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WAIT TO SET
When dragging and popping a jig through grass, the idea is to get a reaction strike. That strike will often come right after you pop the jig, which means you’ll often find your rod in a less-than-ideal position to set the hook. Stefan warns against making the mistake of trying to continue a hookset after a pop. “If you pop a jig, get a hit and try to continue into a hookset, you’ll miss half your fish,” says Stefan. “He’s not going to let go of it. Just reel down and then set the hook. Otherwise, you won’t drive the hook in well enough to get that fish out of the grass.”
off it a bit and use his imaging sonar to show him what the weeds in front of him look like. He’ll then fan-cast the area, but if his electronics show an irregularity he’ll fire a cast in that general direction. It takes practice to hit specific spots seen on the electronics, but the results are worth it.
EXPLORING THE JUNGLE
Imagine, for a second, you have to find a monkey in a jungle. Obviously, there are plenty in there, but there are also hundreds of thousands of acres to cover. What do you do?
Some may take a helicopter and try and spot one while flying from high above. Maybe you try and call them out by hanging out in the canopy. But if they won’t come out, that means you have to go in.
Hopefully you picked up on the metaphor – the jungle being a weedbed; monkeys being bass. Get it?
Realistically, a weedbed is an underwater jungle, and Stefan uses one of three ways similar to those above to find the bass inside it.
The first involves flying above the weeds with a topwater. Stefan will keep two tied up – a walking stickbait and a popper. The walk-the-dog
topwater will be used to cover water, but when he sees an ambush spot, he’ll break out the popper and target that area.
If the fish aren’t willing to come way out of the cover, Stefan tries to call them out with a Dirty Jigs swim jig. The beauty of the swim jig is he can both cover water with it as well as pitch to specific targets. He’ll vary between a 1/4- and 3/8-oz jigs depending on the depth of the weeds, with the goal being to always have the jig ticking the weed tops as it’s reeled in, effectively calling out fish.
If the fish aren’t willing to come out, such as if it’s sunny or after a front, Stefan then makes his lures go to them. His two favorites are a ¾-oz Dirty Jigs Tour Level No-Jack Punchin’ Jig or a ½-oz Texas-rigged worm, both tied to 15-pound- test fluorocarbon.
With both, he’ll pitch or cast the lure out and let it get to the bottom. For the worm, he’ll slowly drag it back, which is why he likes a worm over a creature because it slips through cover easier.
Meanwhile, the jig is a more of
an aggressive presentation.
“I’ll drag it on the bottom,
but when it gets stuck in the
grass, I’ll give it a quick rip
or pop,” says Stefan. “It’s
like how you would pop a
rattlebait out of the grass,
but you don’t want [the
jig] to move far. You just
want it to pop through for a
reaction bite.”
And you thought
there wasn’t anything
left to learn about fishing
grass?
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