Entry 114-3

George Cochran and the Keys to Catching Bass

Fluttering the Spinner Bait

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: Sometimes you'll do better in a bass-fishing tournament or catch enough bass for a fish fry if you'll fish lures in a different way than other fishermen fish them. This past year, I placed 15th in a tournament by using a technique that I call fluttering a spinner bait. When most fishermen cast their spinner baits out into cover, as those spinner baits make contact with the cover, the anglers either will lift their rod tips to help the baits ride over or through the cover, or they'll speed up their retrieves to give the spinner baits more speed and power to crash through the cover or to hop over it.

But, in this particular tournament, I started killing the spinner bait every time my spinner bait hit cover. I'd let the spinner bait fall and flutter toward the bottom on a slack line. Then I'd watch my line for the strike and once I saw the strike on the line, I'd set the hook. I was using the 3/8-ounce Strike King Premier Elite spinner bait with a No. 4 gold willow-leaf blade. One of the big advantages to fishing
the spinner bait is that you can fish it so many different ways under various water, weather and cover conditions. There's no one way that's always right to fish a spinner bait.

For instance, if you believe the bass are holding in heavy cover and are convinced that the spinner bait is the best lure to use in that heavy cover, then don't continue to fish that lure the same way you've been fishing it, if the bass aren't biting the spinner bait. Switch up your retrieve - the speed at which you retrieve and the action you give the spinner bait as you retrieve it. When the spinner bait crashes into the cover and falls, it looks just like an injured baitfish that's been dazed or knocked out. Because a bass is an opportunistic feeder, many times when a bass sees an easy meal that fish knows it won't have to expend much energy to catch and eat, the bass will attack.

Instead of just chunking and winding the spinner bait, learn to switch-up your retrieve and change the action of the bait and change the way it performs throughout the entire retrieve. I've learned that many times simply changing the action of the bait from the way most anglers normally fish the lure helps you to catch a bass on the same lures on which other fishermen can't seem catch bass.




 

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