Bass fishing lures are built to solve different problems on the water, whether the job is covering a flat quickly, grinding through shallow cover, probing a deep point, working grass, or slowing down in front of pressured fish. Complete Fishing Gear covers the core largemouth and smallmouth categories, including crankbaits, topwater lures, spinnerbaits, jigs, bladed baits, jerkbaits, swimbaits, and soft plastics. Running depth, profile, vibration, action, retrieve speed, and cover type all influence which lure belongs on the line, and experienced bass anglers usually carry several categories because the right presentation can change by the hour.
A crankbait covers more water per cast than any other hard bait — you're making contact with the bottom, ticking through wood and rock, and creating a deflection reaction that triggers strikes from fish that aren't actively feeding. Squarebill crankbaits in the 1/2 oz range are the shallow-water workhorses — deflect them off laydowns and dock posts in 2 to 6 feet of water and the deflection triggers largemouth that would ignore a bait running clean. Medium-diving crankbaits in the 1.5 to 2.5 size class reach 8 to 12 feet and are the primary searching tool on points, channel swings, and main-lake structure from spring through fall. Lipless crankbaits — the Strike King Red Eye Shad and Bandit lipless models — are the cold-water specialists and grass-ripping tools. The Strike King series runs across nearly every crankbait category and is one of the most thoroughly field-tested lines in bass fishing. Bandit rounds out the hard bait selection with a deep catalog of proven crankbaits covering every depth range largemouth and smallmouth anglers target.
Topwater fishing produces some of the most memorable strikes in bass fishing — and it's not just the visual drama, it's that topwater lures catch fish that are actively positioned on the surface and unwilling to chase anything running deep. Walking baits like the Heddon Zara Spook cover the open-water side-to-side walk-the-dog presentation. Poppers create the cupped-mouth spit that triggers surface-feeding bass in calmer conditions. The Berkley Swamp Lord hollow-body frog is the dedicated lily pad and heavy-matted-grass tool — a presentation with no exposed hooks that runs across cover other lures can't touch. Buzzbaits are the speed option — a buzzbait in the 3/8 oz range with the right blade size produces the right surface disturbance for dawn and dusk in the shallows, and it's one of the few lures where fishing fast is the correct approach. The topwater selection at Complete Fishing Gear covers all four categories with proven models from the brands that produce them best.
Spinnerbaits are the most versatile bass lure in the water — they run weedless through sparse cover, they trigger schooling fish in open water, they run at adjustable depths by varying retrieve speed, and they work in a range of water clarity and light conditions where other lures are too visible or too subtle. Strike King and Booyah are the mainstays in the spinnerbait section. The Z-Man ChatterBait Jack Hammer bladed jig occupies the space between a spinnerbait and a jig — the hexagonal blade creates a unique vibration frequency that triggers bass in early spring warming trends and throughout the year in grass and scattered cover. Standard casting jigs — football jigs for deep structure, arkie heads for wood, flipping jigs for heavy vegetation — are the contact bait that produces fish from every bottom depth bass occupy. The jig section is built around models that pair with the most productive craw and chunk trailers for each situation.
Jerkbaits occupy a critical niche in early spring and late fall cold-water fishing — a suspending jerkbait worked on a slow twitch-pause cadence in 46-degree water is one of the most consistent largemouth and smallmouth triggers when fish are lethargic and reluctant to chase. The Rapala X-Rap and similar suspending jerkbaits in the 3.5- to 5-inch range cover this category. Swimbaits in the 3 to 6 inch range on a swimbait head are the versatile open-water and grass-edge tool — a paddle-tail swimbait on a 1/4 to 1/2 oz ball head covers the same water as a spinnerbait with a different profile and action that produces when the spinnerbait doesn't. Zoom swimbait bodies, Berkley PowerBait, and similar designs are the core of the swimbait section. For anglers targeting trophy largemouth or deep-summer suspended fish, the larger swimbait options in the lineup represent the dedicated big-bait category, where the quality of each strike matters more than total cast count.