Went camping this last weekend, and had a blast catching bass on the lake we stayed at

I'd really like to get into bass fishing more seriously, it was quite the thrill!  I don't own a boat, but we do have a raft and kayaks

What kind of gear should I get to start catching some big bass?  My rod and reel are pretty basic and I was using her lures since she's been fishing for years

I'm very new to fishing so please understand that I don't know all of the lingo yet (I google almost everything )

Here's some pictures from the weekend:

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A fishing pole and almost any lure. They love shiny things.

Up here you can catch one after another with almost anything but I seem to gravitate towards dardevle's.



Good luck OP. And fishing from a kayak is relatively cheap fun

I'm seeing a difference in weights between different spoons - one ounce, 2/5 ounce, etc.

Whats the rule of thumb there?

I have no idea other than some will sink faster and ride further down in faster waters. Bass will bite them either way from what I have seen.

First thing you're going to want is a boat.

I would suggest a Ranger...

Just kidding, if it's your first boat get a $5000 budget together and look for an older 17-19' tracker or similar aluminum boat.

First you want a nice rod and reel.  I'm partial to St Croix or custom rods my buddy builds but they stay in my boat so I don't have to worry about have to worry about transporting them.  I would definitely watch some youtube videos on fishing with ned rigs, senkos and drop shots.  Then move on to crank baits, jerk baits, jigs and spinner baits.

Also watch some videos on how to find bass in spring, summer and fall.  I really like the flukemasters channel on youtube.

Soft plastic's tubes, worms and some craws. Next is some varity of spinner baits. Then as you learn crank baits with different diving depths. Now the hard part fish and fish some more. Live bait is awesome and just as fun to catch. For streams I'd suggest a four to six foot cast net with 3/8" mesh and target 1-3" shiners. Shiners are killer! Check out Richard Gene on Youtube. Good Luck.

Check out bbcboards.  Alot of good folks on there.  They have a hometown area as well that will keep you a little better up to date as far as your region.

Start with a medium to medium light spinning rod, with wacky worms or Ned rigs. I like the nearly indestructible Z-Man plastics, the ZinkerZ worm and the TRD worm for Ned rigs.

I have a medium and medium heavy rod setups for cranks/topwater and plastics. You dont need to get super fancy, start with getting a tackle box filled up with a few different senkos and plastic worms, I've always been a huge buzz bait fan and crankbaits are great too. Eventually, I would recomend a good baitcaster combo, but get accustomed to open face if you have run the bait casters yet, good luck and enjoy!

A medium fast rod can do just about whatever you want for bass fishing. Somewhere around the 7 foot length is a good size, depends on if you’re taller or shorter.

You can go to Academy and find spinner combos, I’d probably spend about $100 or a little more on a spinner combo that has a reel already on it.

Soft plastic lures, I’d get maybe two or three basic colors. Black and blue, junebug, green watermelon, or a bama craw with some brown and orange.

Zoom trick worms on a shakey head, popping a tube, a spinner bait, a Whopper Plopper, and deep diving crankbait will work for you.

I’d go with a heavy fast rod for topwater frogs and jigs.

Every serious bass fisherman has at least five rod/reel combos geared and ready to go.

A worm rod, rigged Texas-style.  Throw it out and let it sit.  I've got quite a few bass when I picked up my rod after sorting out a tangled reel.
A crankbait rod.  Sometimes you need to cover a lot of water fast.
A heavy flippin' stick for precision drops into heavy cover - especially during spawning time.
A spinning rod for open water when the wind picks up.
Another worm rod, rigged Carolina-style.

Unless you're ripping a crankbait past cover or over structure, or tossing lightweight minnow mimics when fishing for open-water (smaller) schoolies, you need a quality rod/reel for precision casting.  Big bass hand out in cover, and you need to be able to cast to a spot no bigger than a trash can lid.  Those big fish won't swim far to ambush their food.

If I had to pick just one, I'd get a 6 1/2 ft. medium-heavy, fast taper rod with a quality baitcaster.  Don't cheap out on the reel.

Totally in on this

Just found my old rod from when I was a young teen and have the itch to go fishing

I use the Bass Pro Shop Stik-O worm a lot, usually a 5” wacky rigged, weightless in dark colors, spinnerbaits also work well for me, black jitterbugs after dark, have had good luck with lizards and brush hogs in the past as well.

