Entry 84-3
Roger Stegall On Largemouth Bass
Roger Stegall on the Series 3 Strike King Crankbait
Editor's Note: Roger Stegall, of Iuka, Mississippi, is a bass-fishing guide on Pickwick Lake on the Alabama/Mississippi/Tennessee border. Although Roger has built his reputation on catching big smallmouth, he also produces a tremendous number of largemouth for his clients each year. Even though he catches plenty of largemouth in the same places he catches smallmouth, on some days he targets only largemouth bass. This week Stegall will tell us about his favorite largemouth bass baits and tactics.
Stegall: I like the little Series 3 crankbait from Strike King, because it runs perfect and casts straight and true. It runs 8-feet deep on 10-pound-test line. I can fish it around a lot of different types of cover. I like the root beer, the chartreuse with a black back and the shad colors. I let the water dictate what color of crankbait I'll cast. If the water is clear, I'll cast a root beer with a white belly crankbait. If the water is dingy, I'll throw the root beer with the chartreuse belly crankbait. This color is deceiving because it looks like a crawfish in the water. Those are my favorite springtime colors.
But during the summer months, I rely more on the Series 3 crankbaits in the shad colors. I'll fish this lure in 4 to 8 feet of water, and I can fish many various kinds of cover with this lure. I like to fish it around stumps and logs when I'm fishing it down the bank. But I also use this bait to catch some really-big bass by fishing secondary points in open water. I like a ledge where the water drops from 5- to 10-feet deep. A lot of times I'll fish these ledges the opposite way that most people do. I'll cast out into the deep water and reel the bait up the ledge back toward the shallow water. One of the reasons I use this tactic is that bass get conditioned to seeing lures coming from the shallow water to the deep water, but they rarely see lures moving from the deep to the shallow water. Now if you'll think for just a minute, you'll realize that just as many baitfish come from the deep going toward the shallow water as they do from the shallow moving toward the deep water. However, very rarely do fishermen cast into that deep water and retrieve lures from the deep to the shallow water.
I use the baby-bass color of the Series 3 crankbait from Strike King right after the spawn. Largemouth bass will eat their young. For about three weeks after the spawn, there will be plenty of eating-size small bass for the larger bass to feed on, and that's when I feel that the Strike King Series 3 crankbait in the baby-bass color will catch the most largemouth. To make the baby-bass color produce even better, I fish it around grass, because grass seems to be the preferred cover of the baby bass. I believe that picking your lure color based on the lake's water color, the size of the bait in the lake and the size of the baby bass in the lake will make Strike King's Series 3 crankbait much more productive for you.
