Entry 25-1

Randy Dearman on Professional Bass Fishing

Weird Tactics That Win Tournaments

Editor's Note: Randy Dearman of Onalaska, Texas, has fished professionally for 20 years, and he's competed in seven BASS Masters Classics.

Question: Tell me about an unusual technique that you've used in a tournament to catch fish.

Dearman: I used an unusual technique in the clear, deep Bull Shoals Lake on the Missouri/Arkansas border. After a heavy rain, the water level rose about 10 feet, and the creeks and little side pockets had what I call sawdust -- that matted stuff that floats on top of the water and gets packed so tightly that you can't get a bait through it. I was trying to flip a jig through that stuff on the water, but my jig wouldn't sink through it. I didn't have any heavier jigs with me. So I put a 1-ounce weight on the line and then tied the 1/2-ounce jig on it. I had the weight pegged against the eye, and it enabled the bait to break through the mat.

The film on the water was so thick, it almost looked like land. The bass had backed-up underneath the stuff. I had to use a bait heavier than 1 ounce to bust through it. By putting a 1-ounce weight above the jig, I could penetrate through the sawdust. It seemed like the thicker the stuff, the more likely there would be a fish underneath it. It was just a real thick mat, and you needed something real heavy to go through it. I ended up with a 1 1/2-ounce actual weight to penetrate through this stuff.

The layer was several inches thick, and it took that heavier weight to penetrate through it. If you threw a lighter bait out onto the layer, the bait wouldn't break through it. Everytime I found a pretty good patch of that sawdust backed-up against the bank, the water wasn't deeper than 2 feet beneath it. You wouldn't think you'd need to use something real heavy in that shallow water, but the only way I could penetrate that layer was by using a heavy bait. The fish were up underneath the sawdust.

Question: Can you think of another weird tactic?

Dearman: On Lake Murray in South Carolina two years ago, a lot of the guys were catching bass on a wacky worm -- a worm with no weight. I found by taking one of our big tubes and fishing it with no weight at all, that the tube would fall extremely slow and sink like a wacky worm. But I could catch a better grade of bass on a Texas-rigged tube by fishing it just like a wacky worm.

Instead of hooking it in the middle like I'd hook a worm, I'd fish the tube with no weight and just let it fall real slow by the corner of the boat docks. The bass were holding on the ends of those docks, and most of the guys were throwing wacky worms. But I caught more bass than the other anglers on a tube. So when the bass hold around the boat docks, people can use the tube to upgrade the size of the fish they catch.

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