Best Bass Lures: What Won the 2025 and 2026 Elite Series, Season by Season

The best bass lure depends on the water temperature: the eighteen Bassmaster Elite Series events of 2025 and 2026 were won on ten different kinds of bait. Bass eat different things in 45 °F and 80 °F water, on a spawning flat and on a summer ledge, and the anglers who fish for money change lures to match. These picks rest on the winners’ own tackle lists, Kevin VanDam’s six-season water-temperature framework and the reviewers’ 2026 lists; none of the lures was tested for this page.

With the sonar screens off at Guntersville in 2026, Hank Cherry won on a 3 in curl-tail grub, “a bait that’s older than much of the field,” as he put it.

Which five lures should you buy first?

For one rod and about $55, in the order the year arrives:

1. A pack of Yamamoto 5 in Senkos in green pumpkin ($7.99), with 3/0 extra-wide-gap hooks and 1/0 wacky-rig hooks, for spring to fall anywhere.
2. A Z-Man 1/2 oz JackHammer in green pumpkin shad ($19.99, or the cheaper Elite EVO): the pre-spawn grass bait.
3. A Strike King KVD 1.5 in a craw color ($9.99) for spring banks and laydowns.
4. A bag of Z-Man Finesse TRDs and two 1/10 oz ShroomZ heads (about $12) for clear, cold or hard-fished water and every smallmouth lake.
5. A Heddon Super Spook in bone ($9.99) for the first calm morning after the spawn.

Then add a bag of 5 in Zoom Super Flukes ($5.79), the chatterbait’s trailer and the herring-lake bait. Under 50 °F, add the jerkbait.

Which lure for which season?

The season table is Kevin VanDam’s, published by Bassmaster: his water-temperature bands, the lure families he names for each, and the pick from this page that fits. The bands are for largemouth. Smallmouth spawn a little later, at 60–65 °F (16–18 °C). They feel summer heat ten degrees sooner, above about 75 °F (24 °C). The bass water temperature page sets that out reading by reading, and the largemouth bass page has the biology behind the bands.

The bass fishing hub carries the same season pattern for all three bass you will meet.

What won the Elite Series in 2025?

The pattern is the season: jigs and jerkbaits in the cold months, Texas rigs, flukes and shaky heads through the spawn, a chatterbait and a football jig in early summer, swimbaits and frogs in August. That is nine events and seven lure families. At Tenkiller, a Texas-rigged soft plastic was on 60% of the final-ten rods.

What won in 2026, when the sonar went off?

The 2026 season split its nine events in two. Forward-facing sonar was banned at four of them: Guntersville, the Tennessee-Tombigbee, Santee Cooper and Champlain. It was allowed at the others, the Arkansas River and Pasquotank among them. The table reads like an experiment on what the sonar had been hiding.

Where the screens were off, the old lures came back. Hank Cherry won Guntersville on a grub, and Jason Christie won the Tennessee-Tombigbee on a spinnerbait, a swim jig and a Texas rig. Where the sonar was on, the jighead minnow and the drop shot ruled. A 20-year-old rookie won Lake Martin on a Freeloader minnow. Evan Kung won the St. Lawrence on a drop shot in 20–40 ft with 109 lb 9 oz, the heaviest all-smallmouth winning weight in Bassmaster history.

The bait of the year was none of those. Chris Johnston won Santee Cooper by 19 lb 12 oz on a Hideup Coike Fullcast. A month later Christie won Pasquotank on the same kind of bait, off a single dock. Bassmaster calls it an urchin-style bait, “the hottest new lure in bass fishing”: a round, spiky, buoyant Japanese soft bait on a treble hook. A nail weight pushed into it makes it sink slowly, hooks up. It skips under a dock like a wacky Senko and falls slower; that is the whole trick.

Which lure for the water in front of you?

Temperature says which season it is; the water in front of you says which lure. The color rules are Tyler Brinks’s, from his clarity guide on BassResource. The blade rule is Wired2Fish’s: Colorado blades for dirty, cold water and slow retrieves, willow blades for clear water and speed. The lure rules are what the two winning-lure tables keep repeating.

How do the picks compare?

The last five rows are the lures for smallmouth and spotted bass, further down the page.

The picks in detail

Yamamoto Senko, 5 in

Gary Yamamoto’s mid-1990s stick bait is soft and salt-heavy, and it falls horizontally with what he calls “a continual vibration”. Weightless on a 3/0–4/0 hook, wacky-rigged or on a drop shot, it catches bass on the fall with no skill required. Wired2Fish picks it for its “high catch rate” at every level. Ten come in a pack for $7.99. The Senko page has the rigs, the soft plastics hub the family.

Z-Man ChatterBait JackHammer, 1/2 oz

The tournament bladed jig, built with Evergreen: a stainless hex blade over a 5/0 heavy-wire Gamakatsu hook. It comes in four weights, up to 1 1/4 oz. It won Tenkiller in 2025, and the cheaper Elite EVO was on the second-place rods at Lake Martin in 2026. Its case is the pre-spawn: bass on grass in 48–70 °F water, stained or windy, a straight retrieve, a fluke trailer. The chatterbait hub explains the model ladder.

