Each year, there’s a barrage of new bass baits that promise great catches by offering new designs and new actions. Here’s a look at a few key categories.

Swimming Frogs

Check the feature, “Using Frogs to Catch Toads” in this issue for details on fishing this new style of softbait. While hollow-body frogs like the Scum Frog are essentials, swimming frogs provide an effective alternative for shallow bass. Action comes from paired legs that create a surface disturbance on the retrieve.

The legs of Zoom’s Horny Toad fold back in a 180-degree angle so they sputter on the surface as the lure’s retrieved. The Sizmic Toad from Uncle Josh has a boot-tail on each leg to create surface disturbance. Lake Fork Tackle built the wide-body Fork Frog, with legs bowed to the side to enhance kicking action and flotation. Culprit’s Pro Frog is a trim design of pliable plastic, while the Zombie Toad from Voodoo Baits is an elongated shape, incorporating a hook groove on the belly to ease hook-sets, and has MegaStrike flavor cooked in. YUM’s Buzzfrog, infused with potent LPT (Live Prey Technology) flavor, is a bow-legged design with flattened boot-type feet and hook grooves top and bottom.

Mann’s Hard Nose Series incorporates a soft body for lifelike feel and action, with a head of tougher plastic to securely hold a hook and resist tearing. The Hard Nose Swim Toad is a sleek 5-incher with feet that fold backwards for action, and is infused with salt and the feeding stimulant S.P.I.C.E, acronym for Soft Plastic Infused Crustacean Extract.

Meanwhile, Berkley has crafted the Gulp! Batwing Frog of revolutionary Gulp! material, which is supple and natural-feeling as well as biodegradable. As a water-based material, Gulp! soaks up scents and flavors, releasing them 400 times more efficiently than plastisol softbaits, according to company tests. Stanley Jigs enlarged the boot-style feet to create extra commotion in their Ribbit and Bull Ribbit, a massive frog that churns the waters. The company also has designed special hooks for this frog genre.

You can’t go wrong with these lures. The combination of a natural-looking body and buzzing legs triggers awesome strikes from fish that resist other lures. Swimming frogs slide over grass clumps well and are deadly in open pockets between lily-pad clusters or reed patches. If a bass strikes and misses, drop the lure back and the fish eat it as it slowly sinks.

Beavers

Andre Moore, bass pro from Arizona and long-time lure tinkerer, started Reaction Innovations to create the baits he envisioned. One of the first was the Sweet Beaver, which wasn’t given that name until Moore used it to win an FLW tournament at Beaver Lake, Arkansas. The Sweet Beaver line now includes a 31⁄2-inch Smallie Beaver and 5-inch Double Wide Beaver, in addition to the standard 41⁄4-inch model.

These baits feature a ribbed body with an indentation down each side, which serves to keep the hookpoint from hanging in grass, while allowing easy hook-sets. The lateral flattening of the lure gives it a gliding action as it falls, in contrast to jigs and flippin’ tubes. The Sweet Beaver has a pair of lateral flappers, and a beaver-tail-shape appendage that’s serrated and can be split to increase action on the fall or when the lure is jigged.

YUM’s Wooly Bug has a similar ribbed and grooved body shape but with more pincerlike side appendages, in addition to a serrated beaver tail. Voodoo Baits recently released the 41⁄4-inch Cannibal Creature, with smaller lateral appendages and a serrated beaver tail. This bait has large lateral ribs like Larew’s Ring Tube, which serve to slow its fall and produce underwater vibrations.

Bass Pro Shops offers the 41⁄2-inch Flippin Craw, with a Beaver-style body and a pair of antennae and substantial pincers, producing a sort of hybrid between a beaver bait and a craw worm, while Bass Assassin has the hand-poured Eager Beaver. Lake Fork Tackle added the Flipper Killer Craw to their line, with beaver-style body and small clawed appendages, plus a serrated beaver tail. Culprit’s Water Beetle (3- and 4-inch) has a thicker, rounder body and small paddle appendages at the tail, along with a more craw-like beaver tail that’s separated, not serrated. This bait forms a transition of sorts to the new generation of flippin’ craw baits. Both the beavers and flippin’ craws have excelled for the flippin’ bite, a hot tactic this season.

Flippin’ Craws

This craze started with the Paca Craw, which Braxton McNaughton designed for Netbait Baits of Alabama. Initial acclaim came from Florida, where pros rigged the 5-inch bait with a full 1-ounce tungsten sinker and flipped the combo into weedmats, where the dense sinker dragged the craw into the weedy lairs of big bass.

