Story and Photos by Lawrence Taylor
I fished with tournament angler and Kentucky Lake guide Ben Parker on the first day of June and we had a huge day. Multiple doubles and even a triple or two, with fish ranging from dink to more than 5-pounds, despite fishing areas we knew wouldn’t infringe on the BASS Elite Pro’s fish.
Over dinner that evening I asked Parker for five advanced fishing tips – not things like keeping hooks sharp or retying after a snag – but tips that haven’t been written about a million times in popular fishing magazines. Here are those tips from a man who knows how to boat a bass.
1
Today when we were fishing crankbaits we had several instances when I hung big fish – I could tell when they hit they were at least four pounds – and they came unbuttoned. Now why did that happen and what did that tell us? A lot of times when that happens it doesn’t mean you should totally change baits, you should try changing colors on the same bait before you totally change lures or fishing styles. I was thowing a Black Pearl color pattern Fat Free Shad BD7. They hit it, I pulled my rod back and they’re on for about five seconds and they’re just gone. That’s not a hook that’s inside a mouth -- its on the outside -- maybe they hit it closed mouthed, I’m not sure. Instead of totally changing baits, I threw four other colors before I found what they were hitting. What they were eating was the Foxy Shad Fat Free Shad BD7. After that, I started catching keeper fish and they were eating the bait, and we were fishing the same spot as we were when I hung those bass that came unbuttoned. What a bass wants changes with the time of day, color of water and a bunch of other factors.
2
There’s a certain technique to getting a crankbait bass to the boat and it’s different than when you’ve got one hooked on a single hook. The proper way to get a bass hooked on a crankbait to the boat is to sweep the rod back when you feel the strike, then slowly reel the bass in. Horsing it in often allows the bass to jump. Well, it really provokes the bass to jump. When you sweep the rod back, you should be able to calculate how big the fish is. If you know the fish is a 12-incher, just reel it to the boat as fast as you can and hope it jumps off. When the rod loads and you know it’s a 5-pounder, the way you fight that fish is critical.
3
Somewhat related to the tip above, not letting a bass get under the boat is critical to getting it into the boat. It’s the worst situation you can get into when battling a big bass. When a bass gets to the boat and tries to dive under the boat, you should be in a football-ready position (knees bent in a semi-crouch) and the amount of line out should be equal to the length of your rod. I’ll say that again because it’s important – the length of line out should be equal to the length of your rod. Your hands are holding the rod fully extended out over the side of the boat. When the bass attempts to dive, push the rod tip as far out away from the boat as possible. Another plus to having this length of line out is that if the bass goes around the front of the boat, the trolling motor is not a factor. An angler with just 4-feet of line out will have major problems if the bass heads around the front of the boat and gets tangled in the trolling motor.
4
Sidescanning technology is one of your best tools to locating fish. It’s one of my favorite ways of getting a better understanding of the bottom contours and finding fish-holding areas. You need to really work with it and get a more efficient understanding of a certain area than just using sonar. You can see contour changes, depressions, cover, geographical oddities and fish. With a lot of practice you can see schools of fish and you can better gauge the size of the fish and differentiate between a school of bass, crappie carp, etc. You can tell what kind of fish you see on the screen by their position in relation to other fish in the screen as well as their size. Bass on a ledge are more like a line of cattle going to feed.
5
People sometimes have a problem when they read more than they actually get out and fish. (Ouch Ben, I’m a writer you know!) Sometimes you can get information overload. A lot of it is keeping a clear and open mind. Okay, we’re in this situation, we should do this, but nothing beats trial and error. Make your mistakes, but learn from it. The second day of a recent tournament I threw a crankbait over and over but didn’t catch what I needed and didn’t make the cut. The next day I got up at daylight and went back to that spot and figured out what I was doing wrong. What I should have done was throw a jig or worm. There was so much trash blowing across the point I was trying to fish, if you could get the bait to the point without too much trash on it you’d catch fish, but more times than not, my crankbait retrieve would be fouled by floating debris. I went back and threw a 10-inch worm that went through the debris and caught a 4-pounder on my first cast. I felt like, “I’m an idiot.”