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We've all heard the
high praises for spinner baits. Most people have seen the pro's say that
the spinner bait
is the single most versatile bait they use and they can put it any cover
with no problem. We see spinner baits
by the thousand on the store shelves in a bewondering combination of
colors and blades, and no doubt just
about any well stocked tackle box contains a couple of dozen or so that
looked just great on that little shrink
wrapped card. But knowing just how to make that little chunk of metal
and plastic work it's magic is an art
form lost on all but the blessed few, who coincidentally were the same
few who won 3 out of the last 5 club
tournaments with the blasted things.
GETTING DOWN TO
BASICS
Any lure's
job is to catch fish. A fisherman's job is slightly harder, to find and
catch fish. A spinner bait can
help you find fish, but really comes to shine in catching fish. No lure
will attract fish from all over the lake to
the one little spot you're sitting. That's why we call it fishing, not
catching. Picking that high percentage spot
that is likely to hold fish is your part of the bargain. Once the spot
is picked, then your spinner bait can take
care of the catching part, if you'll just tell it how. Each combination
of blade, size, style, color, etc., is best at
one particular type of spot. The whole trick is to match the bait with
the spot you're fishing.
Spinner baits are at
their very best when you are fishing a particular depth. Any depth
between 1 and 20
feet is fine, just as long as it is a given depth within a few feet.
Once you know the target depth, you can
adjust the bait run almost exactly at that depth with very little
additional effort on your part. Spinner baits can
be fished to cover a vertical portion of the water column, but it will
require more work on your part, and I can
think of several baits that would probably do a better job. But when
fish are hold close to a particular depth,
very little other than a spinner bait will allow you to present the
bait, exactly like you want it presented, in an
easy, effective manner.
There are several
other things about your particular fishing spot, and the fish the spot
is holding, that you
need to decide before choosing a spinner bait. The color of the water,
the temperature, the type of cover, and
the mood of the fish are all factors in selecting a particular bait.
This is obviously not an exact science, so
close is likely good enough. But the closer you can tailor a particular
bait to a particular situation, the better
your chances for a full livewell at the end of the day.
Nothing that swims, at
least in my lake, even remotely resembles a spinner bait. So the
question
immediately arises, just why do spinner baits seem to be a natural prey
for big bass? Not only do bass bite
spinners, but they bite will all of the subtlety of a run-away truck.
Now a Buzz bait seems natural enough. I
firmly believe the bass thinks a Buzz bait is a tiny bass boat, and he's
going to get it before it gets him. But a
Spinner bait? What if the bass thinks it's not an it, but thinks it's a
them? Underwater, a spinner bait is not a
bad imitation of a small school of minnows or shad. If you will think of
a spinner as not a bait, but a small
collection of baits, then you'll be well on your way to figuring out
just what combination of spinner bait to throw
in any given situation.
Let's break down our
spinner bait to it's component parts, and see if we can construct the
perfect bait for
the exact conditions we want to fish today.
HOOKS, HEADS, AND
WIRES
The body
of the spinner is the easiest to chose. The primary concern is depth and
speed of the retrieve,
and the weight of the body will dictate the selection. The rest if
fairly universal if we don't delve into the finer
points of specialty baits.
For the hooks, select
a strong wide gap hook. Bass that attack a school of bait are likely to
be big enough
to handle the job, so your hook should be as well. I've never met a hook
I thought was sharp enough right out
of the package. Keep the point honed needle sharp and check it often to
insure it stays that way. After all, this
is the business end of the lure. As far as color it doesn't make that
big of difference. Most spinner bait hooks
are nickel plated. This allows a bit more silver flash to shine through
the skirt during the retrieve. For ultra clear
water, a bronzed hook will give a more subdued look, but not really
enough to make a difference for 99% of the
situations.
The wire end is much
ado about nothing. Manufactures advertise differences in their wire, but
the fish don't
seem to notice. For the purist, a thinner wire will allow more wobble,
and hence vibration, from the blades at a
given retrieve. Then again, changing blade size or style will make an
even bigger difference, so wire size
becomes fine tuning at best. You'd like the wire to position the
trailing blade over the hook. Shorter arm
spinners are used for vertical presentations and special situations, but
the standard configuration works the
best in just about every other case. The wire should be stout but not
brittle. The bends should be gentle and
kept to a minimum. I prefer the style with a single bend for the line
tie, since I don't have to worry about the
line wrapping around a looped eye on a windy day. On the other hand, if
a spinner bait breaks, it's most likely
going to do so right at the line tie bend. It's rather frustrating to
catch a 4 lb bass and bring ! back nothing but
the wire and a blade.
