Posted by Jason Sealock on Thu, May 31, 2012 @ 08:00 AM
By guest blogger Mike Pehanich
Like most fishermen, I never have enough time to fish.
I’m blessed to be able to fish some of the best waters in the world on assignments for B.A.S.S. and the Traveling Angler section of my Small Waters Fishing blog. But when assignments and circumstance conspire against my angling, I have to steal hours here and there on small local waters to feed my fishing fever and to keep pace with tackle and technique.
Now these small waters encounters can be guiltless love affairs, and very sweet ones, at that. Such rushes to freedom can turn into exploratory adventure on local park lakes, backwaters, residential and development lakes, forest preserve waters, golf course ponds, and small streams, reservoirs, and natural lakes wherever I can find them.
The number and, often, the size of the bass I encounter on nondescript waters that tens of thousands of people pass without notice every day bedazzles me!
Because I rarely spend more than a few hours at a time on these waters and may even fish several such waters in a day or even a mere morning, finding fish quickly is of paramount importance.
Fortunately, finding prime fish hangouts is not that difficult – particularly on waters that get minimal fishing pressure.
Here are a few principles I follow and some of the more obvious and reliable places always worth checking out.
Go with the flow
Current and wave action bring food to the fish and oxygenate water, too.
Inlets and outlets – Look for inlet and outlet streams to hold baitfish, insects, and crayfish. Nutrients and sediment gather here as well, which often means better habitat and cover to go with the smorgasbord. Low water periods may diminish their productivity, but be sure to check them out whenever there is flow.
Culverts and ditches– Runoff pipes can bring water and current, too. They can be particularly productive after rains. Often their current cuts a channel well into the lake or river. This creates subtle structure that many anglers will overlook. In the last hour of daylight in 2011, I cast a jig far into a local lake at a point where I projected a drainpipe runoff channel to reach. I was rewarded with a four-pound-plus bass. Happy New Year!
Windy shores – Wind, too, stacks plankton and insects, which, in turn, attract baitfish and predators. Wave action produces oxygen and also breaks sunlight penetration, activating fish.
Aerators – Lakes susceptible to summer or winter kill often have aerators to keep oxygen levels high and to prevent freezeout. These are boom or bust areas, but keep them in mind. At times they can hold big concentrations of fish.
Take the rocky road
Many waters, natural or manmade, feature rock concentrations along the shoreline to prevent erosion and to buttress banks.
Rip rap – Rock and slabs of broken concrete are often placed in heavy concentration along dams, levies and along banks vulnerable to heavy wave action or runoff erosion.
Round rock reinforcement – Property owners often place smaller and more decorative rock along their shorelines for aesthetic purposes as well as for bank protection. Often this round rock extends well below the waterline to create prime habitat. Where banks are relatively steep, much of the rock will roll into the water over time, extending the rock structure further into the lake That makes for happy crayfish homes and bigger bass banquet tables!
Structural elements
The same principles of structure fishing that hold on big reservoirs and lakes apply to small waters, too.
Shallow flats – An extended flat on a small lake may host the lion’s share of the spawning for multiple fish species. They may also be prime feeding areas depending on the habitat they host. Find ‘em. Fish’em!
Mini-points – Many development lakes have relatively even and featureless shorelines. But look carefully as you walk their perimeter and you may find small projections of clay, sand or rock. Work the point and its sides, and then work the adjacent area where bass may be holding before making a minor foray onto that tiny piece of structure.
Cover
Deadfalls, moss, emergent and submerged vegetation and other forms of cover can be key attractors.
Matted vegetation – Many small waters accumulate mossy algae fairly early in the year, and it may come and go throughout the season depending on weather and water conditions and the treatment of the land and water managers. Often this is prime frogging and pitching water, and the outside edge invariably holds concentrations of fish.
Deadfall – Trees, brush, and overhanging limbs are always worth working carefully.
Docks and other manmade cover – Even tiny docks can hold fish, but the usual rules on dock fishing still apply. That is, more complex structures that come close to the water hold more fish. And wooden docks often out-produce those made of metal.
As for “other” manmade cover, see that shopping cart laying at the edge of the drainage pond? Chances are a bass will be waiting for you there.
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Posted by Jason Sealock on Wed, May 30, 2012 @ 08:00 AM
Professional bass anglers are a secretive group when it comes to how they catch their fish. Sure, they’ll go into great detail about what rod, reel and lure they caught them on, but they dance around the subject of “how,” especially if it’s a new technique.
