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By Steve Price

It's a crisp, clear morning in the flooded timber just north of the Highway 147 bridge on Sam Rayburn Reservoir, and Gary Yamamoto is doing what he does best: swimming one of his black/blue tail 8-inch Big Grubs through the trees (10-10-520). Rigged with a 5/0 Gamakatsu hook and 20-pound test Sugoi fluorocarbon line, the big plastic lure has already produced four quality bass.

On this day, however, Yamamoto is not trying to finish a five bass tournament limit. Instead, he's using the lure to find bass for the next three days when competition will be underway. Very few professional fishermen use soft plastics to locate bass, but Yamamoto does it all the time, and he does it very well.

"One of the things I have tried to do with all the soft plastic lures I've designed is make them appealing to bass through both their appearance and their actions," he explains, "and when I accomplish that, the lures actually become excellent fish-finding baits."

Versatile Selection

This is one of the major advantages soft plastic lures have over many hard baits. Not only do some of them have very good tail action, they also look very natural in the water, like something a bass eats regularly. And with good tail action, plastic lures become much more versatile than most anglers realize.

As an example, Yamamoto points to one of his favorite plastic fish-finders, his Series 19 Single Tail 6-inch Grub, which can literally be fished from top to bottom. On the surface, a fast retrieve turns the grub into a tail-churning buzzbait, while a slower retrieve lets the lure sink slightly where it can be used as a weedless crankbait. The grub can be rigged Texas-style with a 1/2 ounce sinker and pitched into weeds, or rigged with a football-style leadhead, and used as a drop-bait around ledges and steep rocks.

There's more to it than that, of course, not the least of which is deciding which type of soft plastic lure to use, and when. The differences between many soft plastic lures may seem subtle, but often they're not. The Single Tail Grubs, for instance, are best used on lakes where the bass are known to be feeding on baitfish; the Double Tails are more effective when the bass are feeding on crawfish.

"The Double Tail Grubs can be crawled and bounced along a fairly smooth bottom the way crawfish act," Yamamoto explains, "but they're not that effective in thick hydrilla because the tails hang up in the vegetation."

Big Baits - Big Limits

On many of the deep Western lakes where the bottom is generally clear of vegetation, Yamamoto often looks for bass with a Double Tail Grub rigged with a 1-ounce football-style leadhead, with the hook exposed. While many would chose a lighter-than-normal weight for such conditions, Yamamoto goes in the opposite direction. The reason? The heavy weight lets him cover water quickly and at the same time go after more reliable reflex-type strikes.

Another of Yamamoto's favorite fish-finders is his 8-inch Big Grub (10 Series). He fishes it around standing timber (where he fished it at Rayburn and finished 18th in the Texas BASSMASTER Invitational), or in shallow, flooded brush (where he fished it at Lake Eufaula to finish second, as well as have the heaviest one-day weight in the Oklahoma BASSMASTER Invitational).

"The Big Grub penetrates thick cover very easily when you rig it with a Gambler Screw-Loc sinker," Yamamoto explains, "but it also swims as it falls and continues to swim as you retrieve it. It imitates a baitfish, and actually pulls bass away from cover to strike."

"That's what was happening at Lake Eufaula. For two days, the bass could be caught by flipping a lure directly into the flooded brush and jigging it once or twice, but that bite died entirely the last day. I started pitching the Big Grub just beyond the bushes and slowly swimming them past each target, and the bass came out of the cover to hit it."

The 6-inch Big Grub can be used anytime; the 8-inch version is effective when larger bass are likely to be present; and the 10-inch Big Grub is designed specifically for really big bass. Yamamoto usually presents the lure with a soft pitch, lets the lure fall, then slowly swims it back by gently raising his rod tip. Then, with his rod tip up, he stops so the lure swims back to the bottom. It's that simple.

The Carolina rig lizard is one soft plastic lure many anglers do use to locate bass, and when Yamamoto is fishing a lizard, this is also how he rigs it. Normally, however, he does not use lizards that much when he's looking for bass because he feels the grubs offer more versatility. When bass are on points or around scattered grass in the spring, then he will consider a lizard.

Erratic Action - Proven Results

Mention the words "boat docks" or "piers," and many fishermen immediately think of spinnerbaits, jigs, and possibly crankbaits. Not Yamamoto. His lure for locating bass in these types of places is a weightless Senko. "I think this particular soft plastic lure is more versatile than most hard baits because of its erratic fall," says Yamamoto, who prefers to rig the Senko Texas-style, but weightless. "I usually try to cast or skip the bait underneath the docks, then let it fall. When it does sink, even with the 16 and 20 pound test lines I use, it twitches slowly from side to side just like an injured or dying baitfish.

"We all know this type of action is one of the most effective for provoking a bass to strike," he continues "but no other type of hard lure or spinnerbait really produces it as well or as consistently as a soft plastic bait. You can deflect a crankbait off a stump or rip a Rat-L-Trap out of grass and sometimes get a reaction-strike, but with a soft plastic lure you get this 'dying shad' action on every cast, no matter where you throw it."

Heavy Cover Solution

There is another major advantage in using soft plastic lures to locate bass, which is that all of them can be rigged weedless. As such, they can be cast or pitched into places where other lures will quickly snag - the very places that bass live.

"We have all begun to realize that bass move tighter to cover and become more and more reluctant to leave that cover as fishing pressure increases," Yamamoto adds, "so if you can't get a lure to the fish, there's no way you can catch it.

"With a soft plastic bait rigged weedless, you can go straight to where the bass live, with a lure that not only looks but also acts completely realistic. I'm sure that in the years ahead, as more and more anglers realize how effective soft plastic lures are in finding bass, that they'll start using them that way."

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