Two baits, 200 bass, and a Mystery Lake

OHIO – My fishing season ended abruptly when elbow surgery put my casting arm in a cast. Actually, I was encased in cotton padding surrounded by an ace bandage that was wrapped around a splint on my right arm. Surgery was November 4, but two fishing trips prior to having a new scar on the medial side of my right elbow helped soften the blow of the season coming to an end.

The first trip was a two day adventure with Rich Carter while the second one saw me ditch Rich in favor of Mary Kayser. October’s final act/November’s debut had the two autumn months doing their best sunny and 70 April imitation once the early morning chill did an exit stage left. While I will reveal the two baits that accounted for HUNDREDS of largemouth bass from those two outings, I have been sworn to secrecy as to exactly where this fishing adventure took place. So, I am invoking the “don’t ask-don’t tell-or I won’t get a return invitation” clause to this story.

Two baits were responsible for 95 per cent of the bass we caught on my two trips to Mystery Lake. The jackhammer chatterbait by Evergreen that’s distributed by Z-Man was our moving bait while a bait we call the Will Boss served as our soft plastic Texas rigged offering.

Rich is a hammer with the jackhammer while I’m probably a crescent wrench. Using a ½ ounce white jackhammer with a white (pearl) Z-Man RaZor ShadZ  for a trailer, we could do no wrong on the first day of our trip. When the bass became a bit finicky on day 2 for me, Rich continued jackhammering the local bass.

“Lift your rod tip and reel so that the bait is dragging along the bottom,” was the second piece of advice from Sensei Rich. The first tidbit to Grasshopper Doug was to ditch my 3/8 ounce jack hammer for the ½ ounce model.

“Don’t pull the bait left or right when you pop it to make the skirt flair,” instructed Rich. “Lift your rod with an upward pop, let the bait fall, then resume the slow retrieve.” Sounds kind of nitpicky, doesn’t it?

Forgetting how it sounded, I just did it. Bass # 16 coming aboard with Rich’s jack hammer in its jaw convinced me. The only other variation with this bait was to use the same size jack hammer in the Bhite color with a RaZor ShadZ trailer in the Hot Snakes color.

The jack hammer shined when we were hitting riprap banks but the Will Boss took the spotlight when we started pitching baits to shoreline cover like docks and anything else the bass were using for shallow cover. Once again, some fine tuning by Rich increased my catch rate.

“Use a 5/16 ounce tungsten sinker to get a faster fall than that 3/16 ounce sinker you have tied on.” Really? A 1/8 ounce difference was going to…, well, it did. Rich had a 3/0 Aaron Martens Gamakatsu G-Finesse heavy cover hook on his 16 pound test fluorocarbon while I had a 3/0 or 4/0 Mustad KVD Ultra Point Grip Pin hook on my Sunline 16 pound test fluro. Our top Will Boss colors were green pumpkin brown and green pumpkin.

We both had seven foot + length heavy action rods for the Will Boss work while a medium or medium heavy rod, seven feet in length with a soft tip was our first choice for jack hammering. Rich uses some composite rod with a medium east/west flex tuned to the curvature of the earth during a full moon period based on Einstein’s theory about relatives. I had to draw the nitpicky line at this point.

The Will Boss is a Will Presley made bait that has served me well from Lake Conroe in Texas to Michigan’s Lake St. Clair. I don’t know what Will calls this lure, but Rich and I call it money when it comes to pitching baits into suspicious looking bass hideouts. The Will Boss looks like the Berkley Pit Boss but I think it has better action than the Berkley offering (especially since Berkley fired Skeet Reese who designed the Pit boss).

The jackhammer chatterbait is carried by the usual suspects where quality fishing tackle is sold. Should you want to throw the Will Boss, you will need to contact Will Presley at [email protected] until his website opens.