Shaun Solomon
0
Internet forums are full of posts from people asking for your spots. I have the same tools to find spots as anyone else; I’m curious about the methods employed.
I don’t want to know about your “secret lure.” Personally, I find the concept of secret lures amusing. Unless you are making something in your own workshop that you have never shared with anyone else, I am sorry to break it to you, but you ain’t got a secret lure. You might have a rare lure, you might be the only person in the area fishing a particular bait (and good for you if you are!) but you do yourself a disservice if you rely too heavily on a particular bait anyway. There are no silver bullets or magic beans in fishing.
And I’ll be candid, I also don’t care about Senkos. Yep, Senkos are great. I use them too. But Senkos have a way of being relied upon by people who lack confidence to branch out. I know plenty of folks who would be hard-pressed to catch bass if Gary ever stopped making those things.
I will go first, since it only seems fair.
I tend to use fairly heavy line and fairly light line, and not a lot in between. I feel like doing things that are a bit different can help when you are on public water. I don’t use 3/8th oz white spinnerbaits, for example. I like single Colorado or Indiana blades better than tandem willows. They fish on the drop better and I find they get bigger bites. You can’t burn them very well, so willow blades have a place, but if I had to pick I’d take the thumpers. I don’t catch many big fish burning anyway, that’s a one-off when it happens.
I use straight tail worms almost exclusively, with the exception of big Power Worms, the 10” and 12” kind. I love Roboworms, and not just to drop shot. I still Texas rig, split-shot, all the old stuff plays well for me. I haven’t been Carolina rigging much in recent years but I plan on getting back in touch with the technique. I use creatures with C-rigs, and sometimes Fluke type baits.
I love to crank, but I haven’t got into the oversized cranks that have been around the last eight or ten years. I would like to play with them eventually. My favorite cranks are DD22s, Fat Free Shads, and Risto Raps. Old Bandits and Wiggle Warts play, obviously, and I love Wee-Rs for smallies.
I’m not super technical on lipless baits, I like Rat-L-Traps and Super Spots and Rattlin’ Raps. I do modify some to be silent. I am extremely impressed by the Duo Realis vibration baits and want to get some more of those, but you snag a lot of lipless baits, and even with plug knockers a sixteen dollar lipless is hard for me to pull the trigger on.
I fish blade baits a lot, probably more than most people. They play for me year round. I treat them like lipless cranks a lot, and cover a lot of water with them. Ditto tailspinners. Any time the bass are on small bait, the tailspinners are a possibility. Same with underspins. I wish people would forget about them, but some kid had to go and win the Classic on one, so I guess I’ll just have to deal with it.
I love swimbaits. I don’t use many different ones, just Hudds and Slammer type baits, Mattlures Hardgills and some that I make. I will admit I haven’t been using swimbaits as much the last few years as I’ve been learning about local lakes and there are better options if you don’t know a lake very well, IMO. But I love them, and there are a few places I plan to bring them back into my rotation more regularly. I do also fish Keitechs, but I conceptualize of them as grubs more than “swimbaits.”
I fish a lot of jigs. If you forced me to pic one lure, it would be a jig. I cast them, pitch them, skip them, and drag them in a range of sizes and styles. I’ve really loved swingheads the last few years.
My topwaters are your basics; buzzbaits, Super Spooks, Sammys, poppers, and the odd frog. I do the Zell thing with my
Pop-Rs, and I only use clear colors, bone, and chrome. I do use a Buzz Jet here and there, and a few other Japanese baits.
I have been doing strange things with plastic lures for 25 years. I was Ned rigging in 1998. Same with Neko, wacky, free-rigs, etc. I didn’t call them by those names, but I have probably chopped up, mangled, and otherwise destroyed a ton of plastic lures playing with them, and I have not yet come across a “new” way to rig them that I haven’t already tried at some point. I use a lot of small plastics on four pound test. Sometimes you even catch decent fish with bitty plastics. I love Tiny Brush Hogs and Huddlebugs. If you haven’t Neko rigged a Huddlebug, for the love of God go out and try it.
I guess jigs, swimbaits, blades, cranks, and plastics are at the center of my bass fishing universe. Pretty normal stuff I suppose. I need to spend more time with a bladed jig in my hands, and expand on my glide bait fishing. I still haven’t lit up the world with a Spy Bait, but that’s on me. David Swendseid gave me a nice starter pack of them and I just seem to snag them. The best time to learn new methods isn’t when the bite is dead, and it’s hard to put down a confidence bait when they are eating it but I need to do it more often. There is always something new to learn.
