, a lead head with a skirt and a single hook on the lower, and no body at all. Reeled fast enough, the blade climbs to the surface, churns and squeals from the friction of blade on wire, while the skirt and hook run an inch under it. Stop reeling and it sinks, which is the one fact that separates it from every other topwater. The first production buzzbait, the Lunker Lure, reached the shelves in 1976, and Wired2Fish still rates it the best overall buzzbait almost fifty years later.

A buzzbait cannot stop. Cast, reel, squeal, and the fish that wants it has to come up and get it before it is gone.

When does a buzzbait work?

Topwater anglers wait for 65 °F (18 °C); buzzbait anglers do not. The window opens earlier than most people think, and the pros in the table agree on its shape.

Above the mid-60s, the bass water temperature page has the fish on grass edges, docks and shade lines, and moving fastest. That is prime buzzbait water through summer, with the bite shifting to dawn, dusk and night as the surface passes 80 °F (27 °C). Baker’s summer exceptions: a midday bite near an insect hatch, a bluegill bed or a patch of shade.

Fall is the second peak, when baitfish and largemouth crowd the shallow flats. McKeon Roberts of Wired2Fish fishes a 1/2 oz black buzzbait with a swimbait trailer across those flats until the water drops into the low 50s. Wind, cloud and low light all help; the buzzbait is the topwater that still gets heard in a chop and in stained water.

Where does it work?

That is Cobb’s season-by-cover list, with Gerald Swindle’s night water (big flats near deep water, the shadow side of docks and bushes) and Kevin VanDam’s clear-water downsizing added. Depth is not the point. If bass are feeding near the surface and there is something to bump, the buzzbait is in play. On big Southern reservoirs, where Cobb says the bass are everywhere and nowhere, nothing finds them faster.

Free PDF · Water temperature chart Which fish are biting at today's water temperature?

One water temperature reading, and the 16-page chart tells you who's spawning, who's feeding hard, where they sit and what to throw. 26 fish, every number sourced.

Your email address

Send me the free chart

Enter your email, confirm it with one click, and the PDF is in your inbox. Plus one email a week on what's biting. Unsubscribe anytime. Privacy.

What do you need?

• A buzzbait, 1/4–1/2 oz (7–14 g). Baker’s all-round choice is a 3/8 oz with a standard blade. He drops to 1/4 oz with a smaller blade when the baitfish are small, as in fall, and throws a 1/2 oz only as a double-blade model, which stays up better. VanDam goes down to 1/8 oz for small baitfish, or under bright skies with little wind.
• A trailer hook and the rubber tubing or keeper that holds it.
• A soft-plastic toad or swimbait, optional, in place of the skirt or behind it.
• A casting rod of 7 ft (2.1 m) or longer, moderate-fast action, heavy or medium-heavy power: Cobb’s spec in BassResource. Roberts fishes a 6 ft 11 in (2.1 m) heavy. Length casts far and lifts the bait fast; the moderate action delays the hookset a fraction.
• A baitcaster at 7:1 or faster. Roberts runs 7.5:1. Cobb’s reason is that a few quick turns put the bait on top, after which the retrieve slows down. Keep the spool full; a half-empty spool picks up less line per turn.
• Line: 20–30 lb braid tied direct. Cobb’s reasoning is twist: a buzzbait spins on every cast, and braid shrugs off the twist that wraps mono around the tip within hours. No leader; the line never enters the water. Roberts fishes 30 lb braid with an optional short 20 lb fluorocarbon leader for stretch.
• Or monofilament, 12–17 lb, respooled when the twist builds. It is the honest alternative: Cobb concedes it probably hooks a higher share of strikes, because its stretch delays the pull, and it floats. Fluorocarbon sinks the bait.

Which buzzbait?

Every price is the retailer’s at the time of writing; the hook is listed only where the maker or retailer names it.

Four families, and the table has them all. A single blade is the classic and the cheapest. A double or counter-rotating pair makes more lift and more resistance, so it fishes slower, tracks straight instead of pulling to one side, and makes more noise. Wired2Fish names the Double Take the best of them.

A clacker, a bead or a flap of metal in the path of the blade, adds a knock to the squeal. Jack Lewis’s 1999 history on BassResource already called it “most effective” in choppy water. A toad-style head carries a soft-plastic toad instead of a skirt and skips under docks.

Two more from the Wired2Fish round-up: the plain War Eagle at $5.99, their best value, and the Accent Jacob Wheeler finesse buzzbait at 5/16 oz (9 g) for small forage and cold water. And at the 2025 Sabine River Elite event, Pat Schlapper caught his winning Championship Sunday bag on a Brazalo Bushwhacker Pro Elite buzzbait.

How do you fish it?

1. Engage the reel before the bait lands and reel the instant it hits, so it never sinks. Field & Stream’s rule of thumb starts the same way: get the bait up to the surface immediately at the start of the cast.
2. Hold the rod tip high, about 45 degrees in Roberts’ description, so the blade climbs and the line stays off the water, then lower it as the bait comes in.
3. Find the slowest speed that keeps it up. Baker’s rule: slow down until the blade is “just gurgling along the surface.” A double blade or the Cavitron’s holed blade goes slower still.
4. Bump the cover. Run it into the laydown, along the dock, over the grass edge; the change of direction and the break in the squeal draw the strike. Most single-blade buzzbaits track to one side. Gary Klein keeps two rods rigged, one tracking each way, to run the bait into a dock from either side.
5. Vary the speed before you change the bait. Zell Rowland’s point: most anglers quit after a few casts at one speed, and a burst or a stall changes what the bass sees.
6. Finish every cast. Bass follow a buzzbait a long way, and many strikes come beside the boat.
7. Keep reeling after a miss. The fish usually comes back, and the trailer hook gets it the second time. VanDam keeps a weightless stick worm on a second rod for the swirl.