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Posted by Jason Sealock on Tue, May 29, 2012 @ 08:00 AM
No this article won't be about bass that can't muster the strength to jump very high out of the water. And it won't be about fishing for bass that are really narrow belly to back. We're talking specifically about bass that like to lock up on vertical cover when they come out of the shallow spawning bays and head to their offshore summer haunts. There are targets and techniques on every lake that don't revolve around fish on deep structure this time of year.
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Posted by Jason Sealock on Fri, May 25, 2012 @ 08:30 AM
By Jason Sealock
Bass fishing often boils down to small windows. Windows that open and close constantly. The windows might revolve around the forage. The windows might revolve around spawning cycles. Or they simply revolve around certain baits that present the best option until the bass move to the next place in their annual migrations.
But these windows of change can often make the bass more predictable from year to year. It's also the ability to recognize when one window is closing and another one is opening that separates the highly successful professional angler from every other angler.
The spawn creates those situations where the bass movements, behavior and locations can be predicted almost prognosticated from year to year. They are going to stage, feed and get fat. They are going to move to flatter, more protected area to nest and mate. They are then going to take their young and guard them until they reach a sustainable size. Then the bass will move off to their summer haunts on the main lake.
That period however when the bass leave their spawning areas and play "predator-fish fly swatter", attacking anything that comes in the zone of their fry, makes them predictable and opens a window for a fun, yet often chaotic opportunity.
Their unquenched thirst for protecting the miniscule fry from basically everything else that swims in the lake makes them highly susceptible to imitations and would be attackers.
The recent PAA event on Old Hickory saw several top finishing anglers fishing for those bass guarding fry in and around the shallow cover. What would also make the bass predictable during this same time of the year is the shad spawn. Although the shad spawn on Old Hickory was a little bit off, the fry guarding tendencies lead to several top finishes for the pros that figured out the open window of opportunity for those bass.
Mark Menendez finished third in the bass fishing tournament, and save for one 4-pounder that hit a swim jig six times without ever opening its mouth, he fished a pretty flawless event by focusing on those fry guarders after the spawn.
Menendez keeps his fry guarding approach fairly simple. He sticks primarily with three baits, three types of cover and three cadences to tempt and trick the overly protective parents.
His three baits of choice in specific order are a Strike King Caffeine Shad, a 1/4-ounce Strike King Hack Attack Swim Jig and a 3/8-ounce Strike King Premier Plus Spinnerbait with small colorado blades on it. Generally he's going to keep the colors pretty straight forward. If he's fishing in shallow water or dirty water he's going to go with darker blue gill colors. If he's fishing out away from the bank a distance or if the water is much clearer, he's going to go with a lighter pattern like a shad.
He prefers the Caffeine Shad for its erratic action that triggers those onlookers watching with protective eyes on their fry. He prefers the 5-inch size so he can throw it far, work it fast and give a little more menacing profile to the fry. It's his go to bait when the bass are still up close to the bank and in really skinny water because he can get it in that fry guarding zone without spooking the bass.
As the fish move out, he switches over to the Hack Attack Swim Jig and the Strike King Premier Plus Spinnerbait. He often adds a trailer with some bulk to help keep the baits up in the strike zone because fry tend to always stay at or near the top around cover. With a bulky Rage Tail Craw or creature bait, you can keep the light swim jig or spinnerbait up in the strike zone.
"I look for fry guarders around three basic forms of cover," Menendez said. "Buck brush, laydowns and docks offer all the protection bass fry need as they progress through the spawn. Obviously I start shallow, and as the post spawn period progresses, I move out with the fish and the fry to deeper cover targets. At the Old Hickory PAA event last week, there was a full blown shad spawn in the water willows, but the bass had already migrated out to deeper cover. I found the ends of docks to be the best producing cover for fry guarders."
He fishes the swim jig and the Caffeine Shad on braid. He always uses 50-pound Seaguar Kanzen braid now. Previously 30-pound braid was his choice for the smaller baits, but he found that fishing for bass guarding around hard-targets you could actually cut your lighter braid. Now that he's gone up to 50-pound in a quality braid, he doesn't have those problems anymore.
He'll fish the spinnerbait on 20-pound Seaguar Inviz-X fluorocarbon line because he wants to keep the bait up in the strike zone where the fry are swimming near the surface.
His rod of choice for the fry guarding techniques is a Lew's Tournament SL 7-foot, 2-inch Extra Heavy power rod. The rod seems stiff but incorporates a nice mod-fast tip that gives him great accuracy on his casts. The reel needs to be high speed as well. Menendez chooses a Lew's Tournament Pro 7:1 baitcaster for these applications because those fish hit like a ton of bricks and you need a super fast reel to catch up with them and set a good hook.
