Hey folks. Glenn May here, at BassResource.com, and today I'm gonna dive into our email bag and try to answer some of the questions that you've sent to me recently, starting with this one.
"Glenn, why do you think bass strike at buzzbait?"
Well, reading between the lines, I'm gonna say "You know what?" It sounds to me like you're saying, "A buzzbait doesn't look like anything in nature, so why would a bass attack it. It doesn't look like any food." Well, the reality is a buzzbait appeals to many of the bass's predatory senses.
One of the things that bass do, the best way for them to catch their prey is to corner it up against something so it doesn't have an escape route. That might be up against a sea wall, up against a point, you know, a rock hump, maybe up against some stumps, something where they can limit the escape route of the forage. And in this case, the surface of the water is also a barrier, so it helps prevent the baitfish from getting away. So anything skittering across the top is an ideal target because it looks very vulnerable to the bass.
In addition, a buzzbait creates a lot of commotion and vibration and that appeals to both their visual sense as well as their lateral lines picking up those vibrations. It helps them find that lure and when they see it, it looks like something that's running across the surface that's trying to get away from them. And to me, bass are a lot like cats. They'll chase something that's trying to get away from them. That's why you're playing with a string, bring it across the floor. As the string's going across in front of them, they're not really gonna attack it, but when you get to the tip and that end of the string gets by them, that's usually when they hit it. Because now it looks like something that's gonna get away from them, so they better react to it or it's gonna be gone.
So I think it appeals to all those different senses to bass for that reason and this is why they strike buzzbaits.
