Bumps are a primitive form of communication, like smoke signals. Smallmouths bumping soft plastics without chomping and getting hooked are whispering something—actually, lots of somethings—just out of earshot.

Bumped plastics might be the wrong color, the wrong size, or the wrong style. Perhaps the presentation is off pace—too fast or too slow. Bumps can’t tell you which. Bumps announce that fish are generally active yet barely impressed with what you’re doing. Bumps tell you the fish are there and that they want to eat. Reading the signals reveals only that something must change, without divulging what it might be.

Bumps can be solved with pace. How fast is the bait dropping, or how fast does it have to move to counteract the weight involved? Pace can be altered by changing jig size, going with a different sinker, or by choosing between weighted hooks and bare-bones hooks. Pace problems can stem from moving the bait too fast, or by letting it fall too fast. When bass bump without eating, I try to lighten the package. Even in 20 feet of water, if bass are bumping a 1/4-ounce jig without committing, I might switch to a 1/8-ounce jig. I already know the fish are there, making it worth the wait.

If pace is the problem, slowing down tends to work better than speeding up—most of the time, but not always. On the verge of a truly hot bite (especially in fall), moving faster with larger, more aggressive lures often solves problems with pace.

If bumping persists after a change of pace, it’s time to play with size, style, rigging, and color. And your ducks should already be in order, because you anticipated problems. (Always anticipate problems with smallmouths.)

Plastic Selection 101

Consider cover first. When bass hover on snaggy piles of broken rock, list everything that swims. Grubs, worms, and soft sticks top the list, so grab a bag of each on the way to the casting deck. You should already know a color or two that might work, given the water clarity, water color, and past experience. The time to play with color comes after determining which style of plastic will be most effective that day.

In wood and weeds, downscale the action part of the equation. Ripple tails (snake-style worms) and auger-tail grubs tend to be less effective than smaller curlytails or straight tails, which grab less cover. Tubes and finesse worms become increasingly important as the cover thickens, as will Texas-rigging and Texas-style jigs that allow you to bury the hook point in the lure while keeping the bait straight, so it won’t twist.

“Mung” is slang for filamentous algae. In some areas it clings to every rock and log, particularly in early summer. Let a lure touch bottom just once, briefly, and mung’s the word. Drop-shot rigging comes to mind, wherein the plastic can be set any distance above a mungy bottom. Even more efficient is a float, which can suspend a wacky-rigged worm just above the mung zone without a sinker to hang. Every type of cover lends itself to a logical solution of this sort, and every type of plastic bait performs differently in each type of cover.

Following cover, consider forage. If bass are tuned into one key forage type most of the time, select plastics that match the length and roughly mimic the profile of the natural. One overlooked prey is the leech. Smallies can’t resist a big mudflap leech. When nose-hooked and set below a float or on a drop-shot rig, imitation leeches from Berkley and FoodSource have saved many otherwise tough days.

Compare the relationships between smallmouths and shad in many reservoirs with the tie between smallies and gobies in many areas of the Great Lakes. Shad suspend in open water and gobies can’t (no swim bladder), so they remain pinned to structure. Two different species with very different habits, yet it’s no wonder tubes are the first choice of many to imitate both.

Tubes are shaped like nothing in particular but everything in general, so they can become minnows, craws, nymphs, waterdogs, or anything else a smallmouth eats, depending on the color, size, shape, and presentation chosen. A tube can swim or suspend vertically. It can be dragged or hopped along bottom. But the first rule of selection is to roughly match the size and profile of the most prolific forage species.

If smallmouths are looking up and hitting baitfish, and the baitfish are predominantly 3 inches long, consider 3-inch tubes with white or cream bellies first. If the baitfish are fat and healthy, pick a fat, thick-walled tube, and so on. If smallmouths are looking down, try 4-inch tubes colored brown, green, amber, or black.

Having the right color selection of grubs, tubes, and other plastics is fine—but most days it does no good to have the right color if it’s the wrong size. Smallmouths that completely refuse 5-inch grubs might inhale 3-inch grubs of the same color, even though the reverse is often the case (5-inch grubs rule). Once the primary colors are identified in the systems you fish, gather every size and type of plastic available in those key shades.

When bass bump a plastic bait, assume it’s almost right. When pace manipulation fails, consider size and color. I always want to find out if a good bite can become an absolutely torrid bite. It’s a kind of curse. If smallies are eating a 5-inch pumpkinseed grub, I immediately switch to a related color, like green pumpkin or sand. I test 6 to 10 different baits, most of which won’t even be bumped.

Then I begin touching up the hottest baits with dabs of color using Spike-It pens, dyes, and paints. I periodically pick up the rod that delivered the original hot color to make certain the bite hasn’t died, then continue experimenting until I know which alterations bass are responding to best.

During a hot bite, smallies may bite every color, but most of the time one color or shape stands out, producing more bites than any other. And that color will, almost certainly, produce pretty consistently on that system under similar circumstances. Of course, if everyone is throwing that color its effectiveness declines, so it pays to own as many “deadly but rare” colors as possible.

Contrary to conventional thinking, the best time to experiment with color, style, and size is not during a tough bite but during a hot bite. On tough days, throw only those colors that survive such tests of fire.

Must-Have Plastics

In highly subjective order of importance, you should have on hand: grubs, tubes, finesse worms, action-tail worms, soft sticks, soft jerks, craws, creatures, lizards, and a few oddballs (leeches, in particular; sometimes gobies). The order may change from one body of water to another. And some styles not on that list may be needed on certain bodies of water with unique predator-prey relationships.