His retrieves stay fairly straight forward. Most of the time he'll start with a steady, straight retrieve. A lot of days that's how you have to work the lures to get bit around those skeptical bass. Other days you'll get a lot of fish that he calls "swimbait fish" where they just follow the bait a long ways and never commit to it. Those fish you have to add some variety with twitches, stops and pauses and darts and dives to get the fish to react to a sudden movement.
A third retrieve he'll often do with the spinnerbait is almost a subtle hopping almost like a slow-motion version of stroking a jig. Where he pumps the spinnerbait up and through the upper water column to keep the bait moving in different directions through that fry zone up near the surface. That often catches a lot of bass for Menendez as they slide out deeper during the later periods of the post spawn, fry-guarding window. Menendez feels like the start and stop of raising and lowering the rod clicks the blades together causing bass to strike out of impulse.
Often times the angles you work the lures on the targets can be the real key as can be multiple casts to the targets. Because the bass are guarding and chasing predators all the time, it's often the case where an angler casts down one side of a target while the bass was on the other side chasing something away and never even saw your offering.
"I've had times where I cast down one side of a log and get nothing," he said. "Then I cast down the other side and still nothing. Then I make a few casts across the bushy part of the laydown. Then I finally make the risky cast where I know I'm probably going to get hung up, and the bass bites. That's just what you've got to do sometimes to get them to see the bait and commit. But I always feel confident with the heavier line that I've got a fighting chance when I make that cast."
He often starts his search just out from those shallow flat spawning areas and works out to the first contour change. Just the first bit of "verticality" in the area can really draw those fish out, especially if there is not a lot of cover shallow. They fish want to move deep but they don't want to go all the way out to their summer haunts just yet.
"In the PAA tournament, I found several areas where they had spawned and then moved out to those first contour changes and there were docks at the end of them," Menendez said. "I would fish the swim jig down the fronts and sides of the docks and the bass would barrel out from under there and crater that Hack Attack Swim Jig. That's just an awesome bite when they hit it like that. If I could have got that one 4-pounder to eat instead of just nosing my jig every time, I probably would have moved up a spot. But that's just how those fry guarders are sometimes -- protective, not always hungry."
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Posted by Jason Sealock on Tue, May 15, 2012 @ 07:00 AM
Being a successful angler has very little to do with understanding bass behavior under ideal conditions. Anyone can catch them when it's "perfect." It's when the fishing gets tough and the bass are sometimes beat off of the beaten path that the truly skilled anglers show their worth. For it's when the bass seem to leave the "obvious places" and set up on sneaky places.
These sneaky places aren't sneaky to the bass. They are just the next thing down from where they were or where they are heading. The funny thing is we give bass a lot of credit for being mystical creatures who enter and vanish like the water in a river. When in actuality they are pretty much thinking about eating, spawning or nothing all the time. It's that nothing part that spins us out. But it's the feeding part that enables us to understand them better.
So we're constantly looking for those zones where they can feed. When angling pressure or changes in conditions dictate, we have to be flexible enough to move off the common obvious spots whether they are shallow or the most obvious structure related areas offshore. So we tapped a Bassmaster Elite Series angler who has had success at various levels of bass fishing competition and won a lot of tournaments by looking for those in between sneaky spots.
Russ Lane is most comfortable when the bass move from spawn to post spawn and on through the summer. That's when big crankbaits, jigs and soft plastics drug around on offshore places really tend produce against bass that are ganged up and feeding on structure.
"Most of the good schools of bass I've found around the country are in that 8-14 foot range," Lane said. "It doesn't matter if we're talking about Lake Fork or Lake Conroe in Texas or Lake Norman or High Rock Lake in the Carolinas or Guntersville or Kentucky Lake on the Tennessee River, bass gang up in that 8-14 foot zone after the spawn, somewhere on those fisheries and I've had a ball catching hundreds of bass off of spots like that."
What's key for Lane is finding all the factors that make a great feeding area but also a spot that doesn't stick out like a sore thumb on a map because he knows every angler is going to go to the most obvious stuff. So like most other anglers, he starts by dissecting a good lake map. Then from there he puts in his hours idling looking for those conditions that can make a perfect spot in an out of the way area.
