|
Norman,
OK - No matter where you fish or how much money you’re fishing for, the one question everyone wants answered is “What did you catch ‘em on?”
To casual fans of the sport, the issues of patterns vs. spots, how you found the fish or how you adjusted to changing conditions don’t matter – there’s still a “magic lure” syndrome. Find the key bait and nothing else matters. Of course, savvier fans of the tournament pros know that’s not the case, but they too want to know the hottest lure trends around, most of which are dictated by the top dogs of the sport.
Here are the top six lures from the 2008 Elite Series season. They may not have caught the most fish, but they provided the most important trends and stories:
FROG
No lure is more exciting when it’s working that a hollow-bodied frog….and no lure produces more frustrating near-misses. Dean Rojas had turned “non-traditional” frogging (i.e., in open water and under overhanging cover) into an art form in recent years, but had no hardware to show for it.
A couple of top fives, but no victories. That changed in the last event of the year at Oneida, where he flipped and frogged his way to victory with the help of Kermit and Kermit’s popping brother.
| But Rojas wasn’t the only frogging winner this year. At Murray, Fred Roumbanis skipped the lower-lake musical chairs. While other anglers tried to time the
bluebacks, some of them successfully, Roumbanis went way up the river and targeted bigger fish with his signature colored Bobby’s Perfect Frog. |
|
|
Not
only wasn’t the frog meant to represent a
blueback, it didn’t replicate a frog,
either – Roumbanis was using it to tempt
bass feeding on bluegills in thick
vegetation. He had the area and the pattern
all to himself and like Rojas his fish
lasted all four days.
SEBILE MAGIC SWIMMER
Scarcely two years ago, few pro anglers, let alone the every day fans, had heard of Sebile, but at the blueback lakes just about every Elite Series angler had one tied on. It replicated the forage fish perfectly and could be burned back to the boat without compromising its action or rolling.
|
|
|
The jointed Magic Swimmer was one of the lures Kenyon Hill used en route to an emotional victory at Clarks Hill, but the real beneficiary of this lure’s magic was Todd Faircloth, who rode it not only in the Carolinas but also at Amistad, to tempt sight feeding fish.
Supplies were so short at some points during the year that pros would beg, borrow or steal to get their hands on one. Steve Kennedy got one, but didn’t like the color, so he painted it himself and went out and whacked some big fish. It was this year’s Chatterbait, the lure you had to have, an open secret. |
BIG WORMS
The plain-Jane plastic worm had fallen out of favor in recent years, dwarfed not only by hard baits and swimbaits, but even within the plastics domain by all sorts of wiggly and multiple-appendaged critters. But this year it came back in a big way, and not just on a dropshot.
This was old-school worming at its best. Mike McClelland rode a worm to a come-from-behind victory at the Harris Chain, then Paul Elias used an ancient monster Mann’s Jelly Worm as part of his one-two punch (with a crankbait) to win at Falcon. In fact, at Falcon, the local stores’ shelves were virtually bereft of oversized worms after 200-plus awestruck anglers in town for the derby attempted to buy them all up.
One of the beneficiaries of the worm bite was Terry Scroggins, who used his Big Show paddletail to amass a 44 pound plus limit that had Dean Rojas fearing for his single-day record’s life. Scroggins used the same worm to take an early lead at Wheeler, but eventually fell behind KVD and winner Jeremy Starks, who used a 10-inch Power Worm for most of his big fish.
FOOTBALL
JIG
| The
football jig, which produced wins for
McClelland and Derek Remitz in 2007,
continued strong in 2008. In fact, a
prototype Booyah football head
contributed to the biggest win of all,
Alton Jones’s dominant performance
at the Hartwell Classic.
With
the increasing ability of anglers to
locate offshore structure, combined
with a largely post-spawn schedule,
the football head played a role on
waters like Wheeler and Kentucky Lake. |
|
|
Even Denny Brauer, arguably the best shallow water jig fisherman around, has incorporated Strike King’s version into his arsenal for deeper water fishing. And you have to assume that it played a key role in McClelland’s ability to garner 11 checks in 11 events.
CRANKBAIT
While David Fritts has moved to the FLW side, there remains a strong deep cranking presence on the Elite Series, once again due largely to the post-spawn schedule and the increased importance of post-spawn fish.
|
|
|
Kevin Van Dam has ridden his Sexy Shad empire to multiple BASS wins, including this year’s event on Kentucky Lake. At that tournament, Timmy Horton used a modified Fat Free Shad to catch 24-plus on the last day and almost spoiled KVD’s party. It would have been the second straight second place finish for VanDam, who also used the big crankbaits at Wheeler, where Jeremy Stark barely edged him out. |
While most of the top finishers at Falcon utilized a Carolina rigged worm to amass their obscene catches, eventual winner and record-setter Paul Elias added in a deep-diving Mann’s crankbait in a discontinued “Homer” color to generate additional quality bites. Just as Bomber is introducing Horton’s modified Fat Free Shad to their product lineup, Mann’s is bringing back the color Elias used in Zapata.
LIPLESS CRANKBAIT
The Cordell Spot, the Rat-L-Trap and their brethren have been around forever, but they’re often unfairly characterized as “idiot baits,” good in the pre-spawn on grass lakes, but requiring no special skill. Tell that to Kevin VanDam, who rode a Sexy Shad Red Eye Shad to victory at Kissimmee. He turned it into a science, targeting specific grass clumps and specific current breaks to seine an area while others flipped and pitched their way to also-ran status.
But the lipless crankbait didn’t stop working once the fish did their yearly bedding ritual. In fact, but for four days of frogging heroics from Dean Rojas, Kevin Langill would have taken home the Oneida crown on the strength of a lipless crankbait bite. It’s a tactic he uses at home on Lake Norman, but it worked equally well in New York on schooling smallmouths.
|
