The connection of soft plastic jig trailers and crawfish is as natural as combining peanut butter and jelly. One skilled southwest Pennsylvania angler, though, feels bass anglers are missing out on some fish if they see trailers as solely a crawfish imitation.

“Many anglers do miss the boat by seeing jig trailers as craws, forgetting about baitfish,” says Elwood City-based angler and tackle promoter Scott Kinard.

Kinard adjusts profile and color to dupe bass not in a crawfish kind of mood.

“When using a jig to mimic baitfish, I like to use a single tail grub as a trailer,” he notes. “I use a Galida’s Grubz single tail trailer on the back of an All Terrain Tackle AT Jig, Skipping Jig, or Swimming Jig.”

Kinard says that while swimming a jig is a great technique to mimic a baitfish, not to overlook flippin or pitching a jig.

“When getting a reaction bite from a largemouth bass, they first relate to the lure placement in relation to their position,” says Kinard. “But at the same time, their brain sees a color that they relate to the prey they are feeding on. When they see a lure that looks like a bluegill dropped right in front of them — if that’s what they are feeding on — they strike out of reaction.”

Kinard likes the Galida’s Grubz in the Alewife, Bluegill, and Clear Smoke colors to add to the back of a jig. Other potential baitfish duplicating colors such as green pumpkin with blue, red, or chartreuse flake are also good options, depending on the time of year and the color transitions of prey.

“When thinking of a jig trailer to match what they are feeding on, you must think of how the lure looks in the water from the bass’s prospective,” he adds. “A single tail grub trailer attached to a bulky jig looks like a bluegill or baitfish when the bass is looking up. If the bass are more suspended around cover, wood, pads, weeds, then try a swimming jig to keep the lure in the strike zone. When swimming a jig, the single tail trailer works great, but a soft jerkbait style of bait like a Fluke can also give the needed profile.

“As always, keep your color selection in line with what the bass are feeding on.”

Chatter-style baits represent another type of jig that couples well with baitfish profile trailers. Kinard says that the same principles can be used on this type of swimming jig, but that this offering gives the vibration and erratic action that a standard jig does not have. He commonly replaces the split-tail type trailer typically supplied with chatter-style baits with a minnow-shaped one.

“Again, color selection is important,” says Kinard. “The jig trailers I like to use on a chatter-style of swim jig are usually Fluke-type baits and straight tail stick worms. The stick worm adds a different action that is not commonly seen on a swimming jig.”

Finally, though not typically thought of as a trailer, a 3.5 inch Lake Fork Tackle Live Magic Shad soft swimbait excels as such when teamed up with a Blakemore Rollin’ Runner or Sworming Hornet style underspin jigheads. The compact profile is especially effective on smallmouths.