Large Mouth Bass - Fishing With Rat-L-Trap Lures
A true ‘go to’ lure for catching large mouth bass
is the famous Rat-L-Trap design. Chances are good that you have one or two sitting in your tackle box right now,
assuming you’ve been bass fishing for a while. In every angler’s quest to haul in more large mouths, we tend to make
things more difficult than they have to be. We often abandon a tried-and-true method for the latest fad.
You should strongly consider dusting off the ol’
Rat-L-Trap next time you’re out fishing for large mouth. It’s an extremely versatile lure. It’s also the #1 selling
artificial lure in America. That alone should tell you something. Any bass fishing lure that is popular got that
way by being a successful fish catcher, bottom line.
If you don’t have any Rat-L-Traps in your box,
you may be missing some of the lunker large mouths. Check the pro bass fishing tournament results. A lot of the
winners won using these lures. That’s reason enough right there to get a few and use them often!
As with other large mouth lures, Rat-L-Traps come
in a wide variety of colors, weights, and designs. Bass are
notoriously finicky strikers, so it’s smart to have a few styles in
your tackle box that differ significantly. On sunny days, the chrome
belly design with a black or blue top should be your standard bass
lure. Large mouths tend to hit lures from below, and the shiny,
flashing chrome drives them crazy!
Bill Lewis 2000 Series Rat-L-Trap
When the sun is hiding (cloudy days, evenings),
you will find that bass will often strike gold or bronze colored lures. Many large mouth anglers report good success
during low levels of sunlight with gold bottom Rat-L-Traps that have a dark colored top (black or navy blue work very
well). The dichotomy of colors in the low light seems to push apathetic bass into a striking mood.
Finally, try enticing large mouths into hitting your
lure by retrieving a Rat-L-Trap through submerged grass. You’ll have to experiment with different colors and weights,
but bass that are in an aggressive mood will often hit lures as they skim through grass at shallow to medium depth.
Start with the brightest colors you have (red, silver, yellow) and keep working through until the large mouth get
interested and give you some action.
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