The plastic grub...

I river fish sixty or seventy days a year most years and you won't ever catch me on the water without a three inch plastic grub. If I'm wading and not carrying alot of tackle I might only have a couple colors but one will be smoke metalflake. It just looks so much like a generic minnow in the water with just the right amount of flash and I have caught so many fish with it over the years that I just have alot of confidence in throwing it. I'm also pretty big on the various orangish brown combinations out there because I feel like they look alot like many of the darters and sculpins in the river and bounced along the bottom make an okay crawfish imitation. Seventy five percent of the time I fish a grub on an eighth ounce plain roundball jighead but I will go up and down in weight. If I find fish feeding in a run but not on the bottom (white bass alot, sometimes smallies) I'll go to a lighter weight to let the grub swim down the run on a tightline rather than hug the bottom.
I also think sauger, in comtrast to most other fish, actually like a bit of resistance when they hit and If I'm catching more sauger than bass I'll fish a quarter ounce jighead. Ill also go heavier in swifter deep water like say below a lowhead dam. I think you allmost have to work at fishing a grub wrong, just chucking it out and reeling it in will produce some fish tho most time I try to swim it slowly just off the bottom or let it sweep thru a run on a tightline, again just off the bottom. In slower water like a hole or around a bridge abutment Ill sometimes tightline the grub to the bottom and bring it back in a series of lifts or slow sweeps. This is also a good way to pick up a nice channelcat or two also. Some of the nicest channels Ive caught have been on grubs. It certainly wakes you up to be smallmouth fishing and tighten up on a ten pound catfish! Thats one of the grubs main strengths, in a river like the Little Miami you might catch any of seven or eight different species of fish on one on any given trip.