Bass Bait: The Best Live Bait and Lures, Matched to What Bass Eat

The best bass bait is whatever the bass in your water already eat: shad, shiners, crawfish, bluegill or worms. Live golden shiners and crawfish are the proven live baits. Among artificials, plastic worms took 41% of the first 100 Florida bass of 13 pounds or more in a state survey. For lure picks by season, go to the best bass lures; this page matches each food to its live bait and its lure.

Of the 168 Florida bass of 13 pounds and up logged by TrophyCatch, 53% fell to lures and 47% to natural bait. At trophy size, the argument is close to a coin toss.

What is the best bait for bass?

Match the forage, the food a bass is already hunting in that water. A lake full of shad calls for a shad or a shad-shaped lure; a rocky river with crawfish calls for a crawfish or a jig. The table puts each food beside its live bait, its lure and the law.

What do bass eat most?

Fish first, crawfish second. In DeGray Reservoir, Arkansas, federal biologists opened 748 largemouth bass stomachs from April to November. Fish made up 59% of the diet by weight and crawfish nearly 38%. Sunfish came to 28% and shad to 23%.

The split shifts with size and season. Crawfish were 42% of the food of bass 8 in (200 mm) and longer and 12% for smaller ones, and they peaked in fall. That is why a crawfish or a jig earns its place on a fall reservoir.

Texas Parks & Wildlife magazine, reporting biologist Craig Bonds’s stomach-content study, lays the largemouth menu out as a pyramid. Bluegill and other sunfish form the base, threadfin and gizzard shad sit above them, and crawfish top it. In Bonds’s thesis lake, Virginia’s Claytor Lake, smallmouth and spotted bass ate about 75% crawfish against about 20% for largemouth. His lure advice follows the calendar. In summer and early fall, small prey is everywhere, so downsize. In spring only intermediate and large forage is around, so go bigger. In winter, cold-stressed threadfin shad turn into easy meals. The magazine’s winter tip: a shad imitation fished very slowly in deep water.

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Lures or live bait: which catches more bass?

Neither wins outright. Florida’s TrophyCatch program has approved 16,615 bass of 8 pounds or more. Of the 168 of 13 pounds and up, 53% came on artificial lures and 47% on natural bait. In FWC’s survey of the first 100 of those giants, plastic worms took 41% and soft plastics as a group 71%.

So the choice is about the day, not about which is better. Lures cover water fast and let you search. Live bait sits in front of a bass that will not chase, and it is the only option that swims and smells like food on its own.

Pressure matters too. Illinois Natural History Survey researchers found that largemouth do not learn to avoid lures by watching other bass get caught; they learn from their own capture. A new lure color caught more fish at first, then the catch fell over 12 sessions as those fish learned it. On a hard-fished lake, something the bass have not seen, a live shiner included, is a fair bet.

Which live bait works best for bass?

Golden shiners

The trophy bait of Florida. FWC lets you take golden shiners of any size for bait with a cast net, dip net, seine or minnow trap within its gear limits. Wild shiners caught on the lake you fish are the classic choice, hooked by the rules further down.

Crawfish

The natural bait for smallmouth and spotted bass, and for largemouth on rock in the fall. Check your state first. Rusty crayfish are thought to have reached new states in anglers’ bait buckets, so several states restrict crawfish as bait. Wisconsin bans live crayfish as bait on all inland waters except the Mississippi River. Carrying live crayfish and fishing tackle together on those waters counts as evidence of a violation.

Nightcrawlers

The easiest live bait to buy, and the one no state in the rule table restricts. Michigan’s state-record smallmouth, 9.98 pounds and 23.1 in (59 cm), was caught on nightcrawlers in the Indian River in 2016. Worms get swallowed deep, so watch the line and set the hook soon.

Shad

A main prey fish in southern reservoirs such as West Point Lake. Threadfin shad grow to only 4 to 5 in (10–13 cm), which suits mid-size bass; trophy fish eat larger gizzard shad. Fish them on the water you net them in.

