Bass Week 2025: Finesse Tips for Great Lakes Smallmouth Bass with Capt. Ross Robertson

Renowned Great Lakes walleye guide and owner/operator of Bigwater Fishing, Capt. Ross Robertson shares some smallmouth bass fishing tips, especially regarding finesse applications. Robertson knows how important the right hook is for anything that swims and he has reliable solutions for your next smallmouth adventure. Good stuff here, check it out!

Transcript: 

00:00:04.920 --> 00:00:08.340: Hey guys, Ross Robertson here. We're gonna talk about some smallmouth fishing.

00:00:08.340 --> 00:00:19.230: You know, a lot of guys think of me as a walleye guy, totally understandable, but living on Lake Erie and very close to Lake St. Clair, we manage to sneak in a little bit of small moth fishing. 'Cause we've got some really good fishing here in case you haven't noticed.

00:00:19.230 --> 00:00:27.060: And you know, finesse fishing, those just always seem to come into play at some point or another. Soft plastics and, and drop shots and things like that.

00:00:27.060 --> 00:00:44.880: We've actually got a little drop shot tied up here and you can see this is a red line drop shot hook number two, really thin wire, super, super sharp. You can see why we just barely kind of nip that thing in there. A lot of my buddies would actually hook it even less because you tend to just get more bites and you let that thing move around.

00:00:44.880 --> 00:01:02.940:  And also having a really small hook, you know that size two, some guys will even go smaller than that. The problem is if you are switching back and forth between a couple different plastics, you wanna make sure that you still have enough hook gap in there. Or for those big fish, you know, just having a little bit be able to get into them aside from the plastic. But size really matters with that.

00:01:02.940 --> 00:01:28.890: Make sure you got some hooks even up to like one off, especially if you're using some fluke baits or things that are maybe over four inches for that. And another way to do that is something that's called a Neko Hook. Believe it or not, it's not really designed for this, what have you, but it works really well. VMC makes a really good one. Couple nice things about that, aside from a really good quality hook is they have a resin eye. So when you're using that tight little line, it's not gonna get pinched in there. You're not gonna damage the line or have that thing actually rotate out.

00:01:28.890 --> 00:01:50.880: And I really have been going to using more of the red line series of hooks and they're really neat because aside from being crazy sharp, when you pick 'em up, you just know it's a different level of hook. They actually come with this little storage carrier that not only lets 'em keep 'em all together there, but even more important, I guess, as you probably know what size they are, you can put these little foam box or something to keep those protected.

00:01:50.880 --> 00:02:29.850: But I'm gonna show you a different way of, of hooking that drop shot up. You know, when you nose hook that, obviously that hook is gonna be as far forward on that bait as humanly possible. It's gonna give it more action. Another way to look at this, especially if you're going through a lot of baits or you know, just try something different, is to rig that Neko Hook here, basically all the way through. We're gonna thread that through. The eye is actually just right in there. And this one happens to be a size one, you know, a couple different sizes like that. And that way as I pull that out, I'll show you that has a nice little keeper on it there. And that little kind of walleye style l almost hook back in the day.

00:02:28.230 -->  00:02:58.260: But it's called a Neko hook. That's gonna be just a different way of hooking up, you know, finesse plastic. So a lot of different ways to rig things, whether you're drop shoting or what have you. But pay attention to what size hook you're using. Sometimes going bigger is not gonna get you bites. Sometimes you have to go bigger in order to actually get the hookups or to actually have the size of the plastic you're, you're using kind of match. So mess with that, keep that in consideration because I promise you it'll make a big difference for not only the number of bites that you get, but the number that you keep.