Start by accepting that most of the videos out there are by folks with a lot of time and money invested in their gear. It can help, but it's mostly a time savings thing. You can use one medium or medium light rod between 6 and 7 feet with a spinning reel and 8lb test mono for damn near everything in freshwater. It might not be ideal in any given situation, but it works.

If keeping to a tight budget on the rod and reel, don't get a junk reel. A Pflueger President or Daiwa Regal LT or Fuego LT will be great and the odds of feeling like you're fighting your gear is slim. Lots of rod choices, most companies list lure weight ranges so you can get a feel for what the rod is designed to throw. It's not an absolute limit but a general suggestion of what will cast well. Obviously if you go much heavier you risk breaking the rod on a cast much more easily than normal.

Reels come in sizes, 1000, 2000, 2500, 3000... not every reel in every size, and sometimes they call it a 10, 20, 25... or 100, 200, 250 and so on. None of the companies seem to really agree on what size things are, but inside a brand it seems to be consistent. For mostly bass fishing you'll probably want a 2500 to 3000 unless you're setting up something with really heavy line.

I'll second that spoons are a great way to start. A small selection can cover a lot of situations and they're an under rated item because they're so old school and "boring". The various worm rigs can get confusing but making a little cheat sheet for yourself will help keep it straight initially. A lot of them are basically the same stuff just lined up a little differently and whether there's really a difference is up to you.

I'm just getting back into fishing after a fairly long time away and am relearning stuff myself. It's been interesting.

Check out shopkarls dot com, particularly since you're starting fresh. Even just doing the month long trial membership will cut a big chunk off your tab if you buy the bulk of your startup supplies there. I'd try to buy rods and reels locally though.

The Youtube channel TacticalBassin has been very helpful to me. They have a lot of gear guides and technique videos that are pretty good. They bounce around a bit so I usually wind up using their description text and some rewinding to get gear notes down. I watched a lot of other videos that were helpful for general background info but Tactical Bassin was the most helpful single channel that didn't get annoying. They are good about sticking to one topic per video too, so you can watch specific material. They ARE shilling Tacklewarehouse but the products they suggest are available lots of places and even they make a point of saying that with most of the lures they suggest it's basically a "this type, in these colors, used this way, pick your brand"

I'll second BBC Boards (am a member over there) and TacticalBassin on YT as a couple excellent sources. Wired2Fish is another good one. Sounds like you'll be bank fishing, so figured I'd just go through my bank set up for ideas. I usually go to bigger lakes and if I'm just pond hopping I'll take far less than this. This is based on baitcaster use too, rarely use spinning tackle anymore. I use a smaller backpack for my tackle and carry 1-2 rods, just depending on where I'm going and what I'm doing. What I'm listing below is overkill and mainly for ideas/options, but a handful of plastics and a couple of spinnerbaits or cranks is a good start.

Rods - 7' MH-Fast for a general purpose workhorse (mostly bottom contact for me) and a 7' M-Moderate for cranks
Reels - mix of Shimano and Daiwa baitcasters, but I use a 5:1 or 6:1 for cranks and 7:1 for everything else
Line - 30 lb braid with a leader for bottom contact and 10-15 lb mono for everything else, no real need for anything else bank fishing
Storage - 2 3700 size Plano boxes and I keep the plastics in their bags
Plastics - craws/creature baits, worms (ribbon tail, trick worms, senkos), paddle tail swim baits, or whatever trailers I plan on using
Cranks - squarebills (1.5 and 2.5 size) for shallow water/structure and a few medium divers (Rapala DT6 and DT10 mainly)
Spinnerbaits - I use double willow blades most of the time, but will go to Colorado blades if the water looks like chocolate milk (more vibration)
Jigs - 3/8oz and smaller for pitching and a few swim jigs (3/16 and 1/4oz)

Colors - Kind of an overthought topic and can really get into the weeds, but these are pretty much the basics that will get by in the majority of situations. TacticalBassin has a bunch of videos about this and the where/when to use different ones.
Cranks - shad, brown or black and chartreuse, and some type of redish craw pattern in early spring
Plastics - green pumpkin (pretty much the gold standard color), black and blue, watermelon for clearer water, occasionally white for bed fishing, and for whatever reason a red worm can be the ticket when it's warm (learned that one the last few summer tournaments I fished)
Jigs - green pumpkin variants, black and blue
Spinnerbaits - white, white/chartreuse
Swim Jigs/Swim baits - white or some shad pattern, bluegill

Probably forgetting some things, but hopefully that gives you a few ideas of what might work for you.

