Finesse Fishing Part 2.
June 25, 2008
Lets see, where did I leave off last time? I talked about the drop shot and the split shot rigs, OK, I remember where my thoughts were. Now I’ll go into some not so well known styles of finesse fishing.
Now lets talk about Flipping reapers. First off a reaper is a CA finesse bait. If I had to discribe what a 
repers looks like I would have to say it kinda looks like a leech. With that said I’ll continue on with the subject. Flipping reapers is yet another technique for convincing lock jawed bass into biting. To rig this technique up all you do is rig it Texas rigged just like you would a plastic worm except with a smaller hook and weight. As to how to fish it, just as the name implies, you flip it gently and quietly into spots where you thing the bass is at. There have been many times when I have flipped a jig into a hole and got nothing, then turn around and flip a reaper and WAM, instant bite.
Skipping reapers. This is technique is not widely used but it can be deadly. To rig this one you would use a small hook rigged weedless and then once again I like to use the small round split shot weight, without the little “Ears” placed right up against the knot. In this situation the earless ones help it skip easier because it does not have the extra pieces hanging off of it. Cast this rig side arm and make it skip across the surface, just like when you used to skip rocks across water. What your doing is resembling a shad skittering across the surface, like he is running scared. I’ve had times where as the reaper skipped along I’ve seen bass chasing it and blasting it as soon as they caught up to it.
With this style you will need to use spinning gear and light line to achieve the best skipping. You can use this technique just about anywhere and trust me, it does work. Shhhhh, here is a secret I’ve had fantastic success using this technique under boat docks. Just make sure you either skip under a dock in an area where there is not much structure for the bass to get tangled up in or use heavier line, this in turn would mean to use a little heavier weight.
Doodeling. I don’t know for sure who actually invented this technique but I do know that legendary western angler Don Iovion was very instrumental in making it a popular style of fishing. What is doodeling you may ask. Its basically a smaller, 3-6 inch’s, Texas rigged worm with a glass bead between the worm and the weight. Here you would cast out and shake the worm in place causing the weight to bounce against the bead, basically ringing the dinner bell. In stained dirty water I like to use a brass weight, it produces more noise. Whereas in clear water I use a lead weight so it helps deaden the sound a little.
Slider Heads, Dart Heads and Shakey Heads. All of these techniques are similar yet different. They all consist of a lead head and a hook. To the best of my knowledge the slider head has been around the longest. It was invented by a gentleman named Charlie Brewer quite a few years back and still today catches bass. The original Slider head has on odd shaped lead head but there is a reason for this. With its flat bottom the head displaces water as it sinks so it sinks slower. When casted out and slowly retrieved it kind of slides through the water, hence the name. There are several ways of rigging it depending on if your fishing around structure or not. If you are then rig it weedless, if fishing in open water then leave the hook exposed.
Dart Heads, also referred to as darter heads. The lead head of this rig comes to a point. This style of fishing was developed to target suspended bass. You first would locate the suspended bass on your sonar, then cast out beyond where they were and engage your spool so on more line played out. What this would do is cause your bait to pendulum back to the boat and swim right through the suspended bass. Here again, you can either rig your plastic weedless or with an exposed hook.
Shakey Heads. This is a technique that has come seen allot of exposure lately in the tournament circuits. Several manufactures have created different styles of the shakey head but they once again are basically a lead head with a hook. They kind of look like the little crappie jig heads except bigger of course. Not so much in weight but in hook size. Same rigging techniques apply as with the others but most of the time these are rigged weedless. As far as what to put on them, basically anything from a small plastic sculpin to a big ole snake worm. These can be fished several different ways, on structure, on suspended fish, or even swimming. The biggest trick here is to shake them, hence the name. when fishing these on structure try and shake them in place without actually moving them off of the structure.
Lastly I’ll talk about the Un-Weighted Worm. This has to be one of my favorite finesse techniques 
when the bass are shallow and very spooky because it out right catches fish. The way this is rigged is you make yourself a leader, I like to use 2-3 foot myself, tie on a small black barrel swivel, one that does not have a snap, attach your leader then tie on your hook then rig your plastic weedless. The reason I use a swivel is to avoid getting line twist, which I’ll go into detail just a little later. By the way, user NO weight.
When attaching the plastic, sometimes you want your worm to be perfectly straight, other times you want a little crook in the head of the work. When rigged with the slight bend in the worm the thing will kind of spin when twitched. This is where the swivel comes in. Without it you would get really bad line twist after just a few casts and we all know how much of a pain that can be. When the worm is rigged straight it pretty much floats and falls at a very slow rate, which is a very subtle presentation and at times that is the only way you can convince the bass to bite. Cast it out, try letting it sink slowly, maybe a slight twitch every now and then. When you do get bit remember exactly what you were doing when the bite happened and repeat that to get more bites.
