The world of bass fishing has been flipped over, tossed about, shaken up and turned on its head over the last decade. The rise in popularity of forward-facing sonar (FFS) has no doubt had a lot to do with these chaotic times. But the Covid pandemic brought a lot of new anglers to the sport as well, and with the same number of fish to fish for, and more anglers on the water with better tech than ever before, bass fishing has undoubtedly changed.
Nowhere is this more evident than in some of the new lures that have emerged in recent years. And the “rubber dice” style baits (like the Geecrack Cue Bomb) sit on the top of the oddball heap. Consisting of a chunk of plastic with a dozen or more protruding tentacles, one of these things looks more like something from a sci-fi film than a tackle shop. But, toss one in the water and you’ll notice pretty quickly that it has a wicked action to it. Taku Ito recently utilized a large OSP dice (14mm) on a drop shot to win the Smith Mountain Lake Elite series event.
I haven’t fished with these new fangled fishing lures myself, and they’re actually very hard to get your hands on. So, I reached out to Alton Jones Jr — one of the top bass anglers in the world at the moment — to get his take on the most modern bait in bass fishing.
Understanding the Geecrack Imo Kemushi Cue Bomb — and Other Baits Like It
Alton Jones Jr.
The terms “rubber dice” and “fuzzy dice” have been widely circulated when talking about this new bait type, both derived from the first bait of this type to gain traction—the OSP Saikoro Dice Rubber Soft Bait. But there are other similar baits as well, like the Hideup Coike. And, of course, the one that Jones actually helped design—the Geecrack Imo Kemushi Cue Bomb.
“A lot of those crazes started in Japan,” says Jones. “When you talk about fishing in Japan, you have incredibly pressured bass, typically a lot of clear water fishing and you’re just fishing for a very small population.”
Basically, bass in Japan are often very hard to catch. Most of these fish have seen traditional lures time and time again. So, it takes something new to turn their heads and unlock their jaws, even if it doesn’t look like anything in particular.
“I’m not going to sit here and try to sell you on it imitating this baitfish or this crawdad,” says Jones. “The more I’ve learned about bass, they’re just opportunistic feeders. If it looks like it has protein in it and if it looks like something they can fit their mouths around, they’re gonna try it. And in a world where they’ve seen every minnow and every Yum Dinger and Senko and Roboworm, just showing them something different generates bites.”
How to Rig Rubber Dice Baits
Taku Ito won the Smith Lake Bassmaser Elite Series event this year using an OSP rubber dice.
Jones fishes his Geecrack Cue Bomb and other rubber dice baits three different ways: weightless, on a Neko rig, and on a drop shot. He shifts between these techniques based primarily on the depth that he’s fishing. The Neko rig is best when possible, but if the fish are more than 15 feet deep he recommends going with the drop shot. And if fishing shallow, he prefers fishing it weightless.
“It has a super slow rate of fall (when rigged weightless), I’m talking like a foot every three seconds,” Jones says. “That’s incredibly shallow, when fish are guarding fry, they’re cruising or they’re spawning. I basically have to be fishing in less than 18 inches of water to fish it that way.”
When swapping over to a Neko rig, Jones inserts a 1/16th ounce nail weight into his bait. This gives him just a little more casting range and helps the bait fall at a faster clip. He also highly recommends using a slightly larger hook than he normally would with a wacky or Neko rig.
“You need to throw a bigger hook in that thing because it has so much plastic,” he says. “It eats up a lot of bite of the hook. Throwing it on an oversized hook has been key to the hookup to landing ratio.”
Jones also fishes the Cue Bomb on a drop shot, and says this is the best way for a newcomer to try this style of fishing. He sticks with the same larger hook, a 1/0 or 2/0 VMC Wacky Weedless Neko Hook. But he’ll go up quite a bit in the weight, using a 3/8 ounce. And he prefers a longer leader than normal too, since he’s learned that the bass like this bait better up off the bottom. Jones stresses the importance of maintaining contact with the bait, keeping it up in the water column and shaking it “violently”.
“I’m going to use a relatively long leader, in the world of drop shots,” Jones says. “Eighteen inches would be as short as I’d go. Really giving it a ton of action and letting those tentacles do the work up in the water column seems to generate a lot more bites. For some reason, I have not been able to get a consistent bite going (with the bait) on the bottom.”
What Makes the Geecrack Cue Bomb So Effective
These baits are effective because they offer something completely new for bass to consider. Most fish have never seen anything quite like one of these lures, in either a natural or artificial offering. So these baits, with their flaring tentacles shooting off in every direction, keep the bass guessing.
As for the gear, a 7-foot medium action spinning rod and reel with a braided mainline and a fluorocarbon leader can be used to fish all three techniques. The 1/0 or 2/0 Neko hooks work well. Keep the bait weightless in super shallow water, add a tiny 1/16th ounce nail weight to Neko rig the bait, and use a 3/8-ounce weight with the drop shot to shoot it straight to the bottom in deep water.
Read Next: How to Fish the Geecrack Bellows Gill
You could catch a fish occasionally in stained water with one of these baits, but this is a technique best suited for clear water and high visibility. If the bass have been easier for you to find than they have been for you to catch, you should consider one of these rubber dice baits. They may just be the tool needed to trick the wary bass into biting.
