Cross Country

By Terry Baksay

Reproduced with the exclusive permission of Bass West Magazine, Please Click on the Bass West Enhanced banner to subscribe.

I remember ordering red-and-black Magic Worms by the hundreds. At the time, you couldn't just walk into your local tackle store and buy handpoured worms, but nothing else would suffice for the splitshotting I was doing. Having discovered the technique by reading Bass West, and through spending time with Western anglers, I had discovered that the bass absolutely could not resist those worms in any of the tidal waters I fished.

Indeed, many of the techniques that anglers use in the West have great applications for waters in the East, where I live. At the same time, much of what we do around here works out there, too. Anglers often get so caught up in using locally popular approaches, they fail to pay attention to things that work in other regions. For me, tracking what fishermen do in other parts of the country--especially in the West--has been critical to my tournament-fishing success.

Go Deep, Young Man

I began paying attention to Western techniques several years ago while rooming with Mike Folkestad on the Bassmaster tour. Mike is the best deep-water fisherman I've ever been around, and he taught me a great deal about metering and fishing deep structure effectively.

Mike also showed me a copy of Bass West, and I ended up tearing out a subscription card and sending it in. I've been an avid reader ever since, and the magazine has really helped me keep up with current trends. We have a lot of deep, clear lakes in the Northeast, so the information bridge was only natural.

I have also had the opportunity to take some Eastern-style fishing out West. For example, I do a lot of smallmouth fishing in very clear water with a bait that, locally, we call "The Butterfly." It's a big, chartreuse spinnerbait with a chartreuse No. 8 Indiana blade, a 1-ounce head and a heavy-wire frame. I tried the same thing the first time I fished Havasu--burning the big spinnerbait next to the tules--and the largemouths absolutely hammered it. I've actually utilized this tactic each of the five times I've fished Western lakes, including Havasu, Powell and Mead, and cashed a check in three of them.

Snap It Up

Among the many things I learned from Western pros was the value of using football heads for various jig-fishing applications, including snap-jigging. I use a Lunker City football head, which has a big, strong hook, a wire weedguard and LunkerGrip cones, which really hold soft plastics in place for snap-jigging. The technique involves using a heavy rod and 15-pound fluorocarbon line to rip the jig off bottom (see the Kentucky version, page XX.--ed). With that football head I get really good action from whatever kind of body I'm using as it snaps off the bottom and falls back quickly.

I also use a football head as my deep-water jig. Beginning with a basic Lunker City football head, I paint the head brown or black, add a thin Living Rubber skirt, then add a small Lunker City PiggyBack trailer. With a 1/2- or 3/4-ounce football head, which drops like a rock in the water, I can easily control a jig in 50 feet of water, but present a much smaller offering than most anglers use to tackle the same situation.

Drop Talk

Through reading Bass West, I also started dropshotting well before most anglers in the East began experimenting with this technique, and I often use an adapted version that I call "bubba dropshotting" for flipping, pitching and working very deep water.

Bubba dropshotting is really just a beefed-up version of traditional dropshotting. I'll use a 1/2-, 3/4- or even 1-ounce Bakudan weight on a dropshot rig, string on a tube, and fish the rig on a 7-foot All Star titanium Pitchin' Stick. The setup allows me to both get though cover, and keep the line vertical with the weight on bottom for deep-water smallmouths in the Great Lakes or other deep, clear waters in this area.

Beyond specific techniques, I've also improved my fishing success by taking note of what fishermen look for in other parts of the country. For example, on Beaver Lake in Arkansas, the local anglers were all talking about transition banks, where boulders gave way to bluffs, chunk rocks to pea gravel, etc. I've since come to realize that many of my favorite spots on home lakes--places I have learned will hold fish through years of fishing--are transition spots. Now I look for them, and it helps me everywhere I fish.

Probably more important than any one technique is the broader concept of paying attention to what fishermen do in other geographical regions. Bass are still bass, wherever you fish, and some of the things anglers do in other areas are apt to work well in your home waters, as well.