Top 8 Baits for Summer Bass Fishing (And When to Use Each One)

Summer is the most active time for anglers.

Even though it’s a bit more difficult on those blistering hot days, this is when families head out to the lake to camp, throw a line in, and have some fun, and of course, dedicated anglers are out there hitting the summer bite. 
How do you make the most of those summer months, though? How can you get your new personal best when it’s 95 degrees and the bass are starting to slow down a bit? 

It all comes down to using the right baits and techniques. 

Today, we’re going to cover the bait side of things. Here are our top 8 summer bass baits, and we’ll give detailed breakdowns on how to use each of them as we go along. 

If you start tying these on, you’ll maximize your potential with the summer bite. 

1: Booyah Pad Crasher

First, we’re going to start with topwater. It’s an extremely fun way to fish, and it’s perfect for a few different situations, but it’s also one that is largely limited to the warmer months. You’re not tossing frogs in the middle of winter. That's for sure. 

The Booyah Pad Crasher is a great way to get started, and it’s a tried-and-true topwater bait that slays bass. 

If you haven’t seen one, this is a flexible, floating, plastic frog with skirts coming out of the back to mimic frog legs. You toss it onto a pad or some other bit of dry area near your target zone, and then you start hopping it back. 

This is perfect around weeds, thick mats, and lily pads, and pretty much any other area where there’s a lot of topwater cover you can hop the frog around on. This is an especially effective bait to use around dawn and dusk. But if you detect activity during the day in thick cover, it can work anytime. 

There are a ton of hollow-body frogs on the market, but Booyah uses good hooks, the bodies are nice and flexible to make it easier for the fish to expose those hooks, and they come in a ton of color patterns and size varieties.

They’re also priced well. So, you don’t have to dig into the grocery budget to pick a couple up and try them out. 

2: Heddon Chug’n Spook

Sticking with topwater options for now, you have to try a topwater spook. These look a little odd.

They’re long, chunky sticks that float on top of the water, and they typically have a fish pattern printed on them with front and rear hooks. It’s the action that makes it stand out. 

A spook floats, and when you retrieve it, it wiggles back and forth when you use a rapid reel, rod tip twitch, pause, and repeat cadence.. It’s called a ”Walking the Dog” retrieve by most anglers. 

This can be useful in similar situations to topwater frogs, but it’s a bit more versatile. You don’t need to hop it off of things, and in fact, you shouldn’t. You can also fish it in clear, open water a lot more effectively than you can a frog, because it just looks like a bait fish swimming around on the top.

Frogs provide an unnatural presentation when you use them in open water. 

The downside is that the hooks are exposed, and when you use a spook in heavy cover, it tends to get snagged a lot faster. 

The Heddon Chug’n Spook doesn’t mix up the formula or do anything weird, but it does give you a high-quality spook that you can rely on for years to come. They also come in a wide variety of patterns, and they’re reasonably priced for such long-lasting lures. 

3: Zoom Trick Worm

The Zoom Trick Worm might be one of the most common bass lures out there. It doesn’t get talked about a lot by the bass community, but bags of these things typically end up in everyone’s tackle box, and they work when you learn how to use them. 

These are super simple. They come in different lengths, but they’re just soft-plastic worms with curly tails that change the action up a bit. You can toss them on a Texas Rig, and they’re extremely versatile. 

We like to toss them under the shade and work them slowly in the summertime. To a bass hiding during the hottest part of the day, they look like a fat, juicy worm that dropped into the water, and the easy meal is irresistible. 

You can also experiment with these on different rig setups, and you can make the Texas rig work effectively in all sorts of conditions by changing up your retrieval method. 

The best part about these is that they’re extremely beginner-friendly. They’re cheap enough for even the most budget-conscious anglers to grab them without breaking the bank, they work exceptionally well, and they’re easy to use with plenty of room to learn advanced techniques. 

We recommend trick worms for summer, but every angler should have at least a few different colors in their box regardless of the season. 

4: Square-Bill Crank

We don’t even worry about the brand or model with this one. Square-bill cranks are made by all the top brands, and there’s a lot of room to shop around for one that meets your price, color, and size requirements. 

Any high-quality square-bill that matches the hatch is going to perform pretty well in the summer if you use it right. 

That’s because these are made to work much more erratically than your average crankbait.

That square bill knocks them around in the water like crazy, and one key to summertime bass fishing is irritating the bass. When you reel in one of these passed bass that’s cranky, suspended, and tired of the heat, it’s going to lash out to stop all the noise. 

That’s when it’s best to use these, too. When the bite is slow and the bass are lethargic, you want to toss a square-bill crankbait out and start annoying the bass like crazy. 

5: Rapala DT12 Series Deep Crankbaits 

You can’t go wrong with a deep-diving crank in the summertime.