True, I just scratched the surface of finesse fishing, this is a subject that could go on forever. Even though I addressed small baits allot in these posts you can finesse fish anything as long as it’s a slow and methodical presentation.
Thanks for visiting my site. Be sure to tell all of your fishing buddies and come back soon!
Until Next Time, Good Luck and Tight Lines To Ya!
Finesse Fishing Part 1
June 22, 2008
Hi and welcome to my site. Today I figured it’s about time I get into a little detail concerning finesse fishing.
There are many different ways of finesse fishing so this will be a 2 part post with part 2 to show up in the near future.
What exactly is finesse fishing?
For the most part finesse fishing is basically down sizing your offering and slowing the presentation down. Some techniques that come to mind are Split shot, drop shot , Doodeling, Shakey Heads, Slider Heads and darter heads. As you can see the list is endless.
On the other hand you can also use big lures for finesse fishing, just as long as your presentation is slow. That’s would be the real key to this style of fishing. Slow and methodical is the trick. What your looking to do is get the inactive bass to react to your lure.
So anyhow, lets dig a little into some of these techniques and I’ll give up some of my tips that work for me. I already talked about rigging several of these techniques in Bass Fishing 101 so I’ll try and remember just what I shared and try not to bore you too much. I will however go into a little detail on how to fish them.
The drop shot. This was originally used as a deep water style of fishing with light line and small baits. You would cruise around and watch your graph, find the fish on some kind of structure or suspended, position yourself above them and drop the lure in front of their faces and shake it until you made them mad enough to eat it.
It evolved into much more over time. Now it is used to make long casts to underwater structure and slowly shook back to the boat. This techniques can also be used effectively while fishing from shore. Cast out to what appears to be open water, let it sink and shake it while not moving the sinker. If you don’t get bit then try shaking it while moving the sinker. If you come in contact with structure try and shake it in place
Another way of finesse fishing it is to use a bigger weight with a bigger lure and actually flip it into cover. I have heard people call this variation of the drop shot rig, a flop shot rig. Whatever you want to call it the principal is the same as I describe below.
Most of the times the bite will be very suttle, maybe you might see your line jump or twitch and then have a heavy sensation on the other end of the line. Other times you’ll just see the line do something you didn’t make it do, like move or continue to seem to sink when the water is not all that deep.
When these things happen, reel up the slack, feel the pressure and set the hook. Most of the time it does not require a bone jarring hookset like with a jig, just a quick little jerk will do, especially when you have your lure nose hooked with the tip exposed.
On to the split shot rig. Once again, this rig is basically a down sized version of the Carolina rig with a round split shot weight attached to the line.
As to how to fish it goes you cast out and basically drag the bait along slowly. Often referred to as long lining because you can cast the line out, let it sink and basically control the speed of it by slowly tapping your trolling motor.
I have seen allot of tournaments won this way. During team tournaments the person in the front of the boat will be casting out a jig or drop shot while the partner in the back will dragging a split shot. With this way of fishing between the 2 of you, your able to cover the water pretty thoroughly.
However if your fishing a draw or Pro-Am tournament it can really be a disadvantage to being in the back of the boat if the person up front wants to long line because it makes it very difficult to cast out towards shoreline structure and if you try to long line the 2 lines can get tangled up and it can cause tension between the 2 people in the boat.
Yes, I am speaking from personal experience here. I have had more than one bad experience while fishing draw tournaments prior to getting my own boat and lets just say that by the end of the day no one in the boat was happy.
Anyhow, back to the subject. I like to use the round split shot weights without the little “ears” on them because they go through structure much smoother than the other ones. Yes, they can be a pain in the back side to remove from the line and still be able to reuse them but to me the trade off is well worth the price.
As far as to what the bite feels like, refer to the above description of the drop shot bite. Split shotting is the technique that I will rig up for people who are just learning to fish for bass because its easy to do as well as effective. You can split shot anything from a 3 inch reaper to a 12 inch worm.
As you can see, there is a lot to the technique called finesse fishing and I only dove into 2 different style’s of it. Stay tuned for Finesse Fishing Part 2 where I’ll get into a few more techniques that I know will help you catch more bass.
Thanks for visiting my site. Be sure to tell all of your fishing buddies and come back soon
Until Next Time, Good Luck and Tight Lines To Ya!
[tags]finesse fishing, bass fishing, drop shot, split shot[