Lane starts his search either working from the spawning areas out to the main lake structure or from the main lake structure back to the spawning areas depending on how far out the fish. But usually his search has to do with large flats and cover. Flats in that 8 to 14-foot range offer great places for bass to gang up. Usually if you can find bass ganged up they will be relating to a depth change and/or a harder bottom.
The reason generally has to do with current. It's a proven fact that bass like to feed in current. The current not only washes bait to the bass but it also speeds the bait up towards them and disorients the baitfish making them easier to eat a lot of them at a time. The bottom is generally harder around those current driven spots because the hard rock is what turns the current or forces it around and causes it to speed up a bit around the hard obstacle.
So once he finds a hard bottom in a depression, hump or rise or just something like a shell bed on the edge of a subtle drop that many anglers may have skipped over he looks for bait and pulls out his weapons of choice.
His latest addition to the arsenal is quickly becoming his favorite largely in part to the fact that he created it just for this scenario. The SPRO Fat Papa is his namesake crankbait. The crankbait is unique in many ways but for very specific reasons that's he found over many years of trial and error cranking for bass in that mid-range depth in the post spawn and summer periods.
"We put a lot of thought into the Fat Papa. We started with its wobble. It has a wide wobble almost intimidating it's so wide. We did that intentionally because we weren't looking for a numbers bait but rather a big bass bait. We want the biggest alpha female bass to bite. We made the baits silent. We want the crankbait to hunt along and just appear in the fish's strike zone before it has a chance to spook off the fish. We designed some very specific colors to help in all different situations. It's got sharp Gamakatsu hooks. And the final attribute is a shaved lip on the underside. We did this so the bill would slice the water effortlessly and cut down on the fatigue associated with reeling a big wide wobbling crankbait all day."
Cranking is an obvious choice on these out of the way areas because you often have to cover a lot of water and you're looking for one bass to show you it's in the area. The Fat Papa allows Lane to cover water but also target bigger bass at the same time.
Lane gave an example from the tour last year where this time of area played into his hands.
"There was a tournament last year where I found a community hole. But back behind that community hole on the main river, there was a bay. Coming out of that bay there was a pinch point, where the land closed the gap in the bay and actually sped the current up through there as it emptied out on to a hard bottom where fishing pressure from the community hole and current from both the dam and from just wind through that pinch point funneled fish through there. It just kept producing fish and reloading every day because the fish just kept coming to that hard bottom off the beaten path."
Ideally he likes wind and a little chop on the water with a mild stain to the water. That way the bass don't get a good look at the crankbait as it comes wizzing by. He's seen days where if the wind blew with the current and made it stronger the bite was actually better. However in reverse if the wind blew against the current or no current the fish scatter and get harder to catch. Wind is still your friend even on these offshore sneaky spots.
He sticks mostly with three colors with the Nasty Shad, Nasty Herring or Tennessee Gizzard Shad. These three baits will take him from heavily stained water to ultra clear water and cover the bases. The clearer the water the more wind he needs for the crankbait bite. He will use the other colors too like the honey shad at various times of the year.
Otherwise he'll drag a Buckeye Mop Jig or a Big Bite Baits Coontail worm on a Carolina rig around. In fact he usually crank an area first and then throw the jig and the worm around after he's done to make sure he presented the bass a lot of different looks in an area especially if he feels the bass have been pressured off the obvious stuff and come to these places to escape the pressure.
For his cranking, he sticks with a 7-foot Wild Black Carrot Stix rod with a Revo Winch crankbait reel and his favorite new line for cranking this mid-range is 12-pound Sunline Reaction FC.
"The line is the best crankbait line I've ever used," Lane said. "It has the sinking and sensitivity like fluorocarbon but it has some built in stretch. That stretch is nice when a fish strikes and when fighting and landing bass. I also like that it seems to snap a bait back off of cover when I hit something hard on a fast retrieve. That really seems to trigger bites."
One caveat he likes is fishing these areas around grass. He likes to crank on the edges of hydrilla or over the top of it in deeper water. When he does this he will go up to a 14-pound Sunline Natural monofilament to give him better ability to rip the bait of grass if it buries. A lot of tournaments he fishes have been won cranking over and around hydrilla grass. That is one more variable that can make an out-of-the-way spot better.
Whether you're fishing in the bays or out on the main lake, make a point to check those places down away from or leading away or towards areas where the bass have left or want to go soon and you'll likely stumble upon an untapped sneaky spot to pull up and have the bass all to yourself.
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Posted by Jason Sealock on Fri, May 11, 2012 @ 09:36 AM
This angler caught some big bulls fishing where small bass had been found
Small waters can be fish factories
By Guest Blogger Mike Pehanich
Odds are that every day you pass lakes and ponds with bass populations that rarely see a lure.