Photos of the fish you catch are key.  We want to see the fish not how long your fingers are.  One hand thumb’s the lower jaw, the other props the belly by the finger tips with that thumb on the back propping it up vertically.  Then hold the fish way out in front of you like you are really proud of it.  It will look bigger and like you are having more fun.

Zoom Trick Worm. Offset shank hook.

Take a man fishing he will eat for a day. Give a man a hot girlfriend who teaches him how to fish he will end up married.

https://www.academy.com/shop/pdp/booyah-covert-double-wc-gn-spinnerbait#repChildCatid=7726510

Use a red permanent marker, color the bottom stringers red.
Just a few, like 6-10.
And slip this on the hook.

https://www.academy.com/shop/pdp/zoom-salty-super-fluke-5-jerk-baits-10-pack#repChildCatid=925328

That was my best lure when i was bass fishing alot.

I ised to “bang” stumps with it, intentionally cast it into a stump, let ot fall then reel it in a a fast pace.
Then cast it atleast 6’ past the stump and reel it in very fast past the stump. Do that from every angle you can.

Piss that fish off and it will reactively strike the lure.
Theres almost always a bass loitering around a stump.

Bang the stumps.


Oo, best tip ever.

Never use bug spray with deet in it. You get deet on your line or lire and you will never catch bass!
They run from that smell.

As someone who recently got into bass fishing, my advice is to buy a heavier rod than you think. They give weight ranges for lures, but you really don't wanna be pushing the upper side of that limit and there's a lot of flex room in the lower end even if it's not ideal.

Also, expect to buy two or three to cover the bass basics, just a fact of life unless you totally ignore whole categories of lures. I use my medium spinning rod a lot for lighter stuff, particularly when the wind isn't cooperative. I want a medium heavy for when I'd prefer to use a casting rod but the wind is in my face. I'm not good enough with casting rods for that. My medium and medium heavy casting rods get a ton of general use and it's rare that I feel that the medium heavy was too heavy, while I regularly wish the medium was more stiff. We get mud bottoms here and trying to hop a bottom contact lure sometimes requires pulling it off the muck. If the rod starts flexing much that leads to more of a strong spring action rather than a smooth lift. I don't own a heavy and don't really have any baits that would use one, but I could sure do with a second medium heavy. My usual set to bring with me for bank fishing is the medium/fast spinning rod, medium/moderate fast casting rod and medium heavy/fast casting rod. I have braid to leader on the spinning rod and medium heavy, straight fluoro on the medium casting rig. That lets me throw anything from light jigs like Ned rig stuff through 1/2 or even 3/4oz stuff. The only time I run into trouble is if I'm throwing into the wind and need to throw heavier but very non aerodynamic lures. My casting reel skills are not up to snuff for that.

Casting rods are easier to learn if you use heavier braid than you really need, and just accept that spool tension will be higher than it has to be for a while. It's easier to make more casts and learn faster when you aren't picking out tight tangles and over runs. My medium casting rod is technically better and has a much nicer reel. It has good 12lb fluorocarbon line. My medium heavy has 50lb power pro braid with a leader. The medium heavy gets WAY fewer over runs and issues.

Bass resource is a good forum with lots of info. Just starting out and fishing from the bank, I would say get one 6’6” or 7’ medium/heavy - fast action casting rod and a good baitcaster. I like my Shimano SLX. I would also look into getting a medium - fast action spinning rod and a decent spinning reel.

I started out learning to use Texas rigged soft plastics.

Seriously, I've not fished out of a power boat (nor felt the desire to) in seven years. First time i dragged some scant fishing tackle on a kayak float on a creek i was hooked.

Just rig your current kayak, grab two rods and a few good lures and go.