We prefer the Rapala DT12 series. They’re high-quality, come in a great variety for all kinds of conditions, and they’re relatively affordable for what you get.

However, the real point here is to get a crank deep and make some noise. You’re not limited to the Rapala DT12. 

These are perfect for when the bass swim deep and suspend to escape the heat. You’ll usually want to bust this lure out around midday when the bass just do not want to hit anything up top. 

Another great point about these is that they’re very easy to use. You tie it on, get it to the right depth, and use a simple pause and reel technique. You can also do a straight retrieval. 

This makes them great for beginners who are having trouble with more complicated lures, but they’re also tools that do extremely well in the hands of seasoned anglers. 

6: Lucky Craft LV 500 Lipless Cranks

Lipless cranks are a jack-of-all-trades for summertime fishing. You can realistically keep the same crank tied on all day without missing out on too much. 

For these, we like the Lucky Craft LV 500 series. They’re a little pricier than widely known options, but they look realistic, are high quality, and get the job done. 

With this, your main strategy is going to be burning it. You want to reel it in straight at a fast pace across those wide-open areas. The versatility comes in when it comes to depth.

Whenever you see bass busting on baitfish, burning a chrome lipless crank through the active area often results in hook-ups. A lipless crank can typically reach whatever depth you want by letting it sit for a minute to sink. Count it down to the depth you want and start burning it. 

That helps a lot throughout the day when the bass move to different depths thanks to the heat, and the fast motion triggers lots of reaction bites. 

The main thing to watch out for is the potential for snags. A beginner can count it down too long, sink it to the bottom, and snag it the second they start retrieving, and a lot of them get lost when anglers start casting around brush and vegetation. 

You want wide-open flats a lot of the time. 

7: Senko

The Senko is one of the most popular baits out now, and there’s a good reason for it. You can fish it a ton of ways, it’s inexpensive, and bass tear them up all year-round. 

We like the wacky rig with this one. Pick your color, get an EWG hook, and push the hook right through the center of the Senko.

You’ll have the head and tail on either side of the hook with the barb fully exposed. There’s no weight on this one, but you should use a small rubber band to hold the lure to the hook. Because it only pierces one thin part, you’ll lose a lot of Senkos if you don’t. 

Just toss it out near some cover or in some shade and bounce it around a bit. It’ll flutter as it sinks, and the bass will nab it without a second thought. 

8: Micro Finesse Fat Assassin

To round this list off, we’re going to throw one out of left field.

The Micro Finesse Fat Assassin from Euro-Tackle is a great option in the summer in very specific situations. It’s not going to be your bread and butter through the hottest season, but it can turn a bad day around quickly. 

This is a tiny soft-plastic lure with lots of ribs and a fat wormy shape. It’s meant to be tossed on ultra-light equipment, but you can use a medium-light or medium rod if you use a split-shot sinker. 

Why should you try this little guy in the summer? Earlier, we mentioned how every family is running out to the lake, grilling hot dogs, camping, and having a great time while they toss some lures and catch some fish. 

Well, that ramps up the pressure. A lot of those weekend warriors looking for family fun are using the stereotypical baits that every angler knows, and that makes the bass a lot less likely to bite those.

You wouldn’t keep biting a cheeseburger if you got yanked out of your house every time you did. You’d try something else for a while. It’s the same way for bass. 

When the pressure is high, you’re in a very public area with lots of other anglers, and the bass just won’t bite, downscaling to this little Fat Assassin can be the ticket to success.

While everyone else is getting skunked with crankbaits and chatterbaits, you’ll be pulling in bass. 

We prefer to use these in the harder seasons, such as fall and winter, but when the pressure is high, finesse baits come in clutch. 

Tips for Catching Bass in the Summer

Now, you know 8 baits for bass fishing in the summer, but there are a couple of key points you need to consider to make sure you’re making the most of each opportunity. 

1: Try Early Morning Fishing

One of the best tips, especially with topwater lures, is to head out early in the morning to start fishing.

The bass are out and ready to eat before the sun starts warming the water up, and you won’t have to get your presentation quite as perfect to make a catch. It’s harder when the bass are all suspended. 

This also works toward the later evening hours when the water starts to cool down again and the bugs come out. 

2: Hit the Depths and the Shade as Priorities

Once the sun’s out on the water, when you’re going around picking your spots to cycle through, focus on the depths and shady areas with lots of cover. 

Those are the places the bass are going to run to as it heats up. Fishing the top of a sunbaked lake at noon isn’t going to catch much. 

Catch More Summer Bass with the Best Baits

If you’re having a hard time this summer catching bass, try these 8 baits out, and we’re sure you’ll start getting bass on the hook.

To find a great spot to use them, check out the BassForecast app today!