The numbers of fish in many of these waters can be good, even astounding! But it’s not at all unusual to find bass abundant but the average size only about 12 inches – and sometimes considerably smaller.
These lakes are great for working on techniques, testing new lures and tackle, honing skills, and introducing newcomers to fishing -- underlying themes of Mike Pehanich’s Small Waters Fishing.
Often they are great for something else, too…
Big bluegill!
“Show me a lake with a ton of stunted bass, and I’ll be there fishing for bluegill,” said Nate Herman of Herman Brothers Pond Management of Peoria, Ill., recently.
Herman understands the dynamics of fish populations in small waters in ways the rest of us can’t imagine. Creating and managing ponds and lakes is his business.
Bluegill and other members of the sunfish family often comprise the bulk of the diet of bass. When the predator-forage ratio tips too heavily toward predator numbers, most sunfish become “bass hors d’oeuvres” before they’ve had a chance to grow beyond the fingerling stage.
But I said “most,” not all!
Those ‘gills that outgrow the maw of those cookie-cutter mini-bass often reach hand-size dimensions and beyond!
On-the-water proof
Decades ago, I observed this on an 8-acre impoundment an old school friend owned in southwestern Michigan. His bass population had exploded, and, though we got a number of 1-3/4 to 2-1/2 pound bass per day, we easily caught 20 or more bass 10 inches or under between them.
But, man, we did catch some handsome redear sunfish, too. Giant, thick-shouldered specimens that made you stop and admire!
I witnessed the phenomenon again yesterday on a residential development lake in northern Illinois.
Casual conversation found that it was loaded with small bass. And indeed it was! In half a day of fishing, we caught 104 largemouth.
But, having anticipated this “small bass/big gill” dynamic, we had brought along a pair of ultralight rods rigged with a tiny feathered jig and a Berkley Powerbait Honey Worm beneath small floats.
Those light wands netted us nearly 40 bluegill, and there wasn’t a runt in the bunch!
Float ‘n’ jig rig
The lures we employed were tiny hair jigs, 1/32 to 1/16 ounce, with sparsely trimmed red squirrel hair. They measured less than an inch long – probably 3/4-inch -- from the jig nose to end of the hair.
We tipped them with Berkley Powerbait Honey Worms.
“When targeting panfish, you want to keep that bait small,” said my angling buddy, Mike Albano, who introduced me to the rig. “Often I will use only half a Honey Worm when the bite is light, to make sure they take the whole bait.”
I used a 3/4-inch pear shape bobber; Albano a pear-bodied stick bobber.
My ultralight combination was a Pflueger Patriarch reel on a five-foot ultralight Quantum PT Energy rod.
I added “range” to the rig by using 3-pound test Berkley Nanofil line. It enables tremendous casting distance, and has proven problem-free to date – an amazing claim if you’ve thrown a lot of tiny baits and rigs on extremely light line.
Float tip: Go with small bobbers or elongated bobbers that offer very little resistance when the fish hit your rig. Leave those big red and white beach ball bobbers at the beach!
Where to angle
Many residential development lakes are bowl shaped with minimal structure. They do, however, offer readable shoreline features.
Look for bass and bluegill alike to congregate in spring on moderately hard bottom areas, particularly those near docks, trees, sunken cover, and, when available, not far from healthy and relatively sparse vegetation.
Troughs at the bottom of sea walls often hold fish, and occasionally big bass, especially when brush or other cover enhance the habitat.
Target, too, areas that transition from rock to sand and other favorable combinations.
Gotta love ‘em
So take advantage of those mini-bass factories. Use them as practice fields and places to introduce new anglers to the game.
But bring along a “gill-ready” ultralight rig along as well to add some variety and extra fun.
And, note one thing more…these lakes almost always hold a few monster cannibal bass, too!
Mike Pehanich is senior writer for Bassmaster magazine and publisher of Mike Pehanich’s Small Waters Fishing website ( www.smallwatersfishing.com ). Sign up for weekly updates of new material, including videos and features with top pros!
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Posted by Jason Sealock on Mon, May 07, 2012 @ 10:54 AM
Greg Hackney and Denny Brauer might just be the who's who of fishing jigs. Of course most of the guys that fish at the top level know a lot about jigs and are accomplished anglers having won a lot of money with jigs. But when you talk about fishing jigs in heavy cover and now after Denny's win on the Arkansas River last year on the Elite Series, you're also talking about fishing jigs offshore.
