Damn Good Largemouth Bass Fishing Guides

The best largemouth bass fishing trips are:

• Angler's Edge Outdoors guided by Joseph S.
• Captain John Young guided by John Y.
• South Florida Fishing Guides guided by Garrett N.
• Glades Jet guided by Jose C.
• Bassin' With Capt Lou Guide Svc guided by Luis L.

Our Damn Good Guides currently offer 88 largemouth bass trips, and the most popular trips are Bass Fishing Lake Austin guided by Derek, Peacock Bass And More guided by Timothy, and Cpt. John's Lake Buchanan PM Trip guided by John.

Our guides are rated a 4.94 out of 5 based on 7439 verified reviews on Captain Experiences.

All guides on Captain Experiences are vetted by our team. You can access their reviews, click through trip photos, read bios to get to know them, and preview trip details like species, techniques, group sizes, boat specs and more.

Looking for kid friendly largemouth bass guides / fishing lessons? Check out our beginner and family friendly largemouth bass guides.

Deep Sea fishing is the most popular type of fishing for largemouth bass as well as lake fishing, river fishing, and inshore fishing.

The most common fishing techniques are light tackle fishing, artificial lure fishing, and live bait fishing but topwater fishing and jigging are popular as well.

Prices for largemouth bass can range anywhere from about $400 to $1,500, but the average price for a half day trip for largemouth bass is $664. The average price for a full day trip for largemouth bass is $1,648.

Hiring a guide provides a number of benefits and many choose to book a fishing guide for a combination of experience, local knowledge, convenience, and cost-effectiveness.

Working with experienced fishing guides who know the best local spots and techniques can dramatically increase your odds of a great day. Having someone who is on the water every day and knows the area like the back of their hand is going to give you the best chances of success.

Booking a guide is also more cost effective, especially if you only get out a handful of times per year. When you consider all of the costs you would incur on your own such as the price of a boat, maintenance, insurance, gas, high-quality gear and tackle, repairs, and more, you’ll find that DIY is sometimes not worth the expense.

Even if you’ve got a great setup already in your home waters, booking a guide also provides a great opportunity to experience new techniques, new locations, or even a chance at a new target species to knock off the bucket list.

The most popular season for largemouth bass fishing is spring, and most anglers book their trips 15 days in advance.

See here for more information on largemouth bass fishing licenses, largemouth bass bag limits, and fishing season regulations for largemouth bass. When in doubt, your guide will always know all the relevant largemouth bass rules and regulations.

Largemouth bass are iconic freshwater fish of the US.

To help you truly understand how ingrained this fish is in the culture of freshwater fishing, the sheer number of nicknames it has will give you an idea of how many people have lived their lives obsessed with this fish: widemouth bass, bigmouth bass, black bass, bayou bass, bucketmouth, largies, Potter's fish, lake bass, line side, marsh bass, slough bass, welchman, Florida bass, Florida largemouth, green bass, bucket mouth, chub, green trout, gilsdorf bass, oswego bass, LMB, southern largemouth, northern largemouth.

And then if you want to add slang for big mommas the list gets even longer: lunker, hog, pig, toad…the list goes on.

The largemouth bass is also the state fish of Georgia and Mississippi and the state freshwater fish of Florida and Alabama.

The largemouth is a carnivorous member of the sunfish family and is native to the eastern and central US, but has spread across the country by being introduced in just about every pond and lake you can find on a map. They are a deep olive-green with black splotches on their midside to flank, sometimes looking like a set of diamonds that form a lateral line. And of course, the largemouth has a jaw that extends back beyond its eye (on smallmouth the corner of their mouth will not extend past the eye).

There are two distinct subspecies of largemouth bass and both have been introduced broadly. The Florida largemouth is the larger of the two, and the northern largemouth is the smaller. The Florida largemouth will also grow faster, and thus is a more sought after fish to stock.

The largemouth bass is the largest of the black basses. They can live up to 10 years or so in the wild and a true lunker can reach over 25 inches and over 20 pounds (with bigger sizes rumored to be out there somewhere…), although this is far from common.

