How to Catch Bass Without Using Live Bait: A Skill Every Angler Should Know

If you’re like pretty much every other angler, we can almost guarantee that we know how you caught your first fish.

Your parents walked you out to the dock with a good old Zebco 33 spincast, a standard bobber rig, and a box of nightcrawlers before you threaded one on a thin wire hook and started reeling in bluegill.

That’s how practically everyone gets started, but it’s also what a lot of anglers keep doing well into adulthood and throughout their entire fishing journey. 

In the bass fishing world, that’s simply not how things are anymore. It’s a sport just as much as it is a hobby and a way of life, and one skill you’re going to want to learn is how to get a big bass on the end of your line without live bait. 

The good thing is that artificial baits aren’t as hard to get into as a lot of beginners think. Today, the Bass Forecast team will go over all the basics you need to know to get started and enter the world of proper bass fishing.

Let’s get started!

Getting the Right Gear

The first thing you’re going to want to do is put together a kit that is going to help you overcome the initial learning curve as much as possible. 

If you’re still using a spincast like most beginners do, you’re going to want to upgrade that to at least a spinning rod that’s between 6’6 and 7’ with a decent 10-12 pound mono line and medium power and fairly fast action.

This is a very basic setup. You can buy combos relatively inexpensively at any big box store, and it’s going to give you a lot of versatility with the types of lures you can use. 

The reason we chose mono for our line recommendation is that if you haven’t used a spinning reel, you’re going to make mistakes that will completely wreck your line. Mono is cheap, works just fine, and you won’t be as irritated when you get a massive bird’s nest. 

Most anglers who have gotten beyond the childhood fishing era already going to have a suitable setup. So you can skip buying a new rod for now. 

Then, you’ll want to buy a variety of soft plastic lures, crankbaits, and spinnerbaits. We recommend in-line spinners such as Rooster Tails when you first get started. These are the basics, and every angler should learn how to use them.

However, unless you get ones that are smaller or larger than average, they’re also the lures that are going to work best with the rod setup we told you about. 

You’ll also need a bit of specialized terminal tackle. Instead of bobbers, split shot, and bait hooks, you need a variety of worm hooks and bullet sinkers.

You don’t need much terminal tackle for the basic setups we’ll be covering, and as you get more experienced, most of the extra tackle you can buy consists of simple variations on these things.

Getting Into the Right Mindset for Bass Fishing with Artificial Lures

When you use live bait, you develop some habits that just don’t work with lures. You typically rig up your bait, chuck it in the water, and wait until a fish bites.

You can’t take that mentality into your journey with lures. It doesn’t work. This is when fishing becomes a much more active hobby.

When you start planning your first trip with lures, keep the following points in mind. 

• You will move a lot more. Typically, you’ll only cast in one area enough to cover the water you can reach, and then you’ll move on. This means you’ll only spend about 15 minutes at a spot unless the fishing is hot. 

• You play a much more active role in your success. You are the one presenting the lure, and it’s your job to present it in a lifelike manner. Any little tweak can mess it up and scare off a bass. So, it’s a lot more skill-based. 

• It’s a learning experience from start to finish. With live bait, you don’t get better. Once you know how to set up a rig and pick a good spot, you’ve pretty much mastered live bait fishing. With lures, you will need to learn from the first time you cast a crankbait to the last cast you ever take. You never rest on your laurels, and there’s always something new to learn. 

Everything else that we talk about is going to stem from these key points.

Taking Your First Cast with Artificial Bait

Your first few trips using artificial baits are going to be the most frustrating, but trust us. You’re going to catch something, and it’s going to become normal quickly. 

To make your first trip as easy as possible, we want you to completely ignore your soft plastics. Instead, take a minute to tie on a crankbait or a Rooster Tail.

We think that Rooster Tail spinners are the easiest to get started with, but they’re most effective during the warmer parts of spring. If you’re fishing any other time, they require a little more effort to get a bite. 

The main reason you should start with these is that they’re cheap, and in the right conditions, they pull in bass fairly easily.

The main drawback is that they get snagged extremely easily if you don’t pay attention to them. We’re going to talk more about this later. 

Crankbaits are also extremely easy to use, and if you pick the right one for the depth at which you’re fishing, that snag issue that inline spinners have isn’t nearly as big of a deal.

However, good ones are a little more expensive. So, each loss is a bit more irritating. 

We recommend using a Palomar knot. It’s not something you’ve likely used if you are used to live bait, but it’s easy, and you can pick it up in a matter of minutes with one of the countless videos online.

This is a strong knot that’s going to keep your lure from flying off mid-cast and costing you time, energy, and, of course, money. 