"I rarely fish a jig right out of the package," Brauer said. "That doesn't mean they aren't good right out of the package, but guys have a lot of personal preferences. When you go changing a jig to fit one guy's personal preference, your product doesn't fit the general public. So you leave it as is when you package it, and then guys can make them better suited to their own liking."
That's a great way to look at it. The tool is provided to you. How you employ the tool is just as important. And we all like to tinker with the original to see if we can make it a touch better and maybe hook one more bass that we missed or land a few more bass that got off. Truth of the matter is we put a lot of advantages in our favor when it comes to rods, reels and line, and we should be the same way about the lures.
A jig seems like nothing more than lead and dressing, but when it comes to customizing, it's one of the most complex lures.
How man strands do you want in the skirt? What colors do you want in the skirt? How many colors do you want in the skirt? How much of certain colors do you want in the skirt? How heavy a head do you need to maintain bottom contact? How light a head for a slow fall? Do you want your trailer hanging loose or threaded up the shank? Do you want twin tails or a chunk? Do you want a lot of trailer action or subtle action? Do you want the chunk to match or be different? Do you want the skirt long or short? Do you want a full collar or a finesse collar? Do you want to fish it around heavy cover? Do you want to thin the weed guard?
As you can see, a lot of variables go into the make-up of your jig. Many folks have come up with systems for modifying their jigs, but we found it interesting that two of the biggest names in jig fishing seem to prepare each jig relatively the same.
Hackney pulled out a Strike King Hack Attack Flipping jig from a package and walked us through how he likes to get it ready to fish.
The first thing he did was pull the jig skirt and snap it loose. You want all the strands to be seperated. Sometimes the skirt tabs don't seperate completely, and you want the strands to be independent and not three or four stuck together as they won't move as freely when you crawl or shake it.
Then, with a pair of scissors, he trimmed the length of the skirt. He flipped the jig upside down and let the skirt fan out as he held the hook. He cut the strands straight across. He flipped the jig back up right and looked at how the strands hung in relation to the hook. He then pinched the strands between two fingers just below his hook, and he cut straight across under the bend of the hook.
This trimming made the skirt strands flare and expand more away from the hook where they had been laying more flat against the hook when they were longer.
"I want my skirt to be just past the hook so when they go to bite the jig, they will get the hook most of the time too," Hackney said.
Next, he went to work on the weedguard. He cautioned about shortening the guards.
"I see a lot of guys shortening the weedguard on their jigs thinking they are making it easier to set a hook on a fish," Hackney said. "What they are really doing by cutting that weedguard short is making it a lot stiffer. If you want to make it a little more limp for better hook penetration, you just need to take a few strands out."
With three or four fibers of his weedguard seperated, he trimmed them at an angle from the jighead toward the end of the weedguard. He was careful not to pull the fibers out as that can sometimes loosen the whole weedguard, and they can pull out. At least he's seen that before on cheaper jigs, and so he's careful not to ruin the weedguard now on all his jigs.
Once he gets the strands and weed guard like he likes them, he puts a Strike King Rage Craw or KVD Perfect Chunk on the jig. Instead of hanging the chunk on the hook by running the point perpendicular across the chunk. He takes and threads it onto the hook an inch or so and slides it up all the way underneath the skirt.
Brauer does the exact same thing with his jigs and talked about why he did that.
"I've had times where a fish bit, I set the hook and brought my jig back, and the trailer that was hanging on the end of the hook spun around and stuck over the hook point and made it harder to get a good hookset. So now I thread my trailers on the shank of the jig to keep them compact and out of the way of the hook."
Other modifications we've seen pros make include pulling bright accent strands off in clear water to make the jig more natural. Anglers will also trim the strands above the collar until they are just 1/4 inch or 1/2 inch to give the jigs a more small finesse profile in clear water. Then couple it with a small profile natural looking craw trailer to give the jig a real natural clearwater appearance.
Jigs are one of the few lures that work January to December and in 6 inches of water or 60 feet of water. You can modify them easily to fit most situations. In most tournaments these pros have various jigs tied on in various styles and colors.
Brauer likes to prep his jigs before he starts fishing, trimmed and ready for action. Some anglers like to prepare the jigs individually for the fishery they are on and the conditions they are facing. Experimenting on your own is always the best advice. Try different trailers, different sizes and different colors at different times of the year and learn what changes make your jigs more effective.
Realize the jig is a great option that can be made into a perfect bass fishing tool with a small amount of forethought and effort.
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