The dawn of the Elite Series coincided with the popularity — and resulting scarcity — of the original Rad Lures ChatterBait, later distributed by Z-Man.
Pros including Bobby Barrack and Alfred Williams had enjoyed some regional and occasionally national success with a hollow-bodied frog prior to the Elite Series, but it was generally thought of as a technique for vegetation.
For many years, striper-sized flutter spoons were used by offshore bass anglers on various lakes, but most notably on Lake Fork. Then Kelly Jordon let the Joe Spaits Spoon out of the bag on national TV, and their popularity spread as their size increased.
Larry Dahlberg took a common musky lure type and introduced it to the bass world. Pros including Chris Lane rode it to great success, eliciting peacock bass caliber strikes from bass that wouldn’t otherwise break the surface. It allows anglers to cover water, has better hookup percentages than a buzzbait and something about the Plopper just makes bass angry.
Big bait fever had gripped Californians for decades as they chased record class fish on lakes like Castaic and Casitas.
With stops on the Tennessee River impoundments seemingly every summer, anglers like Kevin VanDam cleaned up with deep diving plugs.
Clear water smallmouth fall for all sorts of soft plastics, but one of the greatest bronzeback killers from Japan is a hard lure that looks like a downsized Devil’s Horse. Unlike that classic topwater, though, the spybait sinks and can be counted down to the desired depth and kept there. It barely rocks back and forth, but something about those whirring propellers must drive smallmouth wild, because it’s become equally as deadly for spotted bass and even largemouth.
Prespawn jerkbaiting, with carefully custom-weighted Smithwick Rogues, was a longtime known pattern, but during the run of the Elite Series, jerkbaits went from seasonal, regional commodities to year-round tournament winners.
Elite pros often talk about bite windows, and few are typically as short or as easy as chasing the shad spawn. It’s only a portion of the day during a small slice of the year, but anglers who can find the early morning gorgefest can clean up in a hurry, stocking their livewell before others have gotten to their first stops. Eventually, the pros revealed the shad spawn can extend into the day.
By the early Elite Series years, blueback herring were prolific in the Carolinas, and anglers who knew how to chase their mating ritual could clean up on lakes like Clarks Hill Reservoir or Lake Murray. As the years went on they spread throughout the Southeast, often crowding out shad, and in turn spotted bass sometimes outcompeted the largemouth. That may have been a mixed blessing, but it’s easy to forget the downside when ravenous bass are blowing up on a pencil popper being burned across a blow-through.
For years, anglers have undertaken all sorts of Herculean efforts to access backwaters – everything from sinking boats to jumping beaver dams. On the Elites, it became a way of life for several pros.
At the dawn of the Elite Series, a few pros – typically those from the West Coast or Japan – were aware of drop shotting and knew its power. The technique — and light line more generally — was still considered situational and potentially heartbreaking. No longer.
Prior to the Elite Series, and even in its earliest years, a wacky-rigged Senko was considered the “Co-Angler’s Revenge,” a way to catch fish out of the back of the boat that didn’t require prime angles or much skill.
The swim jig was already popular in pockets of the country, notably Wisconsin and Alabama, where different styles of jigs and retrieves became popular. Now it’s a coast-to-coast phenomenon, aided by the development of better hooks and a wider variety of trailers. There are now colors to match every forage, and along with its kissing cousin the ChatterBait, the swim jig has further deteriorated the popularity of the spinnerbait.
Other than Rat-L-Traps and ChatterBaits, few fishing brand names become the generic (a la “Coke” or “Kleenex” or “Xerox”) but Damiki Rigging is one of the few. By the time the Elites got to east Tennessee’s Cherokee Lake in 2017, they all knew about this shad body on a jighead.
As forward-facing sonar gained traction and ubiquity, the Japanese hover strolling technique took Damiki rigging from a straight up and down presentation to one with more dimensions.
Perhaps the only time that an outdoor writer’s innovation led to Elite Series victory, the Ned rig is another lure that doesn’t look like it should work – just a stubby piece of plastic on a mushroom jighead – but it catches numbers when nothing else will get bites.
Jigs made of bucktail or other natural fibers were typically thought to be the province of walleye anglers and perch jerkers. While Bobby Padgett had shown a white “preacher jig” to be effective decades earlier, they didn’t gain steam amongst a wide swath of tournament anglers until the Elites used them to mop up leftovers on the Tennessee River chain. The pictured jig is actually a crappie variant with upgraded hooks for bass. Robert Gee (also pictured) cracked Championship Sunday more than once using this jig.
The ribbed swimbait, epitomized by the oft-copied Keitech Fat Swing Impact, is one of the unlikely success stories of the Elite era, mostly because it wasn’t advertised, but rather became a do-everything tool.
The dice lures may be the latest-arriving trend from Japan, and one that’s still developing, but also the least likely. Are they meant to imitate insects? Crawfish? Dying shad?