When selecting plastics for smallmouths, the most effective sizes tend to range from 2 to 6 inches in length. The best smallmouth worms, by me, are 4 to 5 inches long. Cutting a 6- or 7-inch worm down to 5 inches can be productive when the drop rate needs to slow down, thanks to the bulkier body of the larger worm.

A 6- or 7-inch finesse worm often is the best choice for wacky-rigging. But a 5-inch Persuader Curly Tail excels for swimming around cover, while a 5-inch Berkley Power Shaky Worm is perfect for shakin’ (using the rod tip to vibrate a dropping or hovering jigworm), and a 5-inch Zoom U-Tail works best for jigworming or swimming through open water.

Most 4-inch worms I use are finesse-style worms, presented Texas-style on a thin-wire offset hook—sometimes with a split shot a foot or so ahead, sometimes with a small cone sinker at the nose of the bait.

A finesse worm can be as versatile as a tube. It’s a drop-shotting, wacky-rigging, jig-worming, Mojo-rigging, Carolina-rigging multi-threat that saves room in your tacklebox from the excesses of having specific tools for all those methods on hand every day.

I carry a small selection of 2-inch grubs for the toughest, cold-front-related bites. These are presented with ultralight gear—4-pound line and 1/32- to 1/16-ounce jigheads. A 3-inch grub comes into play far more often, but the bulk of my grub fishing involves 4- and 5-inch grubs.

Kalin’s makes a very soft grub, with a thin, sensitive tail that augers well on a slow retrieve. Moreover, Kalin’s (now owned by Uncle Josh) maintains one of the widest selections of grub colors available, many that are clear or highly translucent—a huge factor in clearwater lakes and reservoirs. YUM grubs are impregnated with a concoction of scents and flavors that smallmouths seem reluctant to turn loose, and because the YUM Muy Grande is slightly thicker and bulkier than a Berkley Power Grub, I give it the nod as my favorite river grub (most days).

Tubes can imitate anything, depending on rigging, color, and how they’re presented. Carry some 2-inch tubes for the same reason you might carry 2-inch grubs, but most tubes should be 3 to 4 inches long. The 3-inch Berkley Power Tube is thin-walled so most colors have a nice translucency, and Berkley’s 4-inch Power Tube has a solid nose, allowing it to grip an offset-shank hook better when Texas-rigged. Berkley PowerBaits still contain the best formula for encouraging fish to hold on after biting. (It stinks so good.) And Berkley tubes are machined, so each tentacle is uniform.

Venom offers a variety of tubes—some bulky, some thin. I like their laminates, because river smallies so often show a preference for counter-shaded versions of baitfish like shad and baby bass. Counter-shaded tubes seem less numerous than about 15 years ago, but still work wonders for me.

NetBait’s Paca Craw makes an excellent tool for walking the bottom with football-head jigs. The wide, thin claws flap alternately as the jig makes contact, waving the bass in. This action is unique among craw-style plastics, already generating an array of competitive versions. The YUM Craw Papi produces a similar flapping action while putting out a heavy thump that helps bass locate it in cloudy water. The smaller 3-inch versions of these baits make excellent jig trailers, while the larger versions produce best as stand-alone baits on football heads, Texas rigs, Carolina rigs, and other presentations in waters with good numbers of big bass.

Selecting all other plastics is based on those same principles. A 3-inch plastic is generally for tough bites, while a 5-inch plastic produces better under most circumstances. And try the smaller 4- and 5-inch versions of largemouth plastics—things like lizards, for instance. A 4-inch lizard is just right, in most cases, and an action-tail lizard on a jighead can be extremely effective where grubs are the most popular plastics among local anglers. The ISG Mud Puppy is a natural on a jig, the flattened belly and added surface area allowing it to glide or slow a swimming presentation to a crawl.

Confidence Factor

Develop confidence in a wide range of baits. For instance, smallmouths bite plastic grubs in every environment I’ve fished, from Lake Michigan to Lake Oahe to the Canadian Shield to reservoirs in Alabama. A 4- to 5-inch augertail grub is a universal, go-to soft plastic for smallies. Naturally, a 7- to 8-foot medium-power fast-action spinning rod, a fine reel, and the right 6-pound line all have a lot to do with how well the system works, but we’re talking about selecting plastics. Anglers who lack confidence in softbaits for smallmouths could do far worse than to start with grubs.

Swimming a grub on a 3/32- to 1/4-ounce head covers water, not as fast as a crankbait, but far faster than a tube. And a grub is almost as versatile as a tube. Grubs can be the best choice for drop-shotting in rivers, the tail constantly working in the current. Grubs excel on Texas rigs and football heads and can be the best trailers for skirted jigs when you’re targeting big fish. But the same techniques work with action-tailed worms and small lizards, so it becomes critical to branch off into those styles at some point during a hot bite.

An encyclopedia could scarcely encompass all the softbaits available today, but remember that slow and steady wins the race. Taking things one step at a time eventually tames that wild assortment. But be careful out there. Little changes in size, color, and detail can be so important with smallmouths that stored plastics might push your truck right out of the garage, or turn you into a bargain-bin zombie. Been there. Years of rehab later, I’m deep into smoke signals, looking for reasons to rip up plastics (so I can get the truck back into the garage).