When do you set the hook?

A buzzbait strike is a blow-up, and the blow-up is the problem: the eye sets the hook before the fish has it. Cobb’s rule is to reel until you feel them and never jerk on what you see. Roberts has it as reel down, feel the weight, then set. Mono’s stretch builds that delay in. On braid the rod has to supply it, which is why Lewis’s friends went to a softer composite rod. His last resort was simpler still: do not watch the lure.

Why fish a trailer hook?

Half the strikes on a buzzbait are short, at the blade or the skirt. A trailer hook catches most of them: a second single hook slipped over the point of the main hook and held by rubber tubing or a keeper. Baker runs one 90 percent of the time; Lewis called it “simply a must.”

Hang it point-up and straight behind the main hook, the eye tightened with pliers so it cannot swing. A single trailer goes around cover; Baker switches to a treble trailer in open water. Leave it off in thick grass and brush, where it fouls; that is where the Cavitron’s set-back hook earns its place. On the Double Take it comes pre-rigged.

Skirt or toad?

The skirt is not sacred. Cobb, who helped design Greenfish’s Toad Toter, throws a soft-plastic toad on a 3/8 oz (11 g) head with a 4/0 hook most of the time. The toad’s flat belly planes, so he can reel slower and hold the bait in a spot longer. A toad also skips under docks and bushes where a skirted bait cannot go. It has to be rigged dead straight, hook through the center and out between the legs, or the bait rolls.

Rowland strips the skirt in wind, because it catches the breeze on the cast. Klein threads an 8 in (20 cm) lizard behind a big buzzbait when he is hunting a giant. In clear water VanDam pulls out half the skirt strands and picks a translucent skirt, so the bait runs deeper and shows less.

Which color?

The color rules are short, from Baker and VanDam. Muddy water: a solid bright skirt, white or chartreuse, with a gold blade. Stained: something between. Clear: a silver blade, a silver head and a translucent or natural skirt, and a subtler color still if the fish are missing it. Night, and daytime in summer too: a black bait with a black blade. Cobb leads with white and a nickel blade every time and changes only after a couple of misses.

How do you tune the squeak and the track?

A quiet buzzbait is a broken one. The squeal is the blade rubbing on the wire or the rivet, and there are three ways to make it louder. Baker straightens the end of the arm, slides the blade off and taps a four-sided 9d nail into both holes to square them. Then he slides it back on and bends the wire back over the rivet. Lewis’s older version: drill the rear clevis hole slightly larger than the wire, so the blade rattles on it. MLF’s guide: bend the blade arm until the blade just ticks the wire or the head. Rowland cups the blades a little more to slow the bait, or opens them to speed it up.

The track is tuned by bending too. Klein bends the wire slightly between blade and line tie to make the bait run off-center, into a dock post or a log. Swindle bends the arm between blade and head into a downward stair-step at night, so the head rides lower and short-striking fish find the hook. Klein warns that it does not take much, and that you can overdo it.

Mistakes to avoid

• Letting it sink. Reel from the moment it lands.
• Too fast. The slowest speed that keeps it up gets the most bites; a double blade if yours will not stay up slow.
• No trailer hook. Half the strikes, missed.
• Fluorocarbon. It sinks the lure; braid or mono.
• Setting on the splash. Feel the weight first.
• A silent bait. Tune the blade until it squeals.

Where did the buzzbait come from?

Lewis’s history has the buzzbait growing out of two things. Anglers were burning a spinnerbait fast enough to bulge the surface. And the inline Herb’s Dilly had a wing-shaped blade that lifted it over the log jams of Lake Buchanan in the mid-1970s. Baker traces the idea to the 1940s.

The Lunker Lure of 1976 was the first production buzzbait, and Wired2Fish counts the Whopper Plopper among the lures it inspired. The spinnerbaits hub sets the buzzbait beside the spinnerbait it is built on.

Buzzbait, frog or Whopper Plopper?

On a mat, throw the frog lure. In open water, with fish that want a pause, throw the Whopper Plopper. Along wood, sparse grass and docks, where the wire frame goes through and the fish want speed, throw the buzzbait. A toad on a buzzbait head sits between the first two: it skips like a frog and keeps moving like a buzzbait. The topwater hub has the floating topwaters.

Free PDF · 16 pages

Know what's biting before your first cast

The Water Temperature Fishing Chart. Take one water temperature reading, find it on the chart, and you know which of 26 freshwater fish are feeding today, where they are and what to throw. For your phone and the tackle box.

• The 26-fish chart: who's spawning, feeding hard or shut down at your reading
• Where they sit and what to throw at every band: bass, crappie, bluegill, walleye, catfish and trout
• The best hours at your reading, the cold front day by day, and the spawn calendar from ice-out to midsummer
• The three thermometer mistakes that make a reading lie (the first one is the surface)

Your email address

Send me the free chart

Every number from state fish and wildlife agencies and fisheries research: 61 sources, all on the site.

Enter your email, confirm it with one click, and the PDF is in your inbox. Plus one email a week on what's biting. Unsubscribe anytime. Privacy.