How to Fish Spy Baits for Bass

Spy bait fishing is one of those techniques that almost everyone knows about, but most anglers just haven’t actually utilized it yet.

And since you’re reading this article, I’m assuming that you are one of those anglers. If you need some insights on how and why you need to fish using this technique, you came to the right place.

Let’s break down exactly how to fish spy baits for bass.

Lure Design

The spy bait has a super unique design that gives the bait a different presentation than anything else out there.

The lure has a slender, minnow shaped body with a small propeller at the tip of its nose and the end of its tail.

These propeller blades spin as you reel in the bait to give it flash, vibration, and a rocking action. The blades spin in different directions to keep the lure balanced and upright in the water.

When a Spy Bait Excels

Spy baits are very finesse and subtle baits. They excel at getting finicky bass that won’t bite anything else to eat.

The two best times to fish a spy bait are very clear water and very pressured lakes.

Clear Water

Clear water is essential for fishing a spy bait. This is not a lure that you can fish in and around cover, and it’s not going to pull fish from a long distance when they can’t see it.

This is a clear water technique. Ideally, you want at least 4-5 feet of visibility. If you are fishing very shallow flats or ponds, you can fish it in 2-4 feet of visibility, but ideally you want very clear water.

You want bass to be able to see the subtle flash and rocking of the bait to draw their interest and draw them to the bait.

The spy bait is just too subtle to effectively catch bass in muddy water.

Pressured Lakes

Bass fishing is more popular than ever so many lakes and ponds get tons of pressure from other anglers.

When fishing pressure is super high, that usually means you should downsize your baits, fish slower, and fish more finesse presentations.

The spy bait is great because it allows you to still cover water and draw bass in (as long as the water is clear) while still being very subtle and non-invasive to the bass.

How to Retrieve a Spy Bait

With a spy bait, slow and steady wins the race. All you do is let the bait sink down to whatever depth you are targeting, and then slowly reel it back with a steady retrieve.

You will also get a lot of bites while the bait is slowly sinking down, because it is designed to have a shimmy action as it sinks.

You can also pause the bait every once and a while to let it sink back down to depth or shimmy right in the bass’s face.

But you don’t really want to be jerking, twitching, or ripping the bait at all. This is contrary to pretty much all other hard baits that you want to retrieve very erratically and aggressively.

But that’s what makes the spy bait so effective. It isn’t like any other hard bait. Bass haven’t seen something like this before and it drives them crazy under the right conditions.

Where to Fish a Spy Bait

You can pretty much fish a spy bait any time there is open water. It was made most popular for targeting suspended bass out in deep water.

But now as more guys are using it, the spy bait works great for fishing shallow flats and cover lots of shallow, open water.

I don’t want to limit the bait to those two locations, but suspended bass and shallow flats are the two primary places that this bait shines.

Gear for Spy Bait Fishing

This is a light line, light gear technique. I’ve found that a medium power spinning combo and 6-8 lb fluorocarbon line is perfect.

A straight fluorocarbon setup seems to work the best, but if you want to use a braid to fluoro setup, just make sure that you use a very long fluoro leader.

A much longer leader than you would normally use. There are bigger spy baits that can be fished on baitcasting setups, but I rarely use those bigger sizes because they seem begin to take away from the subtle, finesse profile that makes the bait so good.

BFS gear has become a very popular way to fish these baits, especially over in Japan where spy baits originated from.

I generally prefer to fish spinning gear when I can, so I haven’t experimented much with spy baits on BFS, but it has worked very well in the small amount that I’ve tested.

Also Read: The 3 Best Spy Baits

Reeling this In

If you haven’t yet gotten into spy bait fishing, take this as a sign. It is an incredible technique that will get bass to bite when absolutely nothing else will.

For whatever reason, it hasn’t become a mainstream lure yet, so make sure take full advantage of it before it becomes too popular.

Spy bait fishing is probably the most underrated bass fishing technique and you need to add it to your arsenal.