I don’t want to know about your “secret lure.” Personally, I find the concept of secret lures amusing. Unless you are making something in your own workshop that you have never shared with anyone else, I am sorry to break it to you, but you ain’t got a secret lure. You might have a rare lure, you might be the only person in the area fishing a particular bait (and good for you if you are!) but you do yourself a disservice if you rely too heavily on a particular bait anyway. There are no silver bullets or magic beans in fishing.
And I’ll be candid, I also don’t care about Senkos. Yep, Senkos are great. I use them too. But Senkos have a way of being relied upon by people who lack confidence to branch out. I know plenty of folks who would be hard-pressed to catch bass if Gary ever stopped making those things.
I will go first, since it only seems fair.
I tend to use fairly heavy line and fairly light line, and not a lot in between. I feel like doing things that are a bit different can help when you are on public water. I don’t use 3/8th oz white spinnerbaits, for example. I like single Colorado or Indiana blades better than tandem willows. They fish on the drop better and I find they get bigger bites. You can’t burn them very well, so willow blades have a place, but if I had to pick I’d take the thumpers. I don’t catch many big fish burning anyway, that’s a one-off when it happens.
I use straight tail worms almost exclusively, with the exception of big Power Worms, the 10” and 12” kind. I love Roboworms, and not just to drop shot. I still Texas rig, split-shot, all the old stuff plays well for me. I haven’t been Carolina rigging much in recent years but I plan on getting back in touch with the technique. I use creatures with C-rigs, and sometimes Fluke type baits.
I love to crank, but I haven’t got into the oversized cranks that have been around the last eight or ten years. I would like to play with them eventually. My favorite cranks are DD22s, Fat Free Shads, and Risto Raps. Old Bandits and Wiggle Warts play, obviously, and I love Wee-Rs for smallies.
I’m not super technical on lipless baits, I like Rat-L-Traps and Super Spots and Rattlin’ Raps. I do modify some to be silent. I am extremely impressed by the Duo Realis vibration baits and want to get some more of those, but you snag a lot of lipless baits, and even with plug knockers a sixteen dollar lipless is hard for me to pull the trigger on.
I fish blade baits a lot, probably more than most people. They play for me year round. I treat them like lipless cranks a lot, and cover a lot of water with them. Ditto tailspinners. Any time the bass are on small bait, the tailspinners are a possibility. Same with underspins. I wish people would forget about them, but some kid had to go and win the Classic on one, so I guess I’ll just have to deal with it.
I love swimbaits. I don’t use many different ones, just Hudds and Slammer type baits, Mattlures Hardgills and some that I make. I will admit I haven’t been using swimbaits as much the last few years as I’ve been learning about local lakes and there are better options if you don’t know a lake very well, IMO. But I love them, and there are a few places I plan to bring them back into my rotation more regularly. I do also fish Keitechs, but I conceptualize of them as grubs more than “swimbaits.”
I fish a lot of jigs. If you forced me to pic one lure, it would be a jig. I cast them, pitch them, skip them, and drag them in a range of sizes and styles. I’ve really loved swingheads the last few years.
My topwaters are your basics; buzzbaits, Super Spooks, Sammys, poppers, and the odd frog. I do the Zell thing with my
Pop-Rs, and I only use clear colors, bone, and chrome. I do use a Buzz Jet here and there, and a few other Japanese baits.
I have been doing strange things with plastic lures for 25 years. I was Ned rigging in 1998. Same with Neko, wacky, free-rigs, etc. I didn’t call them by those names, but I have probably chopped up, mangled, and otherwise destroyed a ton of plastic lures playing with them, and I have not yet come across a “new” way to rig them that I haven’t already tried at some point. I use a lot of small plastics on four pound test. Sometimes you even catch decent fish with bitty plastics. I love Tiny Brush Hogs and Huddlebugs. If you haven’t Neko rigged a Huddlebug, for the love of God go out and try it.
I guess jigs, swimbaits, blades, cranks, and plastics are at the center of my bass fishing universe. Pretty normal stuff I suppose. I need to spend more time with a bladed jig in my hands, and expand on my glide bait fishing. I still haven’t lit up the world with a Spy Bait, but that’s on me. David Swendseid gave me a nice starter pack of them and I just seem to snag them. The best time to learn new methods isn’t when the bite is dead, and it’s hard to put down a confidence bait when they are eating it but I need to do it more often. There is always something new to learn.
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I got all set up with a shop and my materials and then got a regular job and never poured a drop. I needed the insurance, and I guess I didn’t want a full time job and a full time job, which is what it would need to be if I was going to be successful with the enterprise. I might pour myself some swimbaits for personal consumption (see my earlier comments about baits you make yourself 
) but I don’t think I’m gonna try to do anything beyond that. I’m positive I’ll make the odd crankbait here and there because I absolutely love doing that.
