These finesse bass baits worked great then, and work great now.
A plaque on the wall of my home office reads “1993 Kenora Bass International Winner.”
As I recall, being a winner didn’t mean first place, although partner Don Lamont and I did place near the top of the pack. Seeing that plaque, how- ever, gives me a feeling of nostalgia for my tournament days. It also reminds me of a time when I only fished smallmouth and largemouth bass with techniques that required finesse. There was no power fishing or run and gun involved. Lamont and I fished the Kenora section of Lake of the Woods almost exclusively, slowly and deliberately.
By staying close to town, we maximized our fishing time.
The difficulty was the fish close to town were pressured and many had been caught before. They were not easy to catch but they could be fooled with a little finesse.
Slider worm works
Two baits we relied on that worked well for us then still work today. The first is called a Charlie Brewer’s slider worm rig. The slider is a worm hook with a small amount of weight at the eye of the hook. It was developed 50 years ago in Tennessee as a “do-nothing” rig for catching big, wary bass.
My favourite slider hook had a squat, saucer-shaped weedless head that looked like the starship Enterprise. The other head we used had more of a teardrop shape and was called the spider. Both heads were light — either 3/16 or 1/8 ounce on a #2/0 hook. The worm used with the slider was a four-inch slider worm or Berkley Power worm. The slider worms had a small paddle tail, but my preference was just a straight tail. Worm colours were subtle, usually black, dark purple, or brown.
Fishing with great action
The cool thing about the slider was it fished very slowly but still had a great action. The key to fishing it was turning a spinning reel very slowly —
three steamboats a reel rotation was about right – and not lifting the rod tip much, if at all. Generally, the rod was held straight out and not too high up. When I think about it now, the patience required to do this all day was significant. Yet it worked. Bass would gently suck up the worms and so any pressure felt on the retrieve required a set.
In the days before braid, we used premium, limp eight-pound monofilament with quality reels and graphite rods. That graphite rod helped detect the subtle strike on monofilament. These days, I use 10-pound braid with a six or eight-pound fluoro leader. But everything else is pretty much the same. The slider technique worked very well on sand bottoms (near beaches), around docks and in weeds. Both smallmouth and largemouth were vulnerable to the slowly fished slider and worm.
Mushroom came before Ned
The other finesse bait was a mushroom-head jig and three-inch grub or twister. The jigs we used were made by Gopher Tackle in Minnesota and were light, with 3⁄32 ounce being a typical weight. Back in the early 90s, Lamont and I learned this technique from Al and Ron Lindner who were also fishing the Kenora Bass International (KBI). When Lamont and I visited them during the KBI pre-fish, they had many small boxes filled with black mushroom-head jigs and countless packages of three-inch Berkley Power Grubs in black, purple, green, pumpkinseed, and blue.
In those days, the Lindners were on the Berkley packaging for power baits. It was a surreal experience sitting in a room with them while looking at their faces plastered all over the baits. Anyway, they had gotten onto the mushroom-head jig presentation and Al Lindner and his nephew James won a couple of KBI tournaments using the pattern. I can also recall James talking about letting the jig hang below the boat with no action, something of a precursor to the moping technique Jeff Gustafson has recently made famous.
Finesse with movement
Unlike the slider, which was fished mostly without rod-tip action, the mushroom-head jig seemed to gain a little appeal with some of that movement. Not a lot, mind you, just a slow lift and drop retrieve, while reeling slowly. There were times when a do-nothing technique would work wonders. For instance, we fished steep rock walls with the light jigs and let them fall on a loose line. If the line hesitated, we closed the bail, reeled up quickly and set the hook. As often as not, that bass held the light grub in its mouth. When the jig hit bottom, we would hold it, then slowly reel up with no action.
In current areas, you’d cast the mushroom jig and allow it to drift on a tight line. When the Ned rig came on the scene a few years ago, I was taken aback by how similar it was to the mushroom-head jig so many smallmouth anglers in the north had been using for years. The Ned rig is an excellent finesse presentation as well and can be fished in a similar way. A mushroom-head jig is also available these days from Z-Man.
Darter head also great
Another finesse jig head that was fine tuned in the southwestern US is the darter head. It has a slimmer profile than a mushroom-head jig and you
can fish it with either a worm or a grub. I’ve always liked ¼-ounce darter heads for bass in current, and for fishing humps. I can recall reading about
American bass anglers using darter head jigs and four-inch worms for bass suspended over deep humps. They would mark the bass with electronics then drop the darter jigs to them and slowly work them up.
I think darter jigs are underused in Ontario bass circles. The jigs are streamlined and cast like a dream. They also work wonderfully with plastic minnow baits and can be used in places like the Great Lakes where smelt, shiners, and bait fish are the primary forage for bass. A slow and steady retrieve, with little tip movement, allows the darter head and plastic minnow to swim.
Finesse bass fishing is not for everyone. Yet if pressured or “sour” bass are avoiding the usual techniques, finesse is almost certain to put a few bass in the boat this summer.
Originally published in the July 2023 issue of Ontario OUT of DOORS
Leave A Comment