Bass Fishing: When and How to Fish Lizards

Lizards during the spawn are deadly. Bass hate these little creatures. It will be executed if a lizard even thinks about getting near a bed. The reason for the violence is pretty simple. Various lizards are well-known bass bed robbers. They will ransack the nest and kill hundreds, possibly thousands, of bass eggs before the guardian even has a chance to react.

I typically will use the standard 6″ Zoom Lizard. Baitcasting will work but I almost always use a spinning reel with SpiderWire and Tungsten weight, Texas Rig the lizard. Dropping the lizard right in a hole or onto a bed is great, but slowly swimming the lizard back to the boat can be just as effective.

Use a 2/0 to 4/0 wide or extra-wide gap hook. Sometimes the bass will strike at the lizard and bite the tail off. This sometimes can be exaggerated when using a fire of chartreuse tail lizard. You possibly could slow your retrieve and use a fish attractant to make the lizard tastier. I like the Jack’s Juice brand.

Swimming lizards is a straightforward tactic and, at the same time, widely overlooked. As the name indicates, you are simply swimming the bait back to the boat (or shoreline). Make your cast and allow the bait to sink to the bottom. Once you have done this, begin a slow retrieve.

I usually make very slight up and down motions with my rod tip to give a little more variance and added movement to the bait. Bass will eat these little snacks just as they do a scurrying crankbait. Swimming lizards is also a tournament-winning technique when bass are related to lily pads and other aquatic vegetation.

Another fantastic presentation for using lizards is the drop shot rig. After your drop shot rig is set up, nose-hook the bait. Now you can cast your lure, put it in the strike zone, and leave it there as long as you want. All of this while still achieving a crazy amount of movement.

Spring and Fall are the reported best times to use a lizard but bass will bite them all year. I tend to go to a Carolina rigged worm in the heat of summer and jigs in the winter although I don’t fish much except in the spring. I’ll have on topwater and texas rigged lizard this spring.