(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.)
Ish Monroe makes his preferences abundantly clear: “I am not an offshore guy,” he said.
That would seem to put him at a disadvantage when the bass complete the spawning ritual and start to head deep. As other anglers sharpen the hooks on their flutter spoons and deep crankbaits, he doesn’t despair, he just tends to look shallower than the rest of them and there are a handful of hard baits that get the nod more than the others.
The first, not truly a hard bait but in the same family, is the hollow-bodied frog. After his girlfriend and flipping, he said, frogging is the love of his life. It’s deadly on late spawners and fry guarders. He’s caught numerous double-digit bass on this bait at this time of year, often in the thickest cover around, so he relies on nothing less than 50-pound Maxima braid, opining that you “don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.”
His favorite frog colors are simple: White in clear water or on bright days; black when the water’s dirty or it is cloudy, and bluegill imitations “just to mix something in.” Of course, his first choice is the standard Ish’s Phat Frog, but when there’s a little bit of a breeze and he needs to make more of a commotion, he’ll turn to the popping version.
His second choice, a more traditional hard bait, is a walking topwater, like the River2Sea Rover, with a large rattle to draw the fish from a distance. He likes his topwaters on the larger end of the spectrum because he believes that fish at this time of year want one large meal as opposed to several smaller ones. It is, he said, “the difference between eating salad all day or one big steak.”
His new favorite topwater is the River2Sea Whopper Plopper, a lure derived from the musky realm that has been winning tournaments all over the country for the past two years. It combines the body of an oversized spook with a buzzbait-like tail, and Monroe believes that “it sounds like a B52 coming in to land.” The lure comes in three sizes – 90 mm, 130 mm and 190 mm – and the mid-sized version gets most of the usage. Nevertheless, when looking for one or two extra-big bites, he won’t hesitate to pull out the largest one.
With all of his topwaters except the frog, he uses a composite rod. When a bass strikes, he just keeps working the bait and the rod loads up properly.
The one topwater that he hesitates to rely upon is a wake bait, which has led to unnecessary heartache for him in the past. “Don’t throw it in a tournament,” he said. “You’ll get your feelings hurt.”
When the bass won’t come to the surface to feed, he’ll use square-bill crankbaits, and if there’s a shad spawn going on he believes that “a spinnerbait is the best bait to throw.” When around spawning shad, he likes a double-willow version because it replicates the baitfish and he can retrieve it quickly, but in other situations he’ll go to a Colorado/Indiana version if the water is dirty. Either way, he likes to fish them on 15- to 20-pound Maxima mono, and stressed that you should “always fish a trailer hook.”
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