Now, you know how to cast, but where things start to differentiate is when you retrieve your lure. 

Start with a straight retrieval. This is just slowly reeling in the line and pulling the lure straight back to you.

Both the crankbait and Rooster Tail suggestions work great with this, but soft plastics are usually more complicated. That’s another reason we recommended you tie on one of those two for your first try.

Cast around the area you’re in toward key spots, such as cover and structures, in a fan pattern. You don’t just cast to the same spot.

Cast, see if anything bites, and then find another way to work that spot or move to the next closest spot that is likely to produce results. 

Noticing your bite is a bit different, too. On a bobber rig, you get a distinct visual cue when the bobber moves around and eventually dunks beneath the surface.

You don’t get that with lures. You have to learn to tell the difference between a bass biting it and simply brushing against some rocks or getting snagged.

Unfortunately, figuring that out comes with experience. We can explain it all day, but until you feel the difference, it’s not going to help much. 

That’s the core of bass fishing with lures. As you go, you’ll start making Texas rigs and working soft plastic lures in more complex ways, try out jerkbait and swimbaits, jig the bottom, etc.

However, the more you dive into that, the more you realize it’s just the details you’re changing. 

Why Is It Important to Learn to Fish with Lures? 

Now that we’ve gone over how to start using artificial lures, why is this such a pushed concept in the bass fishing community? Well, there are a couple of reasons. 

First and foremost, bass fishing is a sport. Live bait is a lot like playing football, but one team sits around on the bench, and the other scores touchdowns on itself. You chuck some bait out, and the fish naturally go after what they already consider food, and they take it with ease. There’s no tricking them or finding the perfect pattern to give them what they want.

In short, using lures is a lot more skillful. 

Other than that, it’s also cheaper, technically. Once you get the bug, you’re almost guaranteed to spend way more than you have to buy lures you’ll try once or twice, but lures last a lot longer than a bucket of minnows, a box of worms, or anything else you can think of.

Even soft plastics that rip and get destroyed by the fish will typically catch you several fish at a time. Hard plastic lures can last practically forever if you don’t throw them into rocks and other hazards.

You can skip the trip to the bait shack, pull out your tackle box, and expect just a couple of lures to put plenty of fish on the end of your line without spending another dime for quite a while. 

Also, it’s easier to target bass specifically. When you use live bait, there’s a much higher chance that you’re going to catch random stuff. After all, you’ve essentially put a wounded animal in the water with limited mobility.

Even the laziest fish are going to take the opportunity to get a good meal. It’s not uncommon to catch big catfish, smaller baitfish, and a wide variety of predators, even if you’re just trying to catch bass. 

With lures, you can focus your strategy and bait selection on things that are likely to attract bass far more than other species.

Although it does still happen. There have been plenty of anglers pulling spinner baits through the water just to get a big catfish on their line.

Granted, it’s so uncommon that it’s usually a neat story to tell, as long as you’re not in a tournament wasting time on it. 

Last but not least, there’s just more to it. Unless you like sitting around and waiting, it gets pretty boring to fish with live bait. You hook it up, chuck it out, and sit. 

With lures, you are constantly casting and retrieving, moving around the water, trying new presentations, and monitoring your line for activity in a much more skillful way. 

All this makes for a more action-packed experience that keeps things energetic and fun. It also adds a nice touch of exercise to the hobby. Which is always good in an increasingly sedentary culture. You can have fun and work your body a bit. 

How to Advance Your Bass Fishing as You Learn

The equipment and techniques we discussed earlier lay the foundation for bass fishing without live bait, and they’ll serve you well for a lifetime. 

These aren’t just beginner tricks you’ll abandon after your first few casts. Instead, they form the groundwork for a skillset you’ll continue to build on as you grow more confident and experienced on the water.

The next logical step is to start using soft plastics. They require the most skill to present properly since there are countless types of rigs and a wide variety of lure designs out there.

Unlike many other baits, none of them handle the presentation part of your strategy for you.

The Texas rig, Carolina rig, drop shot, and wacky rig are all great rigs to learn first without too much effort. 

As you get the hang of that, try topwater fishing early in the morning and jigging across the bottom during midday, and you can even get into winter fishing in ways that you simply couldn’t do effectively with live bait. 

Of course, the more you learn, the more likely you are to need to add new equipment to your loadout, such as heavy rods with fast-action tips for topwater, light rods for smaller finesse lures, a line that is invisible in the water, etc. 

Expanding your arsenal as a sportfisherman is an everlasting journey, and it’s the top reason to ditch live bait and start using lures.

If you’re looking to improve your chances of landing a big catch, we’ve got you covered!

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