Entry 123-1

Mark Davis - Weird Ways to Catch Bass

Weird Ways to Fish a Crankbait

Editor's Note: Mark Davis has been successful in his fishing career. He's not afraid to try different and unusual tactics and baits that most anglers don't think will work under certain conditions, but they just do. Most anglers who know Mark think of him as a creative fisherman. In other words, he's not locked into only fishing particular baits at specific times of the year, under certain water and weather conditions. Davis has the ability to think outside the box and willingly uses various strategies that most people won't attempt to fish with, and therefore catches bass that most people won't take. This week let's look at some of the off-the-wall tactics that have enabled Davis to catch fish in ways no one else has considered using.

Davis: Doing something a little bit different, going against the grain or developing an unusual tactic can often help you win a tournament. I think you have to be creative in your fishing and show a bass a lure or technique in a way they've never seen it before. I believe that bass wise-up to lures quickly and just as importantly they wise-up to the way lures are presented to them. If you see a popsicle truck going by your front door every day, and you go out and buy a popsicle two or three days a week, then soon every time you hear the music on the popsicle wagon playing you know there's a popsicle truck outside your front door. Well, I believe a bass understands the same way. If a bass sees the same type of lure presented in the same spot day after day, he knows that it's a lure and not a baitfish. You lure a bass to attack your bait by putting a lure in a place where he hasn't seen a lure before and making it look like a baitfish he wants to eat.

One of my favorite tactics is to fish a big Strike King crankbait in extremely-shallow water on really-heavy line. I like to take a Strike King Series 5 crankbait on a heavy rod with 20-pound-test line and fish in water 2- to 4-foot deep that has really heavy cover in it, including logs, timber and brush. I like to fish these areas with a deep-diving crankbait because if the average angler looks at that heavy cover in shallow water, then a deep-diving crankbait is the last lure he'll ever think of fishing. Instead he's going to think, "I need to fish that area with a spinner bait, a tube bait or a jig and pig. That cover's so rough I don't want to cast that bait in there that will hang-up." You have to remember that the bass holding in that cover have already seen all the lures that the fishermen have thought about using. But, more than likely, they haven't seen a crankbait in that thick cover.

One of the reasons I'll choose to fish a deep-diving crankbait like a Series 5 is because I'm making short casts, and I want that crankbait to dive quickly. If you're fishing a smaller crankbait, it won't dive as quickly as a Series 5 will. By using 25-pound-test line, I can make two or three turns on the handle and that deep-diving crank bait is down on the bottom, rooting around in the mud and bumping the sticks and the limbs. Once I get that crankbait down to the bottom, I can finesse fish it through the limbs and the stumps and walk that bait right through the cover. That big bill will act as a bumper on a car and let you fish that crankbait through that cover. Then when a bass sees a big deep-diving crankbait wallowing through that cover where that fish never has seen anything but a pig and jig, a spinner bait, a buzzbait or a tube, then that fish is much more likely to attack the crankbait than he is to go after one of those other lures that he looks at every day.

To fish a deep-diving crankbait in heavy-shallow water cover, you have to have courage, patience and the ability to feel what your bait's doing when that lure's bill touches the cover. If you'll just take your time and work the bait slowly, you can walk it through that thick cover. You'll be surprised how many bass you'll catch.




 

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