Most Pros Opt For Plastics In 'Crunch Time'

By John Neporadny Jr.
Special to BassFan

The touring pros have to compete on a wide range of waters throughout the country, so versatility plays a huge role in their efforts to succeed on their respective trails. Being adept with both baitcasting and spinning gear helps the pros adapt to the various water and weather conditions they encounter during competition, but there are times when they resort to a proven tactic that has often produced for them in the clutch.

When the going gets tough, Bassmaster Elite Series pros rely on the following clutch tactics to win a tournament or finish in the money.

Pitching soft plastics

Texas pro Todd Faircloth opts for pitching a Texas-rigged Strike King Structure Bug on bright, sunny days when the cover creates shaded areas to target.

“So instead of having a hundred different targets to pitch at, I can be more precise in knowing where the fish are going to be,” he says.

Faircloth matches the beaver-style bait with a 4/0 wide gap flipping hook and a 3/8-ounce Strike King Tour Grade Tungsten Weight, which he avoids pegging. “I just feel like I get more bites that way,” he said.

Shady areas of flooded bushes and laydowns are Faircloth’s prime targets for pitching. When his lure enters the water, he lets it fall on a slack line to create a more natural descent.

“If it falls short of the bottom it has either hit a limb or a fish has it,” he says.

Then he lifts his rod and if he feels tension on the line, he sets the hook. If the initial fall fails to trigger a strike, he yo-yos the lure a couple of times and then reels in the bait to make another pitch.

“I’m not one of those guys who soak my bait very long,” he said.

When Oklahoma pro Jason Christie needs a bite in the clutch, he pitches a Texas-rigged Yum Christie Critter to flooded willow trees and other wood cover. He matches his creature bait with a 5/0 Trokar TK135 hook, a 1/2-ounce tungsten weight and a bobber-stop for pegging the weight.

Christie keeps his boat about 15 feet away from the target and pitches tight to the trunk of the willow tree first, and then tries the overhanging branches.

“The closer you can drop your bait on that fish, the more apt it will be to react,” Christie said. “Even if it isn’t feeding, if you drop your bait close to that fish, it is going to be surprised and it's going to get that bait.”

He said that about 90 percent of his bites come on the initial fall, so after his lure hits the bottom, he lifts and drops it once or twice before reeling in.

“I believe in a day’s time a guy is better off making more pitches than fishing the bait longer in a spot,” he said. “You'll cover a lot more water and put the bait in front of the aggressive ones better than trying to fish the bait around the cover."

Swimming a Jig

When other tactics fail to produce for him during a tournament, Bill Lowen starts swimming a jig to catch finicky bass.

“I like a subtle natural-style bait,” said Lowen, who relied on swimjig to make the Top 50 cut five times early in his Elite Series career. “A swimjig is the most subtle natural presentation you can have because it doesn’t have a lot of flash and vibration.”

The Indiana pro favors a 1/4-ounce Backstroke Swim Jig for most of his swimming presentations since he prefers keeping the lure high in the water column where it's always visible to him. He matches the jig with a variety of trailers, including twin- and single-tail grubs and plastic craws.

A simple retrieve works best for Lowen when he swims a jig.

“I tell everybody the easiest way to fish a swimjig is just like they would fish a spinnerbait,” he says. “I probably catch as many if not more fish on a swimjig just simply reeling it in instead of shaking it."

Lowen swims his jig in holes or lanes in grass mats and tries to keep his lure as close as possible to the vegetation. He also tries to hit the cover from all different angles and possibly present the lure in a spot other anglers might have missed.

Shaky-Head Dragging

“A shaky-head is a finesse presentation and it is not threatening at all to a bass when it's spooky or skittish,” says Marty Robinson. The South Carolina pro opts for this tactic whenever he believes bass are lethargic or inactive due to calm weather, high pressure fronts or gin-clear water.

A 3/16-ounce Buckeye Lures Spot Remover Pro Model jighead tipped with a 4-inch finesse worm or 6- to 8-inch Zoom Trick Worm is Robinson’s choice for coaxing inactive bass into biting. He relies on the shorter worm for fishing in extremely clear water, but switches to the longer models for tempting bigger fish in stained water.

Robinson estimates he fishes the shaky-head about 50 percent of the time in tournaments and says it's most effective when skipping it to the shade of boat docks. There isn’t a whole lot of shaking going on during Robinson’s shaky-head presentation.

“I catch a lot of big fish with a shaky-head on the fall,” he says.

After the lure settles to the bottom, Robinson slightly lifts his rod and slowly drags the lure to make sure it stays close to the substrate.

“I want that bait just drifting across the bottom as natural as possible to make it look like current is swimming that worm through the water,” he said.

He keeps a tight line while dragging the shaky-head to detect strikes easier.

Dropshotting

Whenever he fishes for smallmouth bass or on largemouth waters receiving heavy fishing pressure, Jordan Lee depends on a dropshot rig to beat the competition.

“A dropshot rig just gets a lot of bites and catches big fish, too,” Lee says.

His set-up consists of a Strike King Dream Shot, Strike King Half Shell or hand-poured finesse worm attached to a No. 1 dropshot hook. He drops his line about a hand length or slightly farther below the hook and affixes a 3/8- or 1/2-ounce Strike King Tour Grade Tungsten Drop Shot Weight to the drop line.

The depth of the fish determines whether Lee fishes the rig vertically or horizontally. If the fish are shallower than 15 feet, he casts his rig and drags it back to the boat without much shaking.

“You really don’t want to overwork it because I've seen a lot of times that will hurt in getting bites,” he says. "So sometimes you just need to drag it back in because the bait has so much action already, you don’t need to move it much.”

When he finds deeper fish with his electronics, Lee will present the rig vertically and shake it frequently while keeping his weight on the bottom.

“When I shake it I'll have somewhat of a semi-slack line,” he says. “For the most part, I want to keep in good contact with my bait.”

The tactic produced in the clutch for Lee during the recent Bassmaster Elite Series event at Cayuga Lake, where he finished 2nd after catching most of his fish on the dropshot rig.