"Every fisherman is comfortable with certain techniques," says Clark Wendlandt.
"I'm not comfortable with all of them, but I do know certain things about some that make me better at those techniques."
Listing all of the tweaks Wendlandt makes to his bread-and-butter techniques would take years, so he gave a few examples that should help BassFans approach the same situations in new ways.
Something Different, Somewhere Different
"When you're fishing shallow wood, you picture most people flipping or throwing a spinnerbait in there," he says. "So a lot of times I go in there with the mindset to throw a crankbait. It's something different, and a lot of times you can go in behind someone who is flipping and catch fish with that bait."
For this technique he likes a No. 5 Rapala Fat Rap (shad or chartreuse), a 6 1/2-foot Falcon medium-action cranking rod (graphite-fiberglass composite), Pflueger Trion reel and Stren line -- 12-14 pound test "depending on how heavy the cover is.
"I think two big keys are making a lot of casts, and looking for the places where bass will actually be on that laydown," Wendlandt says. "The fish may be at the (deepest) end of the tree, a place people might not flip because they can't see it. Throw in places you might not normally fish and a lot of times that's where the fish will be."
Straight Down
"I'm usually a pretty fast fisherman," Wendlandt says. "So when I'm flipping, I try to find something that allows me to present my bait in a vertical fashion -- not where I have to work it over a bunch of stuff. Doing that keeps the bait in front of the fish a lot longer.
"I'm talking about an undercut bank, over logs, bushes -- it can be done in a whole lot of situations, even when pitching in grass.
"If it's a really good laydown, then I'll spend a lot of time flipping it," he says. "I'll fish all around that log. But the place I'll spend the most time is the middle of the log where the bait goes over something and stays there in the middle for the longest period time. You keep the lure in front of the fish's face that way.
"I let it fall to the bottom and hop it a few times. I like the action of the bait when I'm hopping it up and down. I think that's the proper action you need, a lot of times.
"If you're working your bait back to the boat, it gets in front of the fish for only a second," Wendlandt notes. "And in flipping situations, you're trying to get at a fish in heavy cover that may not be aggressive. So you need to work him that much more.
"I like to use that principle of up and down when I can," he says. "I can't do it all the time, but when I can."
