YUM’s the word for big bags of northern-lake bass. If you question that, just look at the last two BASS Elite Series tournaments. Tim Horton and Edwin Evers scored back-to back-victories in the Elites, winning on lakes Champlain and Erie, respectively, and both relied heavily onYUM, with Live Prey Technology.
Evers, who took first place in the Empire Chase at Lake Erie, used Green Pumpkin YUM Houdini Worms and goby imitations sprayed heavily with YUM Attractant to bring 65 pounds, 7 ounces of bass to the scales in three days. His win followed Horton’s commanding 13-pound victory. Horton’s main tool at Champlain was a YUM Craw Papi rigged on a BOOYAH Football Jig.
Keying on Erie’s offshore shoals in 38 to 42 feet of water, Evers strung together three big smallmouth sacks to bring home the $100,000 first prize
and become the newest member of the BASS millionaire club.
Two keys for Evers were fishing very slowly with a drop-shot rig and keeping his baits freshly sprayed with YUM attractant. "The YUM spay caused the fish to hold onto the bait better," he explained.
Evers, who notched his fourth BASS win at Erie, chose a Houdini Worm because a subtle appearance was critical. He stuck with Green Pumpkin because it best matched the gobies that are the primary forage of big smallmouths in Erie’s open water.
Evers used a dropshot rig pegged with a ½-ounce XCalibur Tungsten Tg3 Dropshot Weight, and dropped his offerings directly to fish he could see on his graph. He was deadsticking the Houdini Worm, holding the rod completely still once the bait was in front of the fish.
"The greater density of the tungsten weights allowed me to get to baits down to the fish more quickly and efficiently," Evers noted. "Tungsten also provides a better feel of what’s below, which is important when you are fishing that deep."
Houdini Tricks
Notably, the Houdini Worm that Evers used to catch winning smallmouths on Erie is the same bait that Terry Scroggins used to win both of this season’s BASS Southern Opens, which were held on Lake Toho and the Santee Cooper lakes.
While Evers used a drop-shot rig and was fishing vertically in 40 feet of water, Scroggins used the same worm on a Carolina rig at Toho, where he was pulling big largemouths from hydrilla patches, and on a split-shot rig at Santee Cooper, where he was casting to cypress trees, again for largemouths.