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July 2009 Why Do Bass Anglers Have So Much Tackle?By Rod Yoder Please allow me to relate my experience at my last tournament. I took the month of June and the first half of July off from tournament fishing. Not by choice but due to lower back issues. This gave me plenty of time to think, plan and visualize my next tournament, the Central Division Stren Series on the Detroit River. I had never fished Lake Erie or St. Clair so I researched to gain as much knowledge as I could. I would be fishing as a co-angler so I would have to be prepared for a variety of situations. I started by stocking up on tubes, various sized insert heads, 6 and 8 pound Seaguar INVIZX fluorocarbon line, dropshot hooks and weights, gobies and various other dropshot baits. I spent several days on a deep clear local pond dragging a dropshot or a tube on the light line. This was the only way I had to get used to the feel of these baits in deep water. This is a different fishing style for me. I don't particularly enjoy this approach but I did find an interesting twist to the dropshot. I found it to be a useful way to fish a wacky jig. I would tie on a 1/8 oz Little Pek Shake wacky jig and add a 3/8-1/2 oz dropshot weight to the 2-3 foot tag end. This allowed me to fish 20-30 feet deep with the wacky jig! The heavy weight gets it down, then you have a couple feet of play to work a wacky jig rigged with a small worm... near the bottom! The advantage the Little Pek Shake has for this is the flat eye. You can tie a palomar knot and feed the tag end down through the eye to the dropshot weight.
With what seemed to be 50 pounds of tube heads and dropshot weights, I felt I had a fairly complete arsenal for Erie or St. Clair... Originally I was planning to get in 2 days of practice prior to the tournament. Due to some family issues along with worries about the physical toll the long boat rides would take on my recovering back, I decided to not practice and take my chances the first two days of the tournament and enjoy the experience of the legendary Erie and St. Clair smallies. The majority of day one was spent drifting a large area in Lake St. Clair. It was an overcast day with just the right amount of breeze for repeated drifts over the 16 foot deep flat. I caught my first keeper on a dropshot goby. To be honest, I was a bit bored. I switched to a tube for awhile. I'd make a cast and simply stand there waiting for a bite as the boat slowly dragged my bait along. It crossed my mind that this must be what carp fishing is like. It soon became obvious that I needed to match the bait and technique my boater was using. He was throwing a 3/16oz. shaky head jig rigged with a 5" Yum Dinger. He said that it was his experience that this rig would out fish the standard tube or dropshot when drifting like this. I told him I believed him as he called for the net and I netted his third 3 pound plus smallmouth. So I went digging... I came up with two 1/4oz football shaky heads and a partial bag of Baby Bass colored Senkos. Now I was rigged and ready! I don't recall exactly how many bass we caught that day. It was never fast and furious but quite often one of us would catch one and then the other would catch one between slow times. The bite was very soft. In fact I never felt any of the bites. There would simply be pressure and I'd set the hook not sure if I'd connect or not. We each had our limits and we headed back to the river early enough to make a few quick stops on the way in. As we drifted over 8' deep rock humps in the clear current of the river, I would cast a 3/16 oz Little Pek Jig with a Watermelon Zoom Speed Craw up stream. A long cast would allow the craw to get down to the rocks by the time it drifted by. I was able to cull two of my smallest fish doing this before we had to make the journey the rest of the way down river to the weigh-in. I ended the day in 34th place with a 5 fish limit of 11 pounds 5 ounces. A small limit but at least now I knew how to catch them. My next day partner told me he had made a mistake going to Erie that day and tomorrow we would be going back up to Lake St. Clair. I liked this because I felt I could be ready this time! I returned to my hotel room and was thankful that I brought my traveling RedShad.com inventory. You NEVER know exactly what you may need at a given tournament and as soon as you fail to bring something - that will be what you need! Since one of the two shaky heads I had with me that day had been mangled by a 10 pound drum I desperately searched for a few packs of 3/16 oz. Giggy Heads. I found two packs of 4 plus a couple loose ones. I was out of Baby Bass Senkos though. Instead I sat down on my bed and glued watermelon seed Zoom Magnum Finesse Worms onto each of the 5/0 3/16oz Giggy Heads. The standard hook on these jigs is a 4/0, but I have always liked the larger 5/0 and it proved to be a good fit with the larger style finesse worm.
