Tie multiple blades on your line in front of a swimming jig to give the appearance of a school of shad.
Alabama angler Eddie Johns has been fishing bass tournaments, keeping a log, and teaching bass fishing for decades. Over the years, he’s learned a lot of tricks – bass fishermen are constantly tinkering with their baits, and Eddie is no exception. Some modifications are tiny – add some color with dye, for example. But other modifications I’ve heard of over the years became famous money-makers: remember when somebody shaved the bottom lip on a Pop-R? Sometimes a tiny change in sound or appearance is all it takes to get the fish to bite. So Eddie shared forty ways to change up your baits with BassResource readers.
Soft Plastics
Flatten your bullet sinker with a hammer so you can easily skip it under docks and overhanging branches. It’s cheaper than buying special skipping weights, and you can get a lot flatter. Insert a toothpick before smacking it to keep the hole from closing, and check the edges of the hole to ensure there are no sharp edges that could cut your line.
Use a razor blade or scalpel to slice a curled tail into several thin ribbons for extra action.
Push your worm up over the eye of the hook when you rig it and insert a toothpick, rubber nail, or a short length of big salt water mono through the worm and eye to make it stay up better. Eddie swears by Trapper hooks to keep the fish on, and if the worm gets torn up by weeds or something, he can often mend it by melting it slightly with a lighter.
Add a spinnerbait blade to the hook when fishing a worm. Put it on the hook with the swivel and all, and keep it in place with a bit of rubber tubing, a piece of cork, etc. This adds flash and sound to Texas rigs, etc.
Add a float to your line – it picks the worm up and holds it in place. This is particularly good under docks and such – you can also see when you’ve got a bite.
Eddie likes to add a stinger hook to his worms in the spring. Tie your worm hook on, and leave a long tag end. Rig your worm, then measure out on the line where you want the stinger to be: near the worm's tail. Tie on a little drop shot hook and hook it into the worm's tail. No more short strikes or fish eating the tail and getting away!
Put weights inside your worm. Thread your worm on a hook, but don’t turn it around to Texas rig it. Instead, slide it up the line and cut the hook off while threading the worm. Take some small weights, slide them up the line and into the worm, and then tie the hook back on. Texas rig as usual. This makes the worm go through weeds and grass much more quickly and gives you a smooth, straight fall. Eddie says you’ll probably wreck a few worms practicing this one. He did.
If your weight has a deep concave face, try gluing a tiny piece of spongy foam or felt. Apply scent to this – it lasts a lot longer.
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After tying on the main hook, leave the tag end long enough to add a second stinger hook in the tail to get those short bites.
Use an awl to poke holes in a tube bait, then stuff a broken Alka Seltzer tablet in the tube and seal it with a piece of packing peanut or a cork disk. It fizzes and bubbles when it hits the water and gets attention.
Put a spoon inside a tube bait – makes it get down quicker, and the tentacles hide the treble hook. A tiny spoon can be used for a subtle presentation.
Use a piece of peanut packing foam inside a tube jig for Carolina rigs. It makes it float up.
Jigs
Use a lighter to heat the collar on your jig just before you slide the plastic trailer on – it bonds the plastic and helps it stay on longer.
Add a blade to your jig for sound and glitter – use a small Indiana blade and slide it on before adding the trailer. This is especially good in spring and fall.
Spinnerbaits
Flatten your spinnerbait blade with a hammer for super slow rolling. This gives it plenty of flash and action for a slow roll presentation.
Add Ziptailz to your spinnerbaits to expand the skirt. Eddie uses mostly white spinnerbaits and adds color by adding Ziptails inside the skirts. Slide them clear up the hook, so they’re right up against the head of the bait.
File the edges of willow leaf blades to help them cut through grass.
Take the cap from a Bic pen and cut it off, leaving you with just a plastic cone. Drill a hole in the tip, and take the blades off your spinnerbait. Slide the cone up the arm, pointy end first. When you put the blades back on, the cone covers the wire bend, swivel, split ring, etc., making working through grass and over weeds and sticks much easier. You can make the cone any size you need. Make it short enough to allow the blades to spin. This works for buzzbaits too.
Add blades right on the line ahead of the spinnerbait for an in-line A-rig effect. Use split rings so they can spin.
Use wire from the craft store to add weight to the arm – the one on which the actual bait body is. Wrap the wire around the arm. You can add trim weights to it; the wire also comes in colors. This adds weight to keep a small profile but still gets the lure deeper or even slow-roll a tiny spinnerbait.
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Here’s a crankbait Eddie Johns has rigged up for his next tournament.
Crankbaits
Skipping baits is something not everyone can do, especially kids just learning to fish. Bend the eye of a crankbait to the side to make it veer off sideways under docks and piers.
Take a jointed weight apart and add a worm hook to the joint in the middle. Add a plastic bait, and you’ve got a swimming worm. You could also use half a swimbait.
Use a swivel and clip for crankbaits to make it fast and easy to change baits. Check your line and re-tie as often as necessary. Eddie says he’s never lost a fish due to a swivel or snap failure.
If you tie directly to your bait, use a loop knot to give it more action.
Drill a hole in the lip and epoxy a small weight inside to make a plug run deeper.
Drill holes in one side and add weights. When you stop cranking, it will flop over on its side and look like a dead shad.
Use a Dremel tool to sand the edges of the bill down for better action.
Use a bullet weight on the line ahead of a crank to get it deeper – it may affect the action somewhat.
Use small split-shot weights on the hook shanks of a crankbait to make it suspend when you stop it.
Put a very small Indiana blade on the back hook to add flash to a plug – use a split ring to add it to the eye of the hook.
Hold the bait up and let the treble hooks hang. One hook on each treble will be pointing toward the head of the bait. Cut these ones off, and it will run through sticks and stuff much better without getting hung up.
Put Ziptailz on the back hook to add action and color to a crankbait. They are designed to fit treble hooks or straight hooks.
Topwater
Add blades to frog legs – If you want more action and not flash, paint them black.
If you’re getting short strikes on a frog, switch to Ziptailz instead of the long fringe legs.
Add or remove rattles from a hard topwater bait by drilling into it from the bottom.
Wax your line to keep your lure higher and help it keep from tangling in the front hook. You can use a candle or a beeswax waxer from the sewing department. Please put it on slowly to avoid burning your line. Just pull the line over the wax slowly. It will cut into the wax and get a coating as you continue to pull it through.
Bend the arm on a buzzbait down, so the blade ticks the other arm as you work it. Adds extra sound.
If you rig a pair of double blades (not the three-bladed ones) on a buzzbait and both blades are bent in the same direction, it will run straight. If you rig them pointing in opposite directions, it will run to one side.
Drill holes in your buzzbait blades to add bubbling action.
Cut kids’ juice bags into narrow,1/8-inch wide ribbons and glue them into your buzzbait skirts. They are very shiny on one side, plus they curl up–action and flash in one package.
If you keep missing fish on a hard popper, slit a tube bait and slip it over the lure. The soft sides will encourage the fish to hang on.
So there you have it – forty things you can try that will change your lures' sound, action, profile, or flash. Give some of them a try. If you’ve got some killer lure mods, leave us a comment – maybe there’s a future modification article we can use it in.