For the lead head,
it's easy. Heavy equals deep and/or fast. Light equals shallow and/or
slow. How fast or
deep is determined by blade style, size, plastic trailer use, and a
number of other things, but the weight of the
head is the place to start. A fully equipped tackle box will have a few
heads in every size from 1/4 oz to 1-1/2
oz. For general purpose under 15 feet, 3/8 oz to 3/4 oz will normally do
the job.
When choosing a head
size, think back to your bait school and evaluate the water your
covering. In cold or
very warm water, the bait would be sluggish and moving slow. Selecting a
lighter head would be appropriate.
In that perfect mid-seventies water, bait would be moving around fairly
quick and alert for danger, so go for a bit
heavier head. If there is a weed bed topping out at 10 feet, your bait
school would most likely be cruising just
over the top of it, your spinner bait should too. If there are buck
brush bushes in 5 feet, the bait will hold close
to the middle of brush in dark water, 3-5 feet, or right up near the top
in clearer water, 1-2 feet. Read the water
your fishing and select the head size for where the bait should hold,
the bass will be in the best position to
take advantage of bait at that depth.
SKIRTS
The skirt
provides the body and bulk of the bait. Of all of the materials
available, the new silicon rubber
skirts give you the best chance to imitate your bait fish school.
Silicon also allows to the flair the bait easily
to imitate a spooked school, providing a trigger for an attack.
Choose the colors best
suited to your water. A translucent or silvery skirt gives you that
subtle look in clear
water. A bolder yellow or green works in stained or dark water. In
really dirty water, a black or red skirt shows
through the dinge. You can mix and match colors to work in that in
between water, or pull through different
clarity of water such as at the mouth of your favorite creek.
If you are having
trouble selecting a color, let the color of the bass be a guide. If the
bass are a very light
color with little green on their sides, then a white or silver skirt
should match the hatch pretty well. If the bass
are dark down their sides, almost a true black bass, your dark colors
with perhaps a few bright strands should
work well.
Trim the skirt to an
even length just behind the hook. This will keep the hook hidden, give a
bulky look, and
keep from interfering with any action of a plastic trailer.
BLADES
Blades are
what make spinner baits go. They have the most effect on the
presentation of the bait and come
in a bewildering array of styles, colors, and sizes. But since we have
the model of a school of bait in mind, we
can greatly simplify the selection of the correct blade combination. We
really only have four things to worry
about; number, style, size, and finish.
The most obvious
difference in spinner baits is the number of blades, either a single
blade, or a tandem.
The cover and presentation dictate the choice in short order. If you are
planning to throw your spinner into and
through weeds or thick brush, the front blade of the tandem will foul
and kill the action of the bait. Therefore,
anytime you are going through cover instead of around it, choose a
single blade. Now this isn't to say you
can't throw a tandem very close to cover. Running a spinner just over
the top of a weed bed is very different
than right through the middle of it. You can't foul a blade by running
over a 1 inch limb on a tree. But for the
heaviest cover, a single blade will make the day much more enjoyable.
Past the cover issue,
we're back to presentation. Any blade gives the bait lift and drag, but
must run at
certain speed to provide proper lift. If you want a slow presentation,
the Single blade will work better at the
crawling pace. Since the Single blade provides less lift at speed, it is
also preferred for deep presentation. For
a faster pace, the tandem baits will give you that extra lift for a
shallow flashy presentation. In spring and fall,
when that bass are on the banks, a tandem bait at a fairly quick pace
works well. Summer and Winter, a deep
single blade will normally perform better. There is that special case of
really ripping a bait shallow. Since the
single blade has less lift and drag, it is the best model for high speed
retrieves.
The next issue is
style of blade. Blades come in three basic shapes; round or Colorado,
slender or Willow
Leaf, and a compromise of the two or an Indiana blade. The Colorado
blades give the most lift and drag, so is
suited to slow or shallow presentations. The Willow Leaf moves easily
through the water, so gives you the
fastest and deepest option. The Willow Leaf, because of it's slender
shape, also goes through cover the best
so is well suited for probing inside weed beds. The Colorado, with it's
round shape, moves a lot of water and
gives out the most vibration. If you are in low visibility water and
think the fish need some help in locating the
bait, a Colorado is the ticket. Since most things in life are a
compromise, and you find yourself in need of
one, select an Indiana and fine tune with one of the other styles later
if needed.
