with Gerald Swindle
As a professional bass fisherman, I fish a number of lakes, but I also have to fish a bunch of rivers. My favorite three river baits include a 3/8-ounce spinner bait with double Colorado blades. You can’t ever go wrong fishing a spinner bait on a river, since you can cover an abundance of water with it, find the bass and catch them. The spinner bait also is a draw bait – throwing off plenty of vibrations and calling bass to itself.
My second lure of choice for fishing for bass in rivers will be a 3/8-ounce brown jig with a green-pumpkin Zoom Twin Tail. Most river systems have numbers of crawfish in them crawling on the bottom where the bass can see them. So, when you’re dragging or jumping a 3/8-ounce brown jig off the bottom, it moves like a crawfish, and it’s colored like a crawfish, the bass have every reason to believe it is a crayfish and will eat it.
My third lure for river fishing will be some type of crankbait like a Rapala DT6, because you can find a crankbait in a wide variety of colors – shad, crayfish, bluegill and others. You also can change up your line to make the crankbait run 3-feet deep or put it on 8-pound-test monofilament line and make it run 8-feet deep. You have so many options about how deep different crankbaits will run, and the actions they have – either a tight wiggle or a wide wiggle. So, I’ve come to believe that if I have a spinner bait, a jig and a box full of crankbaits, I can fish any river system and have a great chance of catching a bass.
