When All Else Fails, Go To The Back-Up Plan

By Jonathan LePera
Special to BassFan

Let’s be honest, how often does a plan come together perfectly when bass fishing?

There’s always something that gets in the way. Those fish that were willing to chew yesterday now would rather swim around your spots like they are in an aquarium. Times like these call for some unique approaches – a backup plan – that will put fish in the well.

Backwards Thinking is Good

Mike Iaconelli is a Bassmaster Classic champion and former Elite Series Angler of the Year who ties on a Berkley Havoc Backslide when he wants to target fish in water that is clear to stained in current, such as the tidal Delaware River headwaters, streams, and reservoirs driven by current.

Where the bait shines is during the pre- and post-spawn when fish are cruising and extremely frustrating as they refuse to bite. The same can be said for fall smallmouth when they move up shallow during the last warm wave before winter and roam the flats with little interest in biting much of anything being offered.

But haven’t we been down this road before? Not exactly.

“It’s one of the only lures that I fish that falls in the face of the fish,” Iaconelli says. “They can’t avoid eating.”

Iaconelli first learned the importance of fishing a bait that slides backwards into cover during his early days of fishing in a local bass club. During a tournament on the Delaware that he fished as a co-angler, he got pummeled in impressive fashion by a boater who was “in the know.”

Iaconelli remembers getting out fished 3-to-1, all the while wondering what he could possibly be doing wrong.

“I had to get beat up by him all day and watch this happen,” he said. “At the end of the day, he was a good enough guy to show me the deal. It was an insert weight. This was before insert weights were even a thing. He used regular nails from the hardware store that he would trim with side-cutters.”

Sammy Silvestra was the man who not only added an important trick to Ike’s fishing game, but became a mentor and good friend to him for many years.

Ike was no stranger to the technique as he’d grown up fishing traditional finesse worms and 4-inch french-fry style baits in New Jersey rigged on slider heads and Texas rigs.

A few years back, he was given the chance to design baits for Berkley’s Havoc series. His goal was to put all he’d learned from fishing those generic baits and build a better option that was ready to go right out of the package that could excel in more shallow conditions without needing to add a weight.

The resulting Backslide was designed to have no salt in the front three-fourths of the bait while the back quarter features a heavy salt content. The result is two segments with vastly different densities to make it fall quickly in one direction. It was also designed with opposing appendages – three sets of legs facing downward and one set facing upward. When the bait falls backward, those downward appendages activate or when, reeling up, the frontward appendages swing into action.

When targeting water shallower than 10 feet, Iaconelli fishes it out of the pack. If deep water is part of the deal or if he’s faced with a 5- to 15-mph wind, he’ll add a nail weight to it.

“The more weight you add, the more accentuated that backward glide is going to be and the quicker that it is going to happen,” he said.

Before VMC released its own insert weight recently at ICAST, he’d order a variety from Tackle Warehouse before finally getting to put all his favorite properties into the current model.

He favors VMC’s newest design because every 1/16 of an inch it has a groove that helps the insert weight not slip out – they act as keepers. He keeps a variety of sizes handy, ranging from 1/32-ounce to just over an 1/8-ounce, in a small Flambeau box and trims them as needed.

“I want just enough weight to help me accomplish the job better,” he added. “I just keep adding just enough weight to get that perfect glide.”

Iaconelli often reads the customer reviews on Tackle Warehouse to learn what customers think about the baits he designs. If there is one mistake that anglers make with the Backlside it is they’re rigging the bait on a heavier gauge hook that overpowers the bait and kills the action.

He’ll use a medium wire hook when fishing heavy cover or when big bass are nearby. Most often, a No. 1 to 2/0 light-wire offset VMC hook does the trick.

Iaconelli prefers 6-pound fluorocarbon line, but will bump up to 10 as he did at Cayuga Lake this season to contend with the dense grass. When using light fluorocarbon, he favors an improved clinch knot as it doesn’t cause as much “burn” on the line as a palomar knot would. Braid is not in the equation as it would hinder the descent of the bait, which Iaconelli figures 90 percent of his bits come from.

“I want that bait to keep falling on every cast and I like to cast past the cover target or the fish I see,” he said. “Then I’m going to lift and bow to it and repeat to get that bait to fall on semi-slack line. You don’t want it to pendulum back. In deeper water, as deep as 20 feet, instead of bow to it, I’ll feather it off the reel with my finger. The only difference is a dock or an underhanging tree where I’ll skip to the face to it and bow to it.”

Rigging the bait flat side down is key.

“You want the hook point through the flat side into the round side – reason being when you get that backward glide, the flat side planes better and that flat side helps you,” Iaconelli said.

In open water, like at last year’s Sturgeon Bay Elite Series AOY championship, he rigs it Tex-posed. At Cayuga this year – he finished 11th – he had no choice but to conceal the hook point as he was fishing heavy grass and letting the bait glide backwards into the holes and bald spots.

A 7-foot, 2-inch medium-action Abu Garcia Ike Series spinning rod paired with an Abu Garcia Revo Premier reel works better when fishing closer to the boat but he favors the 7’6” long cast model when targeting spooky smallmouth cruising the flats.

He’ll set the drag so that when he pulls it by hand it barely comes off the reel to ensure he gets a good hookset. If he figures the fish to be 3 pounds or better, he’ll loosen the drag one full turn or more. Once he’s hooked a bruiser, he’ll chase it down with the trolling motor if need be. A last-second charge means he’ll strip line off with his hand and make up ground as he can.

