Comparisons — Braid or fluoro? Spinning or casting? The arguments, settled
Resources — Books, channels and tools worth your time
Rigs & techniques
Texas Rig — A bullet weight ahead of a soft plastic on a hook whose point is buried back into the bait — the weedless bottom rig every bass angler owns, tunable from a weightless flutter to a mat-punching brick.
Wacky and Neko Rigs — Soft stickbaits hooked through the body instead of the nose, producing a shimmying, horizontal-to-vertical fall that triggers finicky or pressured bass.
Drop Shot — A rig with the hook tied mid-line above a fixed weight, letting the bait hover, quiver, or drift at a precise depth while the sinker holds bottom or dangles in open water.
Ned Rig — A mushroom-head jig with a short, buoyant soft stick — the modern finesse standard that gets bites when nothing else moves a fish.
Jighead Rigs — Molded lead/tungsten heads built to keep a soft-plastic swimming, wobbling, or gliding on a steady retrieve — the workhorse heads behind swimbaits, underspins, tubes and football drags.
Skirted Jigs (Flipping, Casting, Football, Finesse, Swim) — A weighted head, a rubber or silicone skirt collar, and a heavy-to-light wire hook — the most versatile power-fishing family in bass fishing, built around head shape and weight rather than one bait.
Spybait — A small, weighted, twin counter-rotating-prop minnow fished on a slow, subtle straight retrieve to trigger bass that have seen everything else.
Jerkbaits & Glide Baits — Hard and soft minnow-shaped baits fished on a rhythmic jerk-and-pause cadence to trigger reaction strikes from suspended, roaming or big predatory bass.
Hair Jig — A jighead dressed in soft natural or synthetic hair instead of silicone or rubber, prized for its slow-collapsing, breathing profile in cold or clear water.
Carolina Rig — A sliding weight pegged above a bead and swivel, with a long leader to a weightless-feeling hook bait — built to drag and cover bottom on deep structure.
Free Rig — A Texas-style soft-plastic rig where the sinker slides freely on the line above the bait instead of being pegged, letting the weight fall first and the bait glide and hover independently.
Bladed Jig (Chatterbait) — A jig head with a stamped metal blade wired to the nose so the whole bait hunts and vibrates on a straight retrieve, blending crankbait thump with jig profile and skirt flash.
Spinnerbait — A wire safety-pin bait that pairs a lead head/skirt with one or more spinning blades for flash, vibration, and lift — the classic reaction/search tool for stained-to-dirty water and shallow cover.
Tokyo Rig — A hook and a weight joined only by a stiff wire arm and swivel, so the weight bangs bottom while the bait floats free above it — a hybrid of a Texas rig's snag resistance and a Carolina rig's separation.
Punching (punch rig) — A heavy, compact Texas-rig variant built to blast a bulky bait through matted surface vegetation straight to the bottom, where the biggest bass in a lake often hide unseen.