The size of the blade
controls both speed and flash of the bait. A smaller size of a given
blade will move
less water and may be retrieved faster or deeper. The profile of the
bait obviously changes as does the amount
of flash and vibration. In general, in clear water, small is good. In
dark water, large is good. This goes back to
the theory that we really don't want the bass to see the bait too well
from a distance but we still want him to
find it. For a given head size and blade style, the size of the blade
will be fairly obvious for any target retrieve
you have in mind. All of this works up to a point. You really can't go
too big with a given blade without causing
the bait to turn over on it's side, or even start doing loops in the
water. The bait needs to come through the
water in a stable upright position and reasonable blade size will insure
this happens at the desired depth and
speed. Can you go too small with a blade? When you get to the point
where the bla! de will not lift the bait on
the retrieve, you've got a swimming jig, not a spinner bait. Possibly
good, but not what this article is about.
The finish of the
blade is governed by water clarity. The three main colors are nickel or
silver, gold, or
copper. Painted blades can be used in special situations, such as black
water or in a rain storm, but the
metal finish will get you by in just about all cases. Each color may
also be had in a smooth or hammered
finish. For a given size and style of blade, all you are playing with is
the flash the bait will give out during
retrieve. For clear water a nickel blade gives the most flash. In dark
water, a gold or copper will give more
flash. Much like the skirt color, brightest may not be best. In some
cases the brightest flash may be too much
and a more subdued color work better. This is particularly true in very
clear water. The hammered finish as
verses the smooth finish is another factor to use. The smooth finish
will give out a large bright flash in a limited
number of directions. A hammered or diamond cut finish will break up the
single flash into many smaller
flashes in more directions. Another way to look at this is a smooth
finish looks like a fish, the hammered finish
looks like several small fish. If the fish are spooky, and hammered
finish is less threatening. If the bass are
feeding on 5" shad, the smooth finish will match the hatch. In
clear water, the hammered finish will broadcast
in all directions. In stained water you may need the beacon light of the
smooth finish to pierce the gloom. And,
of course, available light should be considered. A clear calm day will
give you much more flash off of the blade
than with wind swept waves or a slight overcast.
The final message on
blades is to be careful to not send out conflicting signals. A small
hammered finish
colorado being clipped through the water on a 1/2 oz head is hard for a
fish to figure out. The small hammered
blade says small minnows but the flying thumps of the colorado speeding
through the water says there may
be a 5 lb pike behind them. Not a good message if you are a 2 lb bass.
TRAILERS
The last piece
of our spinner bait puzzle is the trailer. Other than a very deep and
fast retrieve, a trailer is
just as important a piece as the blade. The trailer does two things for
us. First it adds some action to the rear
of the bait and a bit of bulk to the appearance. Second, and much more
important, it allows the final and
easiest adjustment for our speed and depth.
For increased action,
twin tail or curl tail grubs are surprising lively even at slow retrieve
speeds. A curl tail
off a plastic worm can place the action slightly behind the bait's body.
Straight tails offer a very subtle addition.
Both matching and contrasting colors may be used, but for 80% of the
time, white or bone colors work best.
For night fishing, a black body/fire tail worm is a great addition to a
black spinner.
The most important
thing the trailer will do is increase the buoyancy of the bait. The
larger the trailer body,
the higher it will run. The more action from the tail, the more drag and
again the higher it will run. Since the
rest of the pieces of the bait can be somewhat tiresome to replace
often, the trailer lets us easily adjust the
presentation of the bait and use the same body, skirt, and blades. A
bait that runs a foot above our target
weed bed can be retrieved at the same speed but just tickle the tops of
the weeds simply by removing 1/4" or
so of the trailer's body. If we are fishing a slope, we can trim the
body slightly as we move towards deeper
water and keep the same action and speed as was successful on the top of
the slope.
A fast bait can be
quickly slowed down by replacing a curl tail with a twin tail trailer.
This quick and easy
method of modifying the presentation is the key to effectively fishing a
spinner over a variety of depths with
different actions as you search for fish. If you make a major adjustment
in depth, then changing the blade may
be in order. But for a quick adjustment for a wind change, or just to
try running a bit shallower or deeper, the
trailer is the way to go.
EQUIPMENT CHECK
Fishing
with spinner baits is more or less the definition of "BuBu"
fishing. Heavy tackle is the rule of the
day. It's not so much a question of presenting the bait, but what
happens after the strike. Spinner Baits are
relatively big and heavy when compared to say a tube jig or plastic
worm. There is really not much advantage
to light tackle. Since the bait is moving and we don't want the fish to
look too closely at bait, line size
shouldn't matter much either. So, we have the luxury of matching the
tackle to the battle, not the presentation.
If you have one of those short broom handle rods, now would be a good
time to find it. Line should be at least
14 lb, and move to 20-25 lb around heavy cover. The new braided lines
work well since the additional abrasion
resistance is a real plus in heavy cover.