With a greatly reduced sack of tackle and 4 rods instead of 7, I felt good about my chances for the second day - though physically I felt as though I had been in a car wreck! The trip up and down the river that day was brutal. Every muscle in my body ached from the relentless pounding. I fell asleep before my head hit the pillow. Day 2 was absolutely beautiful! How can I better describe it? I started out by placing my tackle into a shiny new Ranger Z522 Comanche. I KNEW it was going to be a great day. I knew the 2 extra feet in length over the Z520 I had been in the day before would make a big difference in the rough river water. And it did. We drove for close to an hour before stopping to fish somewhere in the middle of Lake St. Clair. Keeping an eye on the marked icons on the GPS allowed me to know which side of the boat to cast to. It didn't take long to feel why we were there. In the midst of a seemingly barren bottom, about 17 feet deep, there was a small area of rock. Long casts and slow retrieves, feeling my way along the bottom until my shaky head jig would hit something hard. Wait a few seconds and slowly lift the rod tip. If it felt the slightest bit heavy I would reel down and swing. If a hook-up didn't occur I'd point the rod tip straight back at the water giving slack line. Wait a couple more seconds and check again for weight. Most of my bites occurred during this second pause. I'd never feel the bite, my jig would just feel heavy. But once I'd swing on it the fight would be on! Usually this meant an immediate run for the surface followed by a 4 to 6 foot jump! No need to call for the net, my partner would know by the sound of drag! Once the fat football shaped smallie was by the boat, you could watch her dig for bottom 6 or 7 feet down, fighting against the bend of the rod. "Hold pressure but not too much! Take your time! Remember to breathe!" After dogging it out for the depths, she'd finally decide to come up. Netting these fish was really a simple matter of waiting for them to come up and jump then sliding the net under them catching them in mid-air. What absolute fun! By 10:00 AM I had my limit including 2 that were 4-14 each. I had 2 smallish keepers that I hoped to cull. At one of our stops on the way back in to the weigh-in I was able to improve my catch by a pound. But I was unable to cull the one 2-pounder I had left. After checking in, we pulled into a boat slip and tied off to wait for our flight number to be called to weigh-in. I took this time to call my wife and my nephew, Paul, to remind them how to login to watch the weigh-in live online. I weighed in a 5 fish limit totaling 17 pounds. This plus the first days limit was enough to put me in 4th place after the second day of this three day tournament. Only the top 10 make the cut to fish the third and final day. All I could do was sit back and watch the remainder of the weigh-in to see if my weight would hold up in the top 10. My nephew, watching online, would text me every time someone would weigh in a 2-day total more than my 28-5 knocking me down a notch in the standings. I was finally on the bubble sitting in tenth place, but the end was in sight. One more co-angler to weigh in. Yup... he knocked me down to 11th place, I missed the Top 10 cut by 7 ounces. The good news? I could sleep in tomorrow!
Final standings aside, this was one of the more enjoyable tournaments I have fished. I told my second day partner as we fished in the middle of Lake St. Clair, that I had no clue where we were but I knew we weren't in Indiana! In 17 years of fishing as a co-angler, I have never weighed a 5-fish limit in Indiana. This was why I decided to fish the Stren Series! No matter if I do well in the tournaments, at least I know I will have a ball catching fish rather than beating my head against the wall just hoping to get bit. So here is what I learned this trip. You can never have too much tackle! I had all the "right" stuff prepared for this tournament, but because I also brought along stuff I didn't think I'd need, I was able to adjust from day one to day two and capitalize on what I had learned during day one. I really do owe it to my boaters. On day one, Leo Reiter taught me that a shaky head and soft stick bait can be deadly on St. Clair smallies. On day two it was local guru Steve Clapper who knew how to put us on the fish! Both Leo and Steve were an absolute pleasure to fish with. Thank you both for a wonderful two days. Tackle Used:
A truck full of tackle and all I needed was one rod, a few jig heads, and a couple bags of plastics! But, if I wouldn't have had the truck full of tackle, I would not have had what I ultimately needed to get 28 pounds 5 ounces, an eleventh place finish, and a nice little pay check! :) RedShad.com * 4901 N 50 W * West Lafayette, IN 47906 |
