It should be no surprise to bass fishing fans that Stokesdale, N.C. pro Rodney Sorrell used YUM Dingers to win a recent BASS Northern Tour event at Lake Champlain. Dingers have been winning tournaments all over the country ever since 2003, when Alton Jones introduced the then-new stick baits to the fishing world by topping a BASS Pro Tour field at Clear Lake.
What may surprise some anglers is the way Sorrell was rigging and fishing his Dingers. He combined a wacky rig (hooking the bait right through the center) with a drop-shot rig. As for his presentation, Sorrell simply put the Dinger where the fish were, having found that the best way to work the bait was to not work it at all.
"The reason I got the bites was because I was dead-sticking it," Sorrell said. "I just let it drift, and they would hit it. The natural pull of the lake gave it action."
One of the greatest appeals of a YUM Dinger is tremendous diversity of ways it can be fished effectively. The most popular presentation is to cast a weightless Texas rig to shallow cover and let the bait fall through the water column. However, anglers commonly fish Dingers on traditional Texas rigs, wacky rigs (weightless), drop-shot rigs (nose hooked) and Carolina rigs, to name a few.
When Ohio pro Frank Scalish used 4-inch YUM Dingers to win a BASS event at Lake Erie in 2004, he was stringing his Dingers on 1/8-ounce jigheads and dragging them over rockpiles in Erie’s open water for jumbo smallmouths.
Although Sorrell lives in largemouth country, he focused on Champlain’s legendary smallmouths throughout the three-day tournament, during which he climbed steadily to his first BASS career win. He started out in 31st place after Day 1, finished Day 2 in seventh place and then moved on to win. His three-day total was 53 pounds, 2 ounces.
Photo coutesy of BASS/ESPN Outdoors