Jay Yelas racked up a bunch of fish this year on a spinnerbait, which for the most part is a notoriously situational bait. You need cloud cover and you need wind, and that was the weather at almost every tour event, which helped. But catching big fish on a spinnerbait requires more than just the right conditions.
This Year
"Spinnerbaits are situational for me," Yelas says. "They are for everybody. There are certain times when bass just won't hit one so you have to put it down.
"I was thinking back, and in three of 10 (Bassmaster Tour) tournaments (this year) I never threw a spinnerbait. I tried it in practice and they weren't biting it. So it's not something I use all the time. But I've found over the years that when they're biting a spinnerbait, you can pretty much go with it all day."
Basics
When it comes to deciding whether to fish a spinnerbait, "you have to start with the season of the year," he says, noting that pre-spawn (early spring) is one of the best times.
Then "one of the most basic things is a good cloudy, windy day, which may or may not include rain. If it does, that's even better. If it's a bluebird day, you can forget about it.
"I can't think of another lure that requires a certain type of weather to be most effective more than a spinnerbait does," he adds. "A spinnerbait bite is predicated by daily weather conditions. It can be on one day and be totally gone the next day. It's definitely a hit or miss technique, so it's not something you can count on every day by any means."
If you have the right conditions, you have to determine whether you're going to fish fast and shallow, or slow and deep. "You need to see what kind of habitat is available, and what the water clarity is," he says. "Usually those are big factors, along with whether you have grass or not. Type of lake, cover, water clarity and water temperature all come into play."
Fine-Tuning
When all those factors are nailed down and you feel the spinnerbait bite is on, then you have to make sure you're using the right bait in the right way.
"You have to have the right spinnerbait retrieved with the proper presentation to catch the fish," Yelas notes. "It's not like have you have an overcast, rainy day so you can go out and catch 20 pounds on a spinnerbait. You need that to get in the ballpark, and from there use the exact lure and proper presentation."
He carries spinnerbaits from 1/8-ounce to 1 1/2 ounces with various blade sizes and configurations. He also has roughly 10 different skirt colors that he uses, and two or three different trailers. "A lot of it also depends on retrieve speed," he says. "Sometimes they like it slow, and sometimes they want it really fast."
Following are a couple of examples of different spinnerbait techniques he uses:
> "When you're fishing a lowland reservoir in the South that has aquatic vegetation like hydrilla – places like Rayburn, Guntersville and Seminole – you fish the deeper outside and inside weedlines in the early spring. I'll go to a heavier spinnerbait, like a 5/8-ounce, and slow-roll it out deep in the grass. When it's tough in the spring, that's a technique I love to use. It's a confidence deal for me. I like a Colorado-willow combination, with a No. 3 Colorado and a No. 5 willow," he says. "That's a pretty big willow, but sometimes I go to an even bigger one. I'm not afraid of big blades in the early spring. I also use a 4-inch Power Grub trailer for a little wavy action and to give it more flotation." Work the bait "really slow. You're throwing it out and winding the reel handle the slowest you can possibly turn it to keep the blades spinning and keep it down there deep. You know you won't get many bites a day, but if you catch five you'll have a nice stringer." (This was his strategy at the Seminole Bassmaster, where he landed the biggest fish caught all year on tour – a 10-04 – and finished 16th.)
> His favorite shallow-water spinnerbait is a 1/2-ounce with tandem willowleaf blades – a No. 4 in front and a No. 4 1/2 on the back. "You can work that bait fairly fast in shallow water for aggressive fish," he says. "I find fish with that a lot. I'll go up shallow with that to see if the spinnerbait bite is on. If I can get a few fish to respond, I might start tweaking the bait as far as blade combinations and skirt color." He notes that he usually fishes this bait later in the spring. "You're following a warming trend, where fish are moving up and getting aggressive, so you have to have a situation where the water temperature is slowly on the rise. If you have that, you can fish faster. If you have a cooling tend, with the water temperature dropping daily, you need to slow way down."
Notable
> He "sometimes" uses a trailer hook, "especially if the fish miss the bait. If that happens, I'll go to a trailer hook right away. Mustad makes a great 2/0 trailer hook for spinnerbaits, and that's the one I use."
> He also will trim the skirts at times. "It all depends on how big a profile I'm trying to project. A lot of times I leave the skirt full-length, but sometimes I trim it for a medium profile, and will even take an inch off the skirt off trying to get a small look. With 1/8-ounce baits, I'll pull half the strands out to get a real diminutive profile."
> Gear – 7-foot medium-action Team Daiwa spinnerbait rod; 6.3:1 Team Daiwa TDX 103 baitcaster; 20-pound Fireline or 25-pound Trilene XT. He likes Fireline when he's fishing around grass because it cuts through the grass and because it has no stretch. He explains: "The water is usually clearer so you make long casts, and if you make a long cast and hook a fish around heavy vegetation, he can have a leg up on you." He also fishes Fireline around bullrushes. He likes the heavy mono for "dingier water, and wood and rock cover for a little extra stretch."
