Entry 25-2
Randy Dearman on Professional Bass Fishing
Less is More
Editor's Note: Randy Dearman of Onalaska, Texas, has fished professionally for 20 years, and he's competed in seven BASS Masters Classics.
Question: Can you give me another weird strategy?
Dearman: One summer in the early 1990s, while fishing on the flats in the grass at Toledo Bend, we were catching bass on mostly an old Timber King spoon with a piece of white fork on the back of it. When we'd drag it along the grass, the fish would blow up on it. I lost my spoon. I didn't have any more spoons, so I took a piece of the fork and put it on a hook by itself.
I ended up just pulling the fork across the grass. The lighter fork wouldn't sink, and I caught five bass on it. We won the tournament with 28 pounds of bass -- all five of them caught on the fork.
Question: How important is it to change up your lures?
Dearman: Professional anglers come up with a lot of new ideas and techniques because of the need to improvise. The baits that you come up with often end up working better than the baits you usually use. I've used just a fork a number of times instead of pulling the spoon across the water. Sometimes I'll just put a fork on a hook and drag it through the stuff.
Question: Can you think of any more?
Dearman: In New York one year, we were catching the fish on a Strike King Grass Frog in heavy duckweed. The bass kept missing our bait. The green, fine duckweed nearly floated on top of the water and was matted.
As we'd pull the frogs through the weeds, the bass would blow up on the frogs but miss them. A bass would leave a hole in the weed where it had blown up on the frog. If the other guy could make a cast and get the frog to that hole quickly, he could catch the bass as it struck again. So, I ended up fishing with two frogs on the line.
I'd tie on one frog with a piece of braided line, and I'd put another frog about a foot behind it. When the bass would blow up on the first one, it would leave a hole in the grass where the bass could see the second frog. So we would just slide the second frog into that hole and catch the bass probably 90 percent of the time.
Question: Did you come up with that idea yourself?
Dearman: Yeah, I finally figured that if I could throw two frogs like a train, the bass would bite that second frog.
Contents:
- Part 1: Weird Tactics That Win Tournaments
- Part 2: Less is More
- Part 3: Dearman's Barrel Bass
- Part 4: Teaching the Sport of Bass Fishing
- Part 5: Dearman's Five Most Commonly Asked Questions
