(Editor's note: The following is the latest installment in a series of fishing tips presented by The Bass University. Check back each Friday for a new tip.)
Aaron Martens has a dirty little secret – despite being the Elite Series angler most closely associated with spinning tackle, he’s not a huge fan of finesse techniques. Given a choice, he’d rather power-fish just about any time. Fortunately, he’s managed to blend his exceptional talent with his preferred tactics, and he's able to employ “power finesse” much of the year. It’s been a key element of his three Angler of the Year titles.
Rather than slowly milking a small bait in place, he typically fishes fast with light line. “It’s important to be in a hurry,” he explained.
The dropshot isn’t only effective doodled in place. In fact, many times as he reels in his dropshot rig to make another cast, he’ll kill it for a split second, and that’s when the fish will smoke it. “Most of the time I’m fishing a dropshot, I’m fishing it pretty quick, especially in practice,” he added.
It comes down to efficiency, and Martens stressed that it’s important to find the sweet spot between covering water and saturating an area. He’ll use a dropshot and a shakey head from shallow to deep and “everything in between.” For those who think that they’re merely for deep, clear water, he reminds them that he nearly won an Elite Series event on the muddy Arkansas River a few years back fishing dirt-shallow.
Done properly, it’s more like target fishing than soaking a bait. “A lot of times the bite is immediate,” he said. “So I sometimes just fish the fall (of the bait).”
When dropshotting, he varies his leaders substantially depending on the conditions. When it’s cold, that’s when he goes shorter, making it less than 4 inches, “just long enough for keeping the weight from going inside the hook on a Texas rig.” In the fall, he’ll go longer, up to 3 feet.
No matter the leader length, he’s a strong proponent of straight shank hooks, which he “firmly believe(s) will catch them better all of the time.” He matches the gauge of the wire to the thickness of the bait, but believes that the Gamakatsu Heavy Cover Finesse is the best model he’s ever used. He can go as small as 2/0 or 3/0 when fishing with 14- or 16-pound fluorocarbon and not bend it out.
While Martens uses a number of different brands of soft plastics for his finesse fishing, including Yamamoto and Zoom, he said that the Roboworm skinny and fat straight-tailed worms get the lion’s share of the workload. He likes the thinner one, which moves more effortlessly, in cold water, and prefers the fat version’s more rigid action when it’s warmer. In low-light conditions – such as early morning or cloudy weather – he prefers dark colors, but in clearer water and bright skies, he likes “more transparent” colors. Favorites include morning dawn and cinnamon blue.
While he uses baitcasting tackle when he can get away with it, spinning gear is still the preferred tool for most of these presentations. If possible, he prefers not to use a braid-to-fluoro setup in these situations, relying on straight fluorocarbon instead. Because there’s no knot, he said he’s more accurate this way and has more control over his bait’s trajectory on the cast. It’s also more forgiving when fighting a fish.
Nevertheless, in super-dirty water he doesn’t hesitate to go to straight braid. He’ll pitch with baitcasting gear and 10-pound Sunline and said that it’s amazing how many big fish you can extract from gnarly cover if you play them gingerly.
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