Summer 2020
Credit FLW
®
With the walking bait, he’ll sometimes employ a steady left-right-left-right “sloshing” retrieve and other times the bass prefer “four or five really hard ones.” With the wake bait, he almost always uses a medium-paced steady retrieve.
“They don’t hit the wake bait as hard as they hit the walking bait,” he said. “They sneak up and grab it to wound it, and then eat it again, like a bluegill plucking a
bug. He’s a strong proponent of placing a fifty-cent-
piece-sized spot of fluorescent orange spray paint
on the throat of both lures. “In deep water they feed
using their sense of feel combined with their sense
of vision. They’ll feel it first, but eventually they
see it, and just about every one hits it right on the
orange spot.”
He typically throws both lures on Power Tackle’s
PG104, the company’s longtime best-selling rod,
created specifically to handle big fish in South Texas,
although occasionally he’ll go up to a swimbait rod.
He pairs it with a Shimano Curado baitcasting reel,
typically with a 6.5:1 gear ratio.
The Mega Dawg demands 65-pound test Strike
King braid, which the lighter strikes on the wake
bait usually lead him to use 15- or 17-pound test
fluorocarbon. Regardless of which lines he’s using,
he tries to prevent the fish from jumping once
hooked.
“You will lose a few of them when they jump,”
he said. “But that big lure is pretty overwhelming for them. A lot of times they just fight a little bit and come in.”
It’s a dream scenario for most anglers, seeing the fish of a lifetime break the surface and inhale an oversized topwater, but in this case Hanselman says that if practiced properly it’s more than possible to make your dreams come true. •
Credit B.A.S.S.
page 58