(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.)
During his ultra-successful 35-year career of casting for cash, George Cochran might’ve been a little bit on the secretive side. Sure, he shared some information with friends like Larry Nixon, but his path to two Bassmaster Classic wins and a Forrest Wood Cup trophy wasn’t paved by giving up hard-earned tricks to random strangers.
Now that he’s retired, he'sready to give up the goods. He was known for his shallow-cranking prowess, staying far up the rivers and in the deepest recesses of the creeks even when conventional wisdom said that fish were on the deep structure of the main lake. Once he found his fish, he often had them to himself, and he could pick them off one by one with his favorite lures, many of which have been around as long as he has.
First on the list is “Little Mr. Money,” a diminutive Strike King bait he designed to be sold exclusively at Wal-Mart. It came with red hooks, a Cochran imperative, and doesn’t dive down more than 5 feet on 10-pound line, but despite its small profile it could still be thrown on baitcasting gear, specifically a 7-foot cranking rod from Daiwa. He also likes the “little bitty” Bagley’s square-bills, especially when fishing is tough. While he fished Little Mr. Money primarily in shad colors, he fished the Bagley’s baits in both shad colors (in clearer water) and chartreuse with a black back when visibility was less than a foot.
Another old-school lure that he still dotes on is the Cordell Little O, usually in a bream-imitating color. Among many anglers it has been replaced by a Strike King Series One or a little Bandit, and Cochran uses both of those, but he still keeps a box of the older Cordell plugs in his boat to show the fish something different. With any of them, he’s trying to bounce it off of cover and trigger a strike. Often this requires multiple casts. “I’ll throw 15 or 20 times on one tree because it’s all about the angle,” he explained.
The original Bagley’s Balsa B3 is a larger wooden bait that produced Cochran’s first two B.A.S.S. wins, and it’s often still the first one he reaches for in dingy water. Even though it has no rattles, its wide wobble displaces a ton of water and triggers fish that might otherwise not be able to find a crankbait. The only downside is that they have typically been of inconsistent build quality due to the individual cuts of wood. He bought over a hundred of them early in his career, tested them out in a pool to see which ones would “hunt,” and then only used those in tournament situations.
When the water temperature is in the 40s and 50s, his favorite crankbait day in, day out is the #7 Shad Rap, usually in an orange crawdad pattern. He used to throw it on a spinning rod, but that proved too hard on his aging body, so he switched to a limber baitcasting rod. He fishes the lure with a steady retrieve, grinding it into rocks, but always aware that it is not particularly snag-proof around wood. It’s also exceptional over grass and around schooling fish.
With his shallow square-bills, Cochran prefers monofilament because he believes that fluorocarbon reacts too quickly and breaks too often, but when he goes deeper, he likes fluorocarbon. You may lose a few, he said, but you’ll have a better sense of what your bait is doing.
No matter whether it’s the summer, when fish are “supposed” to be offshore, or fall, when “only a few stupid ones are out there deep,” Cochran advised that if you can employ a few key baits and not be afraid to stay shallow, it’s possible to have a long and productive career with a cranking rod in your hand.
If you want to learn more about Cochran's key baits, including how he discovered when and where to fish an all-black crankbait, check out his full video, available only by subscribing to The Bass University TV.
