Wherever there’s a smallmouth bass bite happening, it seems there is always some Berkley Gulp in use. Both Jamie Hartman and Josh Bertrand have relied on it this week. Bertrand has been using the Gulp 3-inch minnow on a jighead. Hartman has had his Damiki Armor Shad soft plastics soaking in a tub of Gulp liquid for two months.
“We talk about it all the time,” said Bertrand of his fellow pros. “The biologists at Berkley, they know. I’m not a biologist. All I know is it works better than anything else for smallmouth. The 3-inch minnow is what I use for smallmouth – everywhere from New York to the West Coast.”
Being from New York, Hartman has known about the Gulp effect on smallmouth bass for many years.
“I know what Gulp does,” Hartman said. “I put three big packages of Damiki Armor Shad in a Tupperware tub of Gulp back in December. I just saturated them – closed the lid, put it in the sun and let ’em stink!”
Hartman is also making some other key modifications to that bait. He’s colored them in different shades from dark to light and in-between. Plus, he’s fishing them on a custom-made 3/8ths-ounce jighead, which circles on the fall and holds the bait horizontally when it’s stopped.
“They aren’t dramatic colors,” Hartman said. “I’ve got all the shades covered. I keep switching colors throughout the day until I figure out what they want. Smallmouth can be picky, man. When they get together, they’re not. But when they’re by themselves, they’re picky.”