®
Spring 2020
T
he popularity of bass fishing has been on
the rise across the country leading to more
fishing pressure in all our area lakes. On any given lake you could safely say that there is
some form of a tournament almost every weekend, if
the lake is known for bass fishing. Now with the added
pressure of high school and college fishing, the bass in
these waters many times never get a chance to rest.
With all this attention bass are knowingly
conditioned and becoming harder to catch and this
is pushing more fisherman to add finesse tactics to
their fishing arsenal, if they want to be a force when it
comes to tournaments.
With this thought in mind at a recent Writers
Conference, I was assigned to have a session with
Gamakatsu/Spro pro Shin Fukae.
If it is a finesse tactic that we are all fishing, there
is a very good chance that it was Fukae that let us in
on the secret.
Having spent the majority of his life in Japan and
cutting his bass fishing teeth on some of the most
pressured waters in the world, Fukae has either come
up and developed some of these finesse ideas to start
with or he has fished these techniques for years before
letting his US counter points in on the goods.
Once we got settled my first question to him was
what are your top-three finesse tactics?
Shin’s first reaction was a big grin on his face.
DROP SHOT
“Number one on my list of the three top is the drop shot” said Fukae. Drop shot fishing has become a main stay finesse tactic to all bass fishermen when either looking for a bass to round out your limit or as a technique to just put bass in the boat that day.”
He gave more specifics.
“I like to drop shot fast,” he began. “I would make a pitch or cast, let the bait settle to the bottom, give it a few twitches then a short pull and a few more twitches. I repeat this maybe three or four times, then it is time to make my next cast or pitch.
“I would reel in my line fast to be onto the next move. When the hook was tied to the line this would causing a lot of line twist which was having an effect on my line. So, I went to Gamakatsu with the idea for the Gamakatsu Swivel Shot”.
PITCHING FOR CHANGE
His pitch to Gamakatsu was to incorporate a drop shot hook and a swivel setup to take the bait twist away as you are reeling the bait back to the boat.
When the project was done Fukae could fish the bait at the faster speed like he wanted eliminating line twist along the way.
In the last year, Gamakatsu has expanded the Swivel Shot with the addition of the G Finesse Swivel
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