Entry 281-1

Mark Davis: My Favorite Bass Techniques

Part 1: Fishing a Wake Bait

Question: Mark, what is a wake bait?

Davis: A wake bait is any type of topwater lure that stays on top of the water when you start your retrieve and wobbles from side to side and creates a wake on top of the water, just like a boat. That’s all the action the bait has. It doesn’t pop, spit, bob or have any of the actions of other topwater lures. A wake bait swims on the surface like an addled or injured shad that for some reason can’t seem to go down and swim underwater.

Question: Why do you like to fish a wake bait like Strike King’s Wake Shad?

Davis: In the late winter or early spring, when the water starts to warm up, the first topwater bite you can get will usually be on a wake bait. The Wake Shad makes a very-subtle disturbance on top of the water. It’s not popping like a Pop-R, it’s not darting and diving like a walking bait, and it’s not sputtering and splashing like a prop bait. The Wake Shad just moves slowly and easily across the top of the water. The reason I like this bait is it will get you a topwater bite much earlier than any other lure will.

I’ve caught bass on the Wake Shad when the water temperature is as cold as 42 or 43 degrees. In many areas in the South, that’s the wintertime temperature of many of the lakes. Now one of the reasons this is such an effective winter and early-spring bait is because a lot of times in the early and late winter in the South, you’ll have cold fronts come through, and when a cold front hits the lake, the shad become addled and disoriented.

These cold fronts even may kill the shad. Many times as the shad start to die, they’ll come to the surface and begin to slowly swim around on the surface, just like the Wake Shad does. Knowing that this happens every year, the bass will be up near the surface looking for these dazed and dying shad, that present a big meal that’s easy for the bass to catch without expending much energy. We learned this technique when we were fishing for saltwater striped bass and caught numbers of largemouths and spotted bass with this tactic in cold water.

Strike King pros helped Strike King develop the Wake Shad because for many years we had modified different baits that weren’t meant to be wake baits that would move across the top of the water and give off this wake. But the Strike King Wake Shad is the first lure I know of that was actually designed and built to give that waking action that we’ve found to be so deadly. Again, we’re fishing the Wake Shad when most anglers haven’t even thought about fishing a topwater lure because the water is so cold. So what the Wake Shad has done for us is given us a new lure the bass haven’t seen before that we can use at a time of the year when most anglers aren’t even fishing, and especially aren’t fishing topwater lures.

Question: What rod, reel and line are you using when you’re fishing the Wake Shad?

Davis: I like 14- or 15-pound-test monofilament line on a baitcasting rod or reel. You can cast this lure on spinning tackle, but I prefer to use baitcasting tackle.The reason I prefer monofilament instead of fluorocarbon is because the monofilament floats and helps keep the lure above the water. You could probably use bigger than 14- or 15-pound test, but I like that size because I can cast it further than I can cast heavier line.

When I’m fishing the Wake Shad, I like to make long casts to give the bait plenty of time to attract the bass before the bait gets back to the boat. To help me make those long casts, I like a 7-foot medium-action rod. Most fishermen already have this kind of rod and line, so you don’t have to buy any special equipment to fish the Wake Shad.

Next: Schooling Bass on Deep Structure with a Crankbait

Contents:

• Part 1: Fishing a Wake Bait
• Part 2: Schooling Bass on Deep Structure with a Crankbait
• Part 3: Buzz ‘em Up
• Part 4: My Bread-and-Butter Technique
• Part 5: Carolina Rig the Game Hawg