Entry 142-2

Randy Dearman's Five Favorite Fishing Tactics

I Still Love a Spinner Bait

Randy DearmanEditor's Note: In 1983, Randy Dearman of Onalaska, Texas, started fishing the BASS circuit and also became a Strike King Pro. According to Dearman, "Strike King was my first sponsor, and I plan to stay with Strike King as long as I'm a professional fisherman. Strike King has always had great products, and over the years, the company has allowed me to help develop products for them. They consistently come up with new products, and I feel fortunate to be able to work with a company like Strike King."

Even though flipping is my No. 1 tactic for taking big bass, I still love to fish a spinner bait. I like a spinner bait because this lure allows me to cover a lot of water and fish in any depth of water. I can fish a spinner bait in 1 foot of water down to 20 feet of water by slow-rolling it. The spinner bait enables me to find bass quickly, run a lot of water, fish numerous depths and not have to change lures. All I have to do if a bank drops off from 2 to 20 feet is slow down my retrieve as the water becomes deeper. Then I can fish every depth of water between the boat and the bank. Most lures won't let you to do that. With a spinner bait, I also can fish all the depths between 1 to 20 feet. If the bass are suspended, I can bring that spinner bait through the school of bass, regardless of what depth they're holding. There's not many baits that are so versatile and allow you to cover as much water in as many water depths as quickly as the spinner bait will.

Randy DearmanMy favorite spinner bait is the 1/2-ounce chartreuse-and-white Strike King Pro Model spinner bait with a gold willow-leaf blade and a silver Colorado blade. Unlike most fishermen who slow-roll spinner baits, I enjoy fishing the spinner bait as fast as I can without breaking the handle off my reel and still be able to get the bass to bite the bait. Now I know that if the bass are deep, I'll have to fish the bait slower. But if I can, I really like to burn the spinner bait.

As I mentioned earlier, the spinner bait is my search bait. Therefore, the faster I can fish it, the more water I can cover in a day, and the more bass I can find. I not only crash the spinner bait into the cover to try and trigger a strike, I also twitch my rod throughout my retrieve to give the spinner bait some stop-and-go action. However, I never stop winding. Something else I like about the spinner bait is that I don't have to wait to set the hook because most of the time when the bass attacks the spinner bait, the fish really will load-up on the lure. You'll generally catch about 95 percent of the bass that bite a spinner bait since they bite spinner baits so aggressively.

Randy DearmanI use a trailer hook often but not all the time on my spinner baits. Unless the cover is extremely thick, I'll almost always use a trailer hook. Practice days are the best day for me to fish the spinner bait because during practice days is when you need to cover a lot of water to try and locate the bass you hope to catch in the tournament. So, if I only can have one lure with which to practice for a tournament, that lure will be a Strike King spinner bait.
 

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