Entry 21-3
When Strike King Saved the Day for Mike Wurm
When the Tube Tactic Paid Off in South Arkansas
Editor's Note: Mike Wurm of Hot Springs Arkansas, ranked sixth in the world by bassfan.com and one of the nation's leading pro fishermen, has been a part of Strike King's Pro Fishing Team for six years. This week, Wurm will tell us about a couple of times that he's been ready to throw in his rod and instead pulled out a Strike King product that saved the day.
Question: Tell me about your experience in south Arkansas when your tube tactic paid off.
Answer: I was fishing a major reservoir in South Arkansas. Many of these reservoirs (small ponds) are privately owned and hard to get permission to fish but are loaded with bass. Early in the morning I had caught quite a few bass on a Strike King buzzbait and a Strike King spinner bait. But as the sun climbed higher in the sky, the bass seemed to shut down. I was struggling to get a bite.
Before I'd gone down there to fish, I'd talked to the man who owned the lake. He'd told me, "All you have to do is throw a spinner bait, and you can catch bass in these ponds." So I didn't take many lures with me in my tackle box.
One of the problems, which made the day even tougher, was my fishing buddy. He had explained he really wanted to catch a lot of bass. He didn't really care how big they were; he simply wanted to have a bent rod all day. However, much to his displeasure, after about 9:00 a.m., our rods stayed as straight as pool cues.
I began to dig through my tackle box and found a little package up under a bunch of junk. When I opened it up, I saw I had some black/neon-colored Strike King Flip-N-Tubes, which is my favorite color of tube to fish.
Question: Why is black/neon your favorite color to fish?
Answer: I know you can't go wrong when you're fishing a black/neon-colored tube. I like to fish black neon in stained water around stumps, logs and any type of visible cover.
I threaded the Strike King Denny Brauer Premier Elite Flip-N-Tube onto my hook and flipped it around every stump, log and blowdown, getting a bite every time. I gave my buddy one of those tubes, and he started catching bass just like me. We could hardly believe what was happening. We completely turned a day of fishing around, from a day we could barely catch fish, to a day where we caught bass on every cast.
I've learned that when fishing really gets tough, I always can depend on the Strike King Bitsy Bug and the Strike King Denny Brauer Premier Elite Flip-N-Tube in black/neon. I was really fortunate to discover the hidden treasure of the day, those Flip-N-Tubes in the bottom of my tackle box where I'd forgotten them.
Because on this day and in this place, those bass wanted a very soft presentation and a very bulky bait, and the Flip-N-Tube saved the day. Having big tackle boxes is an advantage because you can put a lot of lures in them. Then when you least expect to need a specific lure, you can find a lure and a technique to fish that you may have forgotten about, which can be the key to saving a day of bass of fishing.
Contents:
- Part 1: The Bitsy Bug and Big Bass
- Part 2: A Frog Saved the Day
- Part 3: When the Tube Tactic Paid Off...
- Part 4: The Rocket Shad Saves the Day
- Part 5: Learn Why Cranking May Seem Crazy...
