Westernbass Magazine October 2011, Page 45

Westernbass Magazine October 2011, Page 45

I

first got this idea in my head years ago while

on a guide trip on lake okeechobee. My family

and i had won a trip, paid for by catching the big

fish in a redman tournament. We hired guide randy Mosley at roland Martin’s

marina there and went shiner fishing. it was a great

trip. right after that i ended up guiding here in

California doing the same thing.

i gave it a new twist though. i treated guiding as

if it were a tournament; i would show up a day before

and locate fish like i was sight fishing. i used my trolling

motor on high bypass and covered as many docks as i

could on Clear lake in one day. Then selected the ones

that i could see held the biggest bass. i’d also stop at

the High Valley Fish Farm in the oaks the day before

the guide trip and hand pick jumbo Shiners from their

tanks at .25 cents each. Back then, in the early 90’s,

they were all 6 to 8 inch healthy shiners. at the same

time they were $2.00 each on lake okeechobee.

i would load up my clients

flipping sticks with 20 lb Big Game

line, 5/0 weapon hooks at the

time, and a giant shiner. i almost

always had 3 guys at a time, $500

per day. They bought the bait.

Then, after teaching them all

how to pitch the shiner under the

dock, Wow… the stuff would hit

the fan. it was so exciting, and

these guys got so excited they

did all kinds of crazy things when

trying to land these toads all at

the same time. Some even fell in

the water. Funny stuff, but we

caught some giant bass.

later, i did this same thing

Issue 4  October 2011

on nearly all our lakes including lake Shasta for spots. What i learned from all this was how a shiner acts under pressure. More importantly, how a bass reacts to a frantic shiner. i’d already loved to spoon and was getting better and better at this over time. Soon i learned that by using a spoon in my swimming pool, i could make it surf horizontally. This looked a lot like a shiner being pitched under a dock.

tossing shiners under a dock, with big bass lurking beneath it, was so interesting to me. if the shiner was tired and lazy he seldom got hit within the first minute or so and quite often made it to the other side of the dock and off he swam slowly out of sight and never got hit at all.

However a crazy frantic filled shiner that was strong and full of life tossed under a dock with big bass never lasted more than a second or so. Bass just darted out like a mad dog and… Pow! Shiner gone. With a 3/4 oz. Hopkins Spoon you can mimic the same thing, or very close, and the bass have very little

time to do anything but react,

especially if you can steer the

bait in a way that it crashes into

a piling or a wall or whatever.

Sometimes the bait even hits

the other bass before they can

move out of the way. When the

spoon hits something it draws a

strike immediately. So doing this

in many situations really pays

off - like small schools of bait on

the surface that you can see, any

docks or willow trees.

So here is what i do, i use a

good barrel swivel 18” up the line

from a good wire snap on 17 to 20

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