Rapala Magnums

[bassinbob]

Looking around at the baits I saw the magnums. If the theory big baits = big fish is sound these should work. Anyone ever tried them? Maybe some of you that fish for muskie or pike caught a bass on one? I also saw the Bomber version, it costs about half of the Rapala. Thoughts or experience on these.

Bob

[InEccess]

The best way to catch a 10lbs. bass, is to fish in a lake with 10lbs. bass in it. I think you have the same luck catching a big bass on "regular" sized baits as you would on large baits. However, you'd just be eliminating smaller bass striking the lure if you fished with a bigger lure.

That's just my belief stemming from my geographical location and my experience on such waters.

[Rodman_Rob]

Inexcess pretty much hit the nail on the head. If you're going to go through the painful expierence of throwing large baits, you better do it at lakes that produce a lot of large fish. Most of the time, large bass will feed on lures our size (normal for bass fishing), however because large bass only make up a very small percentage of fish in the lake, you have to have the lure at the right place at the right time with just the right presentation or else you don't have a bite. Often times your chances of catching a big fish are better while using a normal sized bait. Its a catch 22. Sometimes the big fish will want a big bait, other times they'll want something smaller. The ONLY time I go by the Big Baits Big Bass theory is when on waters that I KNOW the bass are bigger than avg.

[jmh_ottawa]

I used to fish for muskie a fair bit and it wasn't uncommon when using large 2oz + spinners at 4mph to pick up the odd 2lb largie... I'd say large baits don't automatically mean large fish.

Large fish get large and stay large by eating

[Raul]

Words of wisdom by InEcces, down here in my neck of the woods we do have them big mommas, which doesn´t necesarilly mean you catch them every trip, it also doesn´t mean that big bait = big bass, I do fish with swimbaits, the moment you add a trap hook to that soft plastic swimbait then you start catching fish but not what you are expecting, hard baits are even less choosy when it comes to the size of fish you catch with them just for a simple reason, they got more hooks dangling from them, the probabilities of a smaller fish getting hooked with more hooks increase.

You have no idea how many small fish I catch with those 5-6-7 inch hard and hybrid swimbaits, I may catch 30 fish on them and from those 30 fish 29 are 1 -2 pound fish and the other may be 3-4 pounds.

I catch more big fish with the old favorite jig & pig. But that doesn´t stop me from trying to catch a bigun with swimbaits.

[bassinbob]

I understand you have to fish water that has big fish in it. I was thinking about fishing in water that I know has larger bass, over 10. My thoughts were using a big bait would elimenate those small fish. If I was only trying to catch these big ones and not wanting to fool with the little ones was mainly what I was asking. As Raul said 1 and 2 pounders will attack a big bait. I wanted to spend some time going after a larger size fish.

Bob

[Raul]

Not with a crankbait, smaller bass can be as dumb as rocks, increasing the size of a crankbait doesn´t bother them, they still attack it. With a soft plastic swimbait the thing changes a little bit, it´s the massive size of the soft plastic what helps you, in order to get hooked the fish have to swallow the bait so that means the fish has to have a big enough mouth to do it, add a trap hook further to the back and it´s dink galore all over again.

But in the other hand, if you don´t add the trap hook there you are casting for hours and even days and not get a single hook up because the bait is too beefy.

Unless you make up your mind and realize that it may take many trips before you hook up something interesting with a soft plastic swimbait with no trap hooks, then you´ll be ready for "the hunt".