An average good largemouth bass might be closer to 15-18 inches and about 3-4 pounds.

Due to sexual dimorphism (when one gender is substantially different from the other), the females are much larger than the males and are much more sought as a gamefish.

 

The largemouth bass all-tackle record is one of the most sought after of all fishing prizes. For almost 100 years the record stood still with a fish caught on a day of hooky in Montgomery Lake, GA in 1932. George Perry was trying to avoid work when he caught a 22 pound, 4 ounce largemouth, weighed it just because, and then took it home to eat it for dinner.

The IGFA certified in 2009 a co-record holder - Manabu Kurita, a fishing guide in Japan who caught an identical sized fish in Lake Biwa in Japan.

While Manabu’s bass was slightly bigger by weight, according to the IGFA a fish must be at least 2 ounces bigger by weight to break a record. 


The hunt for a record largemouth bass has occupied the lives of many for years, and for an incredible read on the quest to beat the record (written in 2005, before Manabu caught his tying bass) check out Monte Burke’s Sowbelly which outlines a few lives that have been totally overtaken by the quest for a shot at a record bass.

Largemouth bass can be found in just about any freshwater body, from lakes and ponds, to creeks and rivers. They are found across the US, in Southeastern Canada, Mexico, in the Carribean (bass fishing in Cuba has become popular, and the fish loves the hot climate), and even in far-flung places such as South Africa and Japan, where the fish has taken on an almost cult quality.

If you want to catch a true beast of a bass, you have a few destinations which are the go-tos: Lake Champlain, Lake Okeechobee, Falcon Lake, Toledo Bend, Lake Sam Rayburn, and Lake Fork. California, Texas, and Florida are consistently where the big bass are held, and states like Texas have even started official lunker programs to breed large bass and release better offspring when stocking lakes in the state.

While these lakes are all notorious for big bass, this also means they have a lot of fishing pressure. This is why many think a new record will come from a smaller lake or even other countries like Mexico or Cuba.

Largemouth bass prefer tons of cover and structure, and will congregate to fallen trees and other debris when available unless they are spawning. As a warm-water fish it is seldom found deeper than 20 or so feet.

Largemouth generally run to deeper waters in the winter and come shallower in the summer, where they can be more easily sight-cast to.

In terms of time-of-day, largemouth bass can be caught often at daybreak and at dusk when they cruise shallower waters to feed and are not hiding under structure, although this is by no means a hard and fast rule.

Largemouth are also great to catch during their spawn, when big females will not only be more visible and available, but also protective of their patch of seabed (will attack anything that comes near, like a lure) and full of eggs (and therefore a heavier fish). The spawn will be earlier in warmer climates, often starting in March in the south and as late as May in the northern US.

With such an iconic fish you are bound to develop a whole world of dedicated gear and lures. Largemouth have entire industries dedicated to finding and catching them. Lures from worms to jigs to plugs to spinners have all been built and customized just for bass.

To this end, there are any number of interesting options to fish with which range not just from picking your lure to even how you rig it (try going wacky).

The most common strategy is trying to entice the fish to bite your lure, sometimes almost out of anger as much as desire. In colder water bass are more lethargic and will need a slower retrieve. Because they love cover, you’ll want to throw to brush and into structure and you’ll want to choose your gear accordingly. 


Largemouth bass are fairly aggressive fish and there is no right way to fish them - everyone will tell you something different. The best strategy is to keep an eye on conditions and try a few methods to figure out what works in your area.

You can certainly eat largemouth bass, although they aren’t regarded as a particularly tasty freshwater option. Bass from stagnant ponds or lakes can have a muddy flavor that turns people off as well, and many people regard bass as more fun to catch than eat.

If you do decide you want to keep your catch, the flavor is generally mild, watery, and a little fishy, sometimes with a grassy taste. Try to keep fish from flowing, cleaner waters (as a rule of thumb, the better the water looks, the better your fish will taste) and grill or fry it fresh.