I took to the lake
with SKA founder Tim Sizemore on a windy, gusting postfrontal day; not the best
prescription for finding those big prespawn females. This Spring has been a
quirky one to say the least. Extraordinary weather pattern shifts, blustery
cold fronts, and massive amounts of rain pushed the prespawn and spawn way
behind schedule. The females are pushed back off the spawning grounds to
retreat to staging areas and heavy cover; a cycle that repeats itself with each
passing cold front. Big bass often escape bright skies and tough conditions by burying
into heavy cover. Your only option is to "go heavy" and engage them
from close range in dense cover. I call it CQB fishing. "Close Quarters
Combat (CQC) or Close Quarters Battle (CQB) is a type of warfare in which small
units engage the enemy with personal weapons at very short range from proximity
hand-to-hand combat to close quarter target negotiation with short range
weapons." The physics of heavy
cover fishing from kayak is very different than flipping from a bass boat.
Leverage, the most important aspect, is diminished in a kayak. When you set the
hook from a boat, you are able to put immense amounts of torque and force into
the hookset, transfer that power to the fish, turn their head and get them
moving in your direction, and wrench them boatside; overcoming the fish's
strength and weight. In a kayak, you lose almost all of your force for the hook-set
and the fight. Ever get a lure hung and pull against it? Right, it pulls your
boat to the hangup. Those physics translate into lost hook-set power. You set
the hook, your boat moves instantly towards the fish and you lose that much of
the force and torque. You are sitting on a very moveable object and a great
portion of that hook-set power in transferred into pulling your boat, and
yourself, towards the fish. Even worse, with a fish on the line, you lose the
leverage needed to pull the fish out of the cover as your boat is moving
towards the fish. You need specific tackle to overcome these physical limitations.
Today, I was flipping Texas rigged creature baits, pegged Elite Tungsten 1/2oz
weights,65 pound braid and, my weapon of choice for CQB bass fishing, a Dobyns
Rods 735C Champion. You must have a powerful rod with a ton of backbone, yet a bit
of forgiveness in the tip, to stick the fish, keep the hook pinned, and wrestle
it out of thick cover. The Dobyns 735, a stout 5 power, has a tremendous
backbone and can stick and control big fish. My motto is “Go Heavy” and step up
a power rating for kayak fishing to increase the hook-set power and overcome
the physics of kayak fishing. For baits, creature baits on stout hooks, topped
by pegged tungsten weights offer big fish appeal, but snakes through cover with
ease. A big misconception is that jigs are for flipping into heavy cover, but
they are exponentially more snag prone than a Texas rigged soft plastic. Drag
or hop those jigs in open water around boat docks and sparse cover. Peg your
sinker with a bobber stop, toothpick or plastic peg to keep the weight from
sliding up the line and getting hung up on sticks and limbs. This makes a
compact package that snakes through cover and gets to the big ones without
getting hung up and messing up your presentation. Flip your bait past the cover
and work it into it, dropping into every nook and crevice. Hit it from several
angles; big bass can be picky under high skies. Stay strong, stay ready! Not
every piece of cover has a bass, so stay persistent and hit every item of cover
you find; sometimes the ones you don't expect are the ones that hold the big
ones. Especially look out for isolated items, different from surrounding cover;
the largest stump in a stump flat in this case. When you feel that thump, thud
or unnatural pressure, reel down and stick the fish as hard as you can; you
can't set the hook too hard in this scenario. Then, keep your rod tip high and
power reel to turn the head and get that fish moving in your direction as
quickly as possible. Braid is essential. Normally, I am a big proponent of
mono-filament and a little stretch, but in this scenario you don't want a
millimeter of give in your line. Hook penetration and raw winching power is a necessity.
On a side note for braid, I use 65 pound test because braid is actually very
brittle and susceptible to nicks, cuts and wear and 30-40 pound braid can break
with surprising ease. 65 pound test has just the right balance of abrasion
resistance vs. diameter.
This big girl had
a bloody tail, evidence of spawning activity, but she had not dropped her eggs.
I found her hiding under a massive, overturned stump in a deep channel between
two spawning flats; a hideaway from the high pressure and bright skies and I
had to go in after her. I flipped the creature bait past the stump, lifted and
popped it across a limb, and dropped it into the middle of the mess. A solid
thump and I snapped a hard hook-set and held it for what seemed like a minute.
Nothing budged and I thought for a fleeting second I had set into the stump
itself when I felt the live weight of the bass. Leaning into the 5 power rod, I
wrestled the big out of her hole and into open water where she went ballistic
on the short line. I moved the rod tip in figure eights to keep her moving
until I could lip her and haul her into my Jackson Coosa. This is my kind of
fishing; heavy line, heavy cover, and short, intense battles!
Good feature!
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