Strike King KVD 1.5

A 2.25 in squarebill that runs 3–6 ft deep. Its square lip deflects off laydowns and riprap, and the deflection triggers the strike. It is Field & Stream’s squarebill pick, and it was the squarebill in second place at the Tennessee-Tombigbee in 2026. It costs $9.99, with 24 owner reviews on the retailer’s page. The squarebill page and the crankbait hub explain the rod that keeps the trebles in.

Zoom Super Fluke, 5 in

The soft jerkbait: a 5 in minnow fished weightless on a 5/0 extra-wide-gap hook with twitches of slack line, so it darts a foot to each side and glides. It is the only lure that won in both seasons, both times for Paul Marks: Lake Hartwell in 2025 and Lake Murray in 2026. The second time he fished it weightless in chartreuse over blueback herring. A bag is $5.79, with 11 owner reviews at the retailer, and it is the standard chatterbait trailer besides. The fluke page covers the rigs.

Heddon Super Spook

The walking bait, 7/8 oz on three trebles and a descendant of the 1939 Zara Spook. Twitched, it zigzags across the surface on post-spawn and summer mornings, in 65–85 °F water and low light. Wired2Fish picks it for its fixed lead tail and feathered rear treble. The Super Spook Jr., 1/2 oz at the same price, is the smallmouth and spotted bass size. The topwater hub covers the family.

Z-Man Finesse TRD on a Finesse ShroomZ head

The Ned rig as its inventors fish it: the original 2.75 in bait in buoyant ElaZtech on a light mushroom head, standing tail-up on the bottom. It goes on a 7 ft medium-light spinning rod, and eight cost $5.49. It is the lure for clear water, cold water and pressured fish. The Ned rig page has the history and the retrieves, the jigs and rigs hub the rest of the finesse box.

What changes for smallmouth?

Smallmouth eat crayfish first and live on rock, so the list shrinks and the line gets lighter. The smallmouth bass page has the biology.

In pre-spawn water of 48–55 °F (9–13 °C), a suspending jerkbait worked slowly over the first rock outside the spawning flats catches the biggest fish of the year. The Megabass Vision Oneten, 1/2 oz, runs about 6 ft (1.8 m) on three Katsuage trebles. It costs $24.99, with 21 owner reviews at the retailer. The Rapala Husky Jerk HJ10, at 3/8 oz, starts at $8.49. The jerkbaits page has the cadence, with the pause stretching to ten seconds near 40 °F.

On the beds, at 60–65 °F, throw a tube. Zoom’s 3 3/4 in Salty Super Tube is the maker’s own suggestion for smallmouth, “the smaller size on a jighead”. It goes on a 1/8–1/4 oz head.

In summer smallmouth drop to 15–30 ft (5–9 m) on humps and river-channel rock, and the Ned rig and the drop shot take over. Trey McKinney weighed the heaviest single day in B.A.S.S. history on the St. Lawrence in 2026: a 30 lb 11 oz limit on a drop shot. His fish came from 20–50 ft.

And spotted bass?

Spotted bass eat what smallmouth eat and live where largemouth live, with one habit of their own. In reservoirs they suspend over deep water and chase shad or blueback herring, as the spotted bass page explains. That is why Fisher Anaya won Lake Martin on a Freeloader minnow on a 1/4 oz jighead over rock piles in less than 10 ft.

Three lures carry a spotted bass year:

• A jighead minnow, or a small paddle-tail such as the Keitech Swing Impact FAT in 2.8 or 3.3 in ($7.69 a pack, 25 owner reviews at the retailer), for the suspended fish.
• A shaky head, Ned rig or drop shot on rock and current seams.
• The Super Spook Jr. or a weightless fluke when they push bait to the surface.

What rod and line do these lures need?

Every lure here assumes a rod and line that suit it. The jig, the chatterbait and the Texas rig want a 7 ft medium-heavy casting rod with 15–20 lb fluorocarbon. The squarebill and the topwater want a moderate-action rod with 10–14 lb mono. The Senko, the fluke, the tube and the Ned rig want a 7 ft medium-light spinning rod. Spool it with 10–15 lb braid to a 6–8 lb fluorocarbon leader. The rods and line hubs explain the matches.

The clarity table is the whole of color, and green pumpkin is the answer when one color has to do everything. The best fishing lures page is the same exercise for every freshwater fish; the best lures for largemouth bass page makes the same argument for one of them.

How we chose

Results first: which lures won or placed in the top ten at the eighteen Elite events of 2025 and 2026, from Bassmaster’s per-event top-lures galleries. Tournament tackle is the only public, dated record of what caught bass on a given water in a given week. Then coverage: between them, the picks had to span VanDam’s six seasons. Then the reviewers, Wired2Fish’s 2026 buyer’s guide and Field & Stream’s crankbait test, decided between comparable products.

Every size, weight, hook and price on this page is the maker’s or the retailer’s. None of the lures was fished for this page.