Take Cover

Bassmaster emcee and Facts of Fishing host Dave Mercer is always looking for a better mousetrap.

Conventional techniques work, but most fish have seen them already or been fooled by them. Instead, Mercer tapped into some unique rigging that originated in Japan that made the Jackall Cover Craw a go-to weapon under the toughest of conditions.

Like most anglers, he’d played with nail-weight finesse worms to get them to slide backward, but when bass bury themselves in the thickest set of pads, he felt overmatched.

“When the Jackall Cover Craw came out, it was the perfect answer,” Mercer said. “It was perfectly weighted already because it is so dense in one end of the bait. Just out of the package, it's a pretty ordinary craw you could put on the back of a jig. Bu, when you turn it around and rig it backwards, it's the dense weight of the bait that makes it slide under cover.”

The technique works best when fish are heavily pressured, like the lake that he lives on in Ontario, as the bass see more flipping jigs than the local tackle shop.

“Because of its natural buoyance and slow fall, fish that aren’t even hungry have to investigate,” he said. “Fish just kind of swim up and suck it in.”

He’ll fish behind other anglers targeting docks, undercut banks, deep weeds and lily pad beds.

“I’ll pitch it out, let it fall to the bottom, then give two or three real quick pops,” he added. “My theory behind that is it is imitating a crayfish and that is how a crayfish swims. I’ll pop it two or three times then feed it more slack so that it goes back to where it came from. It’s super realistic. You can fire it way back in the back end of a dock and where most anglers focus on the front.”

He’ll also let the Cover Craw fall down the stems of deep weeds.

What is most interesting is that not only does he fish the bait on heavy tackle, but he rigs it weightless.

“I’m almost always fishing it on 50-pound Power Pro Maxquatro because it is thinner, giving it more action,” he said. “Even in clear water, because you are feeding it so much slack to the fish you need that sensitivity of the braid because the bites aren’t super aggressive and I want to feel the hit.”

He’ll sometimes add a fluorocarbon leader in clear water. He’ll fish it on a 7-foot, 3-inch medium-heavy Shimano Expride casting rod that has a soft tip to skip the bait and feel the hit, but enough backbone to drive the hook home. The new Shimano Metanium XG casting reel helps him fish more efficiently.

His hook of choice is the Laser Trokar TK-125 mag worm hook and he uses the 4/0 on the 4-inch model and a 3/0 on the 3-inch version. Forage dictates his size choice and color choices are dictated by water clarity as dingier water calls for black/red flake or black/blue flake, while pumpkinseed excels in clear water.

Sneaky Shallow Tricks

Brent Ehrler is no stranger to fishing pressured water and finicky fish.

With California being his home, both ultra-clear water and heavy fishing pressure mean the smartest and bigger fish can develop a case of lockjaw. About 15 years ago, someone told him about rigging the Yamamoto Fat Ika backwards, and while he didn’t discover the trick on his own, he’s come a long way toward making it his own.

At first, he likened the Ika to a tube, but after rigging the bait backwards on a 4/0 Gamakatsu EWG hook, he was convinced that the rig’s totally unique fall would draw important bites.

A jig, shaky-head, or even a weightless Senko are going to fall straight down and since there’s only so many fish under a dock, they’re going to see multiple incarnations of the same baits every day.

“I’ve caught a lot of big fish on it, pitching it around sparse tules and grass on the Delta,” he said. “I do cast it a lot in sparse grass as you would a Senko.”

He’ll even rig it up when targeting bedding bass.

Ehrler fishes the rig in shallow water around docks, especially those without enough water to skip a jig around. As with most grass fishing, Ehrler pointed out that you have to fish all of it to find where the fish are, so he’ll use an Ika as a search tool. If a Senko or jig aren’t effective, this trick makes a big difference.

Unlike the other baits mentioned, the Ika is not going to glide away from the angler 4 to 5 feet. At the end of the skip it will work its way away from the angler but what Ehrler most appreciates is the action that the bait imparts.

“The neat thing about it is that once it lands, when you pull on that it has a completely different action,” he said. “The tentacles fold towards the bait because it's falling nose first with the tentacles away from you. When you pull on the bait, it folds those tentacles back. Yet, when you twitch it, they flare out so when you pause, they fold down and it falls backwards again.

“It has this weird and different action. It really mimics a crawdad flaring and throwing its pincers and arms up.”

He noted that much like when a crawdad swims, it “gets real compact and takes off. It mimics a craw really well.”

Ehrler will work the bait on slack line just enough to make the tentacles flare out on the fall.

“I will hop it 6 to 8 inches off the bottom and then let it flutter back down again,” he said.

Regardless of where he's fishing it, keeping contact with the bottom is key.

When skipping the bait around docks or target-casting, he favors a 7-foot, 2-inch medium-heavy Daiwa Tatula casting rod. He’ll fish the same rod in a heavy action when fishing open water, where he’ll rig the Ika on a 4/0 Gamakatsu Superline hook. He’ll pair both combos with a Daiwa Tatula Type-R reel (8:1 ratio) spooled with 16-pound Sunline Super FC Sniper. Green-pumpkin or black/blue flake are the colors you’ll need.