It’s easy to get overly focused on one presentation that may be working and overlook small tweaks that can add a few more fish to the livewell.
My mind is always working, always thinking about what will get me a few more bites and make me more efficient in the amount of time I have in a tournament.
Sometimes it’s a tweak in lure style, and other times it’s a change in my equipment.
Let me give you an example. During recent tournaments, there were shad and blueback herring spawns going on in the lakes. But when I caught a few fish and saw crawfish in their throats, I knew to alter my presentation to crawfish colors and lures.
And in another tournament, the bluegill were spawning, but crawfish presentations provided a better pattern. The bass had three types of forages at their disposal, but they chose crawfish.
Maybe it was because they were easier for them to catch and eat, or perhaps their bodies knew that the nutrients in crawfish would benefit them most. I’ve seen that with deer that will be fixated on a specific diet to meet their bodily needs.
I always look into the throats of every bass I catch to see what they have been eating and select my lures accordingly. I want to be dialed in to what was happening at that moment, not what I thought or saw the day before.
There have been times when I saw the color of crawfish was different in a given area, and I made the adjustment in my lure color and got more bites.
If I’m flipping a Strike King Rage Bug and seeing the bass are eating crawfish, I’ll keep flipping but switch to the Strike King rodent because it best represents crawfish. If I catch a bass with a bluegill in its mouth, I switch to the Rage Craw because it better represents sunfish.
Tackle is no different.
I will use braid when I want my bait to fall vertically. If I want a more natural fall or glide, I will go to fluorocarbon line. If I need to drop line size from 20-pound to 12, I will lighten my sinker because I can feel it better on lighter line than I can on heavy line.
If I’m going to fish a tube over rocks, I will fish it with straight fluorocarbon line. I love fishing braid, but tube jigs will suck into the zebra-covered rocks and hang up more often than they do with fluorocarbon line. Now, if you’re fishing a tube over sand or scattered grass patches, it’s ok to fish a braid/leader combination, but I never fish braid/fluorocarbon in the Great Lakes around rocks.
A mistake I see anglers repeat is they make changes in their presentations without thinking about how those changes affect lure performance.
If I’m losing fish on a crankbait, I’ll change my reel to a slower gear ratio or change my rod and line to a composite rod because it lets the fish eat the bait.
If I’m losing fish on a bladed jig that I typically throw on fluorocarbon, I will switch to a similar rod and reel setup, except the reel is spooled with monofilament line. When I’ve done that, I stopped losing fish because mono has more stretch. I’m not jerking the bait away from them.
Here’s another example. During a recent tournament, I lost a 4-pounder while pitching a Texas-rigged Rage Bug around lily pads with braid. I switched to fluorocarbon line and still lost a 3-pounder.
I changed my setup. I had been using a 1/2-ounce sinker on the Rage Bug, so I switched to a 3/8-ounce sinker and caught the next six bites. The lighter sinker slowed me down and allowed the fish to get the bait better.
No fishery is exactly the same, nor is the bite always the same. You have to keep changing and tweaking tackle to dial in what works best at that moment, using the equipment that makes you more efficient and offers the very best presentation.
