Entry 114-1

George Cochran and the Keys to Catching Bass

Soaking a Jerkbait

Editor's Note: This week George Cochran, two-time Bassmasters Classic winner and long-time Strike King Pro Team member, will tell us how he fished five tough tournaments and the tactics and the baits he used to survive in them. Often to do well in a bass-fishing tournament or to catch bass on the weekend, you have to use somewhat offbeat and often seemingly inappropriate techniques and lures. Here's a look at how Cochran handled five tough tournaments.

Cochran: I won this year's Bassmasters Top 150 tournament on Lake Guntersville in northeast Alabama using a technique that I don't believe any angler has won a BASS tournament on ever before. I call this method of fishing for bass, soaking a jerkbait. I was fishing Strike King's Wild Shiner and learned if I reeled the bait down to about 8 or 10 feet, stopped the bait, twitched it and let it sit absolutely still for 10 seconds that those big Guntersville bass would attack the lure. If I didn't get a bite, I'd pull the bait with my rod tip, twitch it again and let it sit another 10 seconds.

One cast would take about three times as long to fish as I required to fish the same cast with a spinner bait, a jig or a crankbait. In other words, I was fishing about three times as slowly with that jerkbait as I would fish with any other lure. This strategy is especially effective when the water temperature is around 40 degrees. I was using the green-back, bone-colored Wild Shiner. Until I tried this technique and learned that I could catch bass on it, I was really having a rough tournament at Guntersville without finding or taking many bass. But once I learned how to soak a jerkbait and recognized the deadliness of this technique, I did well in this tournament and finally won it. So, one of my worst tournaments (Lake Guntersville) became one of my all-time best tournaments when I finally figured out the right lure and the best color of lure to fish and the right retrieve to make the bass bite.




 

© 1996-2008 Strike King Lure Company