The wide but thin claws of the Paca Craw flap actively as it falls, resembling the flapping of a bat’s wings, while the hollow body allows a great hook-set. The Baby Paca Craw (4 inches) and 2- and 3-inch Paca Chunk jig trailers are recent additions.

Following the success of this new bait and its sales boom, plastics manufacturers rushed into the fray. Culprit produced 3- and 4-inch versions of the streamlined Flippin’ Craw, with two paired legs, antennae, and claws angled toward the tail, to allow the lure to drop into the tiniest holes in a grass mat.YUM added Craw Papi, a 4.5-inch big-bodied craw with an impressive pair of pincers that flap wildly as it falls. Zoom’s UltraVibe Speed Craw uses the same reverse design as the Horny Toad to give this 3-inch craw super action in a small package, while the Kicker Kraw and Kicker Kraw, Jr. from Kicker Fish Bait Company have ribbed bodies with side fins to prevent line twist.

In its new HardNose Series, Mann’s Bait offers a streamlined 4-inch Flippin’ Craw, with claws folded back to vibrate as it falls. The HardNose locks sinkers like Bullet Weights Screw-Ins and reduces tearing when rigged on big flippin’ hooks.

Swimbaits

This lure category has gradually grown from a western specialty to an international groundswell, with anglers using various types for nearly all species of predatory fish. Among many new offerings, don’t miss Northland Tackle’s Slurpies Swim Shiner and Swim Shad, infused with holographic flakes and sporting bright natural colors. Swim Shiners have a Curly Fin Teaser Tail, while Swim Shad have a Wobbling Paddle Tail. Both are available in 3-inch, 3/8-ounce models and 4-inch, 1/2-ounce editions.

YUM’s Sweet Cheeks, an internally weighted bait (3-, 4-, and 5-inch), features a scent-dispensing chamber in the gills that can be filled with flavor attractants. Prowler Lures has the Swim Bait, a 41⁄2-inch paddler that matches their new leadhead. Spike-It adds the Shad to their Grand Bay Saltwater Lures line, for inland use on a leadhead, as well. A marvelous cross between a swimbait and stickworm genres is the translucent Spindle Worm, designed by Yuki Ito of Megabass.

Meanwhile Pure Fishing adds the 3- and 4-inch RealistiX Pogy and 6-inch Saltwater Stinger Pogy, internally weighted baits with holographic inserts. Matzuo adds the Tournament Shad Flat Tail, with an internal rattle chamber, and has revised the Sterling Minnow, available in both curlytail and paddletail editions. For sound production, Stanley’s Buck Shad combines their patented Wedge Tail design, with narrow peduncle and large tail, and a loud rattler in the tail that shakes during the retrieve. And Gary Yamamoto has entered the swimbait scene with a 31⁄2-inch boot-tail model that matches leadheads.

Drop-Shot Baits

This technique is on fire from Alabama to New York to Texas, not to mention its heartland in California. Anglers have discovered its tremendous triggering power, as well as recognizing its precise bait placement.

While suitable lures are nearly limitless, several new products designed for dropshotting have come along, including an exquisite line of hand-poured baits from Bass Pro Shops XPS lure collection. Try the Quiver Minnow McCreature, Drop Shot Worm, or Ring Worm, in the 3- to 41⁄4-inch range for finesse work.

Another unique design is the Bailey Magnet Magnum, an oversized version of the bait the late Elden Bailey built for crappie fishing. Its solid body and array of tentacles provide great action when the bait is barely moved. The Flirt from Reaction Innovations is a finesse worm but with an enlarged head to hold a hook, a tapered body, and a narrow paddletail for a quivering action. And from Spike-It comes the Split-Tail Finesse Worm, with a tail like an adder’s tongue. Berkley’s Gulp! Wacky Crawler is ultra-flexible for a deadly wacky drop-shot bait. Megabass continues to produce creative designs, the latest the Bumpee Worm, Baby Bumpee, and E-ba in their V.I.O.S. softbait series.

Gobies

Smallmouth bass eat gobies on Lake Erie, St. Clair, and everywhere these weasley little bottom-huggers have invaded. Poor Boy’s Baits offers The Goby, a hand-poured bait that’s scored numerous big tournament wins on the Great Lakes. Available in 3- and 4-inch sizes, they can be rigged on a drop-shot or jighead. Also joining the category is the Great Lakes Goby from Culprit, a 4-incher available in four colors with a matching jighead.

Softbaits have now gone beyond soft plastics to include novel and biodegradable substances like Gulp! and Foodsource. Meanwhile, there’s never been a greater variety of soft plastics to match classic and novel presentations.