When I first started getting into bass fishing I kept hearing everyone talk about “confidence baits”. I began to wonder. What is a confidence bait? Where can I get one? How do you know if you have one. The answer I found out was even more simple than I could ever imagine.
Well to start off a confidence bait quite simply is the one lure that you know will always catch fish. You may not know why or how but it does. When the fishing gets tough what lure do you grab out of your tackle box? This is your confidence bait.
I remember one day a buddy called me up and wanted to hit the lake for a bit. Of course I agreed and away we went. It was cloudy and overcast, a perfect day for top water action. Unfortunately the bass forgot to read the same book we did. We fished for I cant remember how long without a single hit. I knew I had to change something. I picked up a new spinner bait I had bought and neglected to try out cause I wasn’t sure about it and I had not thought the conditions were right for it. Yes, you guessed it. Second cast. Fish on. By the time the day was done I had caught 10 out of this 5 acre lake.
So the next time I went fishing I still had this Spinner bait on. Well I didn’t feel like changing so I threw it out. You guessed it again. Didn’t have to change that lure all day. It became my first confidence bait. Now don’t get me wrong there were days that I barely caught anything at all on it, but since I had such great success on it in the past I kept throwing it.
This brought me to my next question. Why did this one catch so many over the others. Simple, I had more “confidence” in it. Even if I didn’t catch something right off the bat I knew it could catch fish so I kept casting it and learned new ways to fish it. If I tried something else and didn’t catch anything on it in 30 minutes or so I switched out. I wasn’t even giving the other lures a chance. No wondering I wasn’t catching anything on them.
Which brings me to my point. Confidence baits are great, but don’t get stuck on one thing. Learn new ways to fish it, or dedicate a day to catching a fish on that lure that has been sitting at the bottom of your tackle box since you bought it. You never know what may happen. You could come away with a new favorite.
Camden Summers
