When I was learning to bass fish, the really good fishermen that I looked up to all told me the same thing — “you throw a jig if you want to catch big bass.”

Thirty years later, when guys ask me about bass fishing, especially here on Kentucky Lake, I tell them, “you throw the swimbait if you want to catch big bass.”

I’m certainly not advocating that everyone run home, empty their jig boxes and throw them in the trash. I don’t measure hypotheses with such extreme rationale. I’m interested in if other anglers have seen more of a trend in their fishing or others fishing where a swimbait is reached for more for big bass than a jig. Because I’m a student of bass fishing — the anglers, the fish, and especially the tackle. I field thousands of calls, messages, emails, texts a year asking about various lures.