The reason for this
ball bat of a rig goes back to the type of attack we are trying to
provoke. A small school
of bait fish is subject to an ambush type of attack, not a leisurely
nibble. If a bass is hidden in the shadows
and sees this small school moving pass, we would like to trick the bass
into immediate action. By reducing
the visibility of the bait, we force the bass to quickly react and
decide whether an all out attack is better than
going hungry. This sudden onrush from a hidden lair is the reason
spinner baits a famous for bone-jarring bites
from major league size fish. You will very rarely have trouble detecting
a bite on a spinner bait.
This might be a good
point to mention why there is no reference to trailer hooks. I don't
believe a properly
presented spinner bait needs a trailer hook. Trailer hooks are suppose
to be used for short strikes. The bass
should either blast the bait or ignore it. I firmly believe short
strikes are directly related to the fact fish don't
have brakes. Short strikes generally come from two sources. The first
case is the one of an ambitious dink
trying to break up the school before attacking an individual member.
Since I'm not fishing for dinks, I don't
worry about these strikes. The second case is the bass is trying to tell
me something is wrong with my bait.
For some reason, the bass was in the middle of an attack, detected
something wrong with the bait, and tried
to abort the attack. Now, if a fish had brakes, I doubt I would have
ever known it was down there. But the
attacking fish could only make that last second turn to abort the
attack, so all I felt was a thump, not a bite.
I've always had much
better success making that little adjustment to the bait than adding a
hook and
trying to snag a retreating bass. Most of the time, go to a more subdued
bait, by changing from a solid to a
hammered blade, or a bit more translucent skirt. In the few cases where
you then stop getting bites, back up
and add a bit of excitement to the bait. Downsizing the blade or
reducing the trailer will give a faster retrieve
and give the bass less time to look at what it's attacking. Once the
adjustment is made, you can settle down
to catching fish, not snagging ones trying to get away.
FISHING THE SPINNER
BAIT
There are
really two way to fish a spinner bait, depending on what you are trying
to do. If you are exploring
an area and want to find out if it is holding fish, a spinner bait is
about as good as it gets for covering water. If
you know fish are in the area and need to fish it methodically, a
properly constructed and presented spinner
bait will trigger all but the most negative fish. The difference is you
need two different spinners for the different
jobs.
For exploring an area,
you'll have many needs and want a compromise to cover all situations.
Oddly enough,
this will drive you to a single answer I call my Bird Dog lure. You will
want to cover a lot of water and you may
want to go through some heavy cover. Both of these conditions drive you
to a single Willow Leaf blade. You
want to cover water and a variety of depths, so a medium heavy head will
be needed. I prefer about a 1/2 oz
head on my Bird Dog. Since you'll have a fairly good distance between
casts, the skirt needs to show up fairly
well but not so aggressive as to deter bites. For anything above 2 feet
of visibility, a white skirt with a few
chartreuse strands will work well. In low visibility, add more
chartreuse and if cover allows, maybe an Indiana
blade instead of the Willow Leaf. Grab a hand full of white straight
tail trailers and you're ready to go. As you
work the area, use a fast steady retrieve with an occasional flair with
your rod tip. Keep the bait close to cover
if possible and don't be scared to throw the bait into the ugliest cover
you can find. When you get a couple of
bites in an area, you've located the fish and it's time to change over
to a spinner better suited to the particular
conditions you've found.
For working an area,
evaluate the conditions and build or select the combination that is your
best guess for
the given area. Work the area slowly and methodically, exploring every
nook and angle to give the hidden bass
a good look. As you retrieve the bait, try to visualize what a school of
bait would look like. In most conditions,
the school would move a few cautious feet, scatter slightly to prevent
an attack, then move a few more feet in
the same general direction. You can imitate this natural movement with a
combination of rod tip movements.
A slight flick upwards while pausing the retrieve will cause the bait to
flair upwards and the blades to flutter
momentarily. Moving the rod to the other side of your body will cause a
slight change in direction of the bait
after the flair. Keep your rod tip up for direction control if the depth
will allow it. For deep structure, a small jerk
forward while your rod points down will provide a slight flair for the
bait. Try to make the bait look nervous and
wary. After all, if something 100 times your size was about to make you
it's next meal, you'd be pretty wary
yourself.
Spinner baits really
aren't magic, just the results are. Keep in mind what you're trying to
do and make any
adjustments to the bait you feel are needed. Those eye popping hits make
all of the worry and work worth it.
Just don't blame me if you get your arm broke by that next bucket mouth
bass that thought he saw an easy
meal.
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