Freshwater Lures

There is one popular bass fishing lure looks more like some kid's idea of a model airplane than a real fishing lure? It's the buzz bait.

Kissing cousin to the spinner bait, a buzz bait is a top water bait for a variety of situations in which the angler wants to make a lot of noise and disturb a lot of water, and a lot of bass. Looking more like a kid’s toy aeroplane than a bass lure, the Buzz Bait’s job is to draw out Bass into a suicidal feeding frenzy

A buzz bait consists of a big hook hung on the end of a hunk of stiff wire bent like a long L, partly concealed by a skirt of some plastic or rubber stuff, and out in front is this big propeller. Some models even have two propellers. Whatever a buzz bait's makeup, it's a strange fishing lure that you would swear it should frighten every bass in the lake. The fact is that buzz baits not only works, but works well just goes to show that truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

Far from scaring bass away, buzz baits often draw bass from a considerable distance. Sometimes when churning a buzz bait it leaves a big V-shaped wake on a lake's surface, and more often than not, eventually you'll see a second wake converging on the buzz bait as a big bass homes in on it from several yards away until the final climax, where the Bass 'assassinates' the buzz bait.

By design, a buzz bait has two main bass-attracting features. A big propeller blade produces a lot of noise and vibration, and the skirt gives the bass a good, bulky mouthful of color and movement to home in on. Plastic or pork trailers added will increase the size of the offering and perhaps add their own song of vibration to the general uproar going on at the front end of the lure. The whole thing is nearly six inches long, and you would expect a bass to retreat to its lair with a severe headache after encountering something like that roaring across the surface.