Bluegill and other sunfish

The base of the pond food chain, and the bait with the most legal strings attached. Florida allows bluegill, redear and other panfish as bait only for the angler who caught them, on rod and reel or pole and line. Farm-raised panfish under 4 in (10 cm) may be bought for bait there. Texas does not list sunfish as game fish, so they count as legal nongame bait.

Frogs and salamanders

Bonds found adult bass eating frogs, salamanders, snakes and mice. Anglers after bedding bass use a soft-plastic lizard or a live waterdog, a salamander. The law decides here. California allows amphibians as bait except salamanders, which no one may use.

How big a bait can a bass swallow?

About half its own length for a shad, and 40% for a bluegill. In Auburn’s West Point Lake study, the largest gizzard and threadfin shad found in largemouth stomachs reached 0.5 times the bass’s length. The largest bluegill reached 0.4 times, because the deep body of a sunfish fills the mouth sooner.

The study measured shad, not shiners. A golden shiner is built more like a shad than a bluegill, so the shad column is the closer guide for shiners.

These are ceilings, not preferences, and the ratios hold for bass of 4 to 20 in (10–50 cm). In bass of 19 and 27 in (48 and 68 cm), the largest shad reached only 38% and 34% of their length. Young bass switching to fish took prey about 35% of their length. A bait at the top of the table is a trophy bait: fewer bites, bigger fish. Bonds once found a 16-inch bass with a 9.5-inch shad inside, so the ceiling can be beaten.

How do you hook live bait for bass?

Florida Sportsman’s Terry Lacoss sets out the standard ways to hook a wild shiner:

1. Hook through the upper lip for drifting and slow trolling. Never run the hook from the bottom lip up through the top: it limits how much water the shiner can draw over its gills.
2. Add a small float a few feet above the hook to keep the bait near the surface and the cover. A slip bobber lets you fish deeper and still cast.
3. For heavy cover, hook under the body just behind the anal fin with a weedless hook, cast tight to the cover and let the shiner swim in under it.
4. Size the hook to the bait. A kahle hook from 2/0 to 4/0 covers it, and a 2/0 suits most wild shiners. A 2/0 to 5/0 circle hook under the body also swims freely in grass.

Crawfish and worms fish on the bottom: a Carolina rig drags them along, and a worm can go on weedless the way a soft plastic does on a Texas rig. The hook size chart shows how a 2/0 compares with a 4/0.

Does live bait kill more bass?

Not in the one controlled test. Texas Parks and Wildlife caught 240 largemouth at Lake Umphrey on treble-hook lures, Carolina-rigged plastic worms and live carp. Overall 72-hour mortality was 22% and was not related to bait type. What killed bass was where they were hooked: throat-hooked fish died at 48%. Plastic worms produced the most throat-hooked fish, at 18%.

The lesson is timing. Set the hook early with any bait a bass can swallow. A circle hook hooks fewer bass in the gullet: on fathead minnows it cut gullet hooking from 9.7% to 4.8% in an Illinois study. But it landed only half as many bass, and survival was the same for both hooks. When a bass is gut-hooked, cut the line rather than dig for the hook.

Is live bait legal where you fish?

Bait law is state law, and it differs more than most anglers expect. Six states, from the current rule text:

Three rules hold almost everywhere. Never dump leftover bait in the water; Minnesota says to put it in the trash. Buy bait from a licensed dealer when you plan to move it. And read your state’s current regulations before each season, because bait rules are rewritten as new diseases and invasive species turn up.

Which lure stands in for each bait?

The lure column of the first table does the matching: a swimbait or lipless crankbait for shad and shiners, a jig or a Texas-rigged craw for crawfish, a stick bait like the Senko for worms, a hollow-body frog for frogs. Virginia’s fisheries chief, Mike Bednarski, names the jig-and-pig, a crawfish imitation, as the bait behind more of his 6-pound bass than any other.

When live bait is not an option or not allowed, those lures carry the same forage logic. For what to throw this month, the best time to fish for bass works through the seasons, and the bass hub covers the rest.

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