5 Best Bass Lures for Heavy Grass and Weeds That Won’t Get Hung Up

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They say even the worst day of fishing is better than the best day at work. Well, it certainly doesn’t feel that way when you watch $10 lure after $10 lure get permanently stuck at the bottom of the lake, in a far-off grass bed, or tangled up in the weeds. 

As you get better, this happens a lot less often. You learn how to rig and control your lure, cast it with precision, and if you do get snagged, you probably have some tricks up your sleeve to get it free. 

However, beginners can end up losing their enthusiasm (and a lot of money in lost baits) because of it, and it still irritates experienced anglers all the time. Especially when you’re talking about expensive lures. 

So, the team Bass Forecast is going to highlight 5 of the best bass lures for those snag-heavy areas to keep your fishing trip fun. 

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1: Dirty Jigs Tour Level Football Jig

We listed a brand-name lure for this one, but that’s because the Dirty Jigs football jig is a great product.

The different reasons we love it for snag-free fishing are the same, even if you’re using one from a different brand. In general, football jigs do the same thing, but they do it with various degrees of quality. 

A football jig isn’t snag-proof. No lure is. However, it is extremely snag-resistant. 

First, the jig head itself is designed to avoid getting stuck. It’s made to roll up over rocks as you hop it on the bottom or drag it over pebbles. So, it doesn’t get lodged nearly as easily as something pointed like a swim jig. 

That’s not the only thing helping, though. If you buy a proper football jig that’s complete in the package, it also has a very effective weed guard. It’s a sturdy bunch of bristles that keep grass and weeds from getting snagged by the hook, but the bass can bite down and expose the hook with ease. 

Overall, you need a good football jig in your tackle box, even if it’s not our recommendation from Dirty Jigs. They’re just extremely useful lures. 

2: Booyah Pad Crasher

This one isn’t even made to be weedless. It just is because of the way it works. 

A topwater frog is a hollow rubber frog that floats on the surface. For you to get snagged, you pretty much have to intentionally cast it into a bush, yank hard, and hope the body compresses.

That’s one of the reasons it’s so weed-resistant. The hooks lay flat on the top of the body. The body has to compress for the hooks to be fully exposed. 

There’s also the fact that it floats on the top of the water. There aren’t many snag hazards except for thicker moss mats, and that’s why the hooks are designed the way they are.

Everything else is easily avoidable on the surface, and if you ever get snagged, it’s likely because you cast improperly by accident. 

In general, you should rarely get snagged with a Booyah Pad Crasher. 

Other topwater frogs on the market are very similar, and the same is true for them, too. However, if the hooks are designed differently or the lure doesn’t float, this doesn’t apply. 

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3: Anything Texas Rigged

We can’t talk about reducing snags without mentioning the Texas rig. This isn’t a specific lure, either. You can set up most soft plastics on the Texas rig, and all you need is an EWG hook and a bullet weight. 

The Texas rig was made specifically for this. There are other benefits, but it was meant to be weedless to deal with thick brush and other hazards while bopping worms and craws on the bottom. 

You can’t mess this up, either.

Slide a bullet weight/casting weight onto your line with the point aiming back up to your rod, tie on your EWG hook, and thread the soft-plastic lure on headfirst for about ¼ inch. Slide and twist it up to the shank and pierce the hook through the body. Poof. You have a Texas rig that’s pretty much weed-proof. 

If you’re looking for a weedless setup and you’re brand-new, you should start here before you start buying other lures that require a bit more experience to operate well. 

It’s the first lure an angler should learn to work with when they graduate from bobber fishing for bluegill. 

4: Head Hunter Nasty Knight

The Head Hunter Nasty Knight is a single-bladed spinnerbait with a small profile. Again, it’s not necessarily the exact lure we recommend that you have to buy. This is just an awesome lure we trust to provide the benefits we’ll be talking about, and we know it’ll last a good long while. 

Technically, spinnerbaits are not made to be weedless. Similarly to frogs, it’s just an effect created by their design. 

A spinnerbait’s frame is in line with the hook barb, and the front of it looks like a ramp aiming right over the hook. 

Well, when you buzz this through the water, and you clip some weeds and grass, that frame is going to let that debris ride up and launch right over the top. 

Typically, you’ll get your lure back with a bunch of moss and gunk stuck at the tie-on point, but you shouldn’t have many issues with weeds and grass at all. 

The only caveat here is that you don’t want to toss it into a moss mat like you would a heavy Texas rig or jig. It’ll catch every last bit of moss you bump into at the tip until it gets so heavy it breaks the line. With weeds and grass, it’s a great option, though. 

5: Dirty Jigs Tour Level Pitchin’ Jig

Just like the first one, the real focus is on “pitchin’ jigs” in general, but we love the options Dirty Jigs provides in its Tour Level lineup. 

You’ll also hear these jigs referred to as flippin’ jigs. It’s basically the same thing, and it’s used interchangeably a lot. 

These jigs are meant to be flipped through dense vegetation where other lures probably wouldn’t even get to the water. 

A flip is when you do an underhand cast to pendulum the lure to its destination. There are also techniques for holding the line and putting tension on the rod tip that releases when you underhand cast, and that gives you great precision on top of a bit more distance. That’s a bit more advanced, but it works great. 

Just like other jigs, it has a weed guard, and the head design can glide right passed the thick weeds as you cast through them. 

The head design also lets the lure sink straighter and “stick the landing” instead of gliding off and finding its way into a bunch of junk under the water. Which is great, because any time you’re casting through thick vegetation, that vegetation is out of sight down there, too. 

Minimizing Snags with These Lures and Others to Catch More Bass

These lures all help, but as any experienced angler knows, technique keeps you out of snags a lot more than just lure designs.

If you hand the latest weed-free lure to a complete beginner, they’ll find a way to get that thing stuck in a bush 20 feet away from the water, after all. It’s just something we all do when we get started. 

So, to help you maximize the potential of each of these lures and enjoy your time more, we’re going to go over a few things that will help you take advantage of these lures’ features to avoid snags almost all the time. 

1: Pay Attention to Your Lure’s Position

You can’t always see what you’re fishing around. Especially in murky water. However, you can see everything poking out above water, and you can make a pretty good guess as to where the most annoying hazards are by considering how those things spread out beneath the surface. 

As long as you’re decent at casting and retrieving, you should be able to cut back on snags dramatically just by watching where your lure is going and reacting accordingly. 

2: Get a Feel for the Bottom

Most of the time, you can’t see the bottom or any of the stuff lying around down there, but there are ways to get a better understanding of it to avoid snags and fish more effectively. 

An old-school and low-tech way to do this is to simply tie a heavy sinker onto your line. No lures, bobbers, or anything else. Just the sinker. 

Then, you cast that across any area you want to check the bottom of. As you drag it back slowly, you’ll be able to feel what’s going on through the rod and your line. It takes time and experience to get good at this, but it’s not difficult.

There’s a high chance of the sinker getting snagged in really bad areas, but you can always buy cheap, generic sinkers for this. 

If you find areas that are going to be snag-heavy, you can avoid those or switch up your lure to deal with them better. 

There are also casting sonar units that essentially even the playing field with boaters. Speaking of which, most boaters have sonar that handles this issue. 

The more you learn about the bottom, the more you can adjust your approach to avoid snags. 

3: Use the Right Lure

Even among weedless lures, some are better than others in specific situations. None of them is weedless and snag-proof in every type of condition. 

If you’ll be flipping through tall weeds on the banks, use a flippin’ jig. If you’ll be casting around pads and mats, use a topwater frog or punch rig. The right tool for the job is always going to be the best. 

4: Focus On Precision Casting

When you first start, or even if you’ve been fishing for a while and keep casting all over the place, focus on precision. 

Most snags happen when you get too close to hazards or an unavoidable object gets in the way and you didn’t see it, but sometimes, your bad casting causes it. 

Focus on your casting technique, and learn to put that lure exactly where you want it. Usually, it’s best to use the same rod setup for a while to get this down. 

Typically, you want to cast near hazards, but not directly into them. The more precise your casting is, the more likely it is that you can do that. 

5: Use Your Cheap Stuff First

This doesn’t help you avoid snags at all, but it does help in other ways. Use your cheaper gear when you’re first getting used to this. 

First, snagging and losing an expensive piece of gear is extremely annoying, and it can kill your enthusiasm for the sport if it keeps happening. 

Secondly, it lets you save more of your tackle budget to spend on those more expensive lures after you’ve gone through that phase where you get snagged all the time.

It’s like letting an artist start with the cheap stuff to learn the basics, and then getting them the fancy stuff to work with. They can use it more effectively and not waste it. 

Snags Happen, but You Can Avoid Them

Snags around weeds and grass are just a part of fishing. They’re going to happen. 

They happen more when you’re first starting, and as you get better, you’ll learn ways to minimize them. However, you will never fully escape snags. Experienced anglers lose $80 in custom baits all the time. It’s part of the sport. 

The sooner you embrace that and work around it, the more you’ll enjoy it. 

With that said, these lures and techniques that we talked about will help you improve greatly.
And, if you want to improve your chances of catching big bass, download the Bass Forecast app today!