®
Winter 2018
“You can’t beat a Senko on a wacky-rig. It works great when they are biting and still works when they are not as aggressive.”
MODIFYING SOFT PLASTICS
When things get tough sometimes the best approach is to take a proven fish-catching lure and make it smaller. Shryock does this with the Yamamoto Psycho Dad.
“It is a great jig trailer, but I find that it is the best bait for flipping or punching when the fishing is tough,” he said. I “have caught fish with it in all situations, but you can’t beat it when there is a lot of fishing pressure or if a cold front comes through. What I like to do is shorten it down to about three-inches and use a smaller flipping hook, like a 3/O Lazer Trokar TK130 Flippin’ hook. The smaller bait gets more bites and I feel like the smaller hook does a much better job at hooking and landing fish in heavy cover.”
UPSIZE YOUR OFFERING
Downsizing by using smaller baits is a common approach when the fishing is tough, but Shryock often does the opposite when the fishing is good.
“If they are really biting a dropshot, I like to use a five-inch Yamamoto Senko wacky-rigged on my dropshot,” he said. “I find that you generate more and bigger bites with that versus a small dropshot worm. Once they stop biting or if the school dissipates, I’ll go back to a smaller bait like the Yamamoto Shad Shape Worm.”
SLOW YOUR FALL
An often-overlooked part of jig fishing is just how much your trailer can affect the fall rate of your jig.
In shallow water situations, Shryock will upsize his jig trailer to purposely get the bait to fall slower. Using this and heavier line, he can make sure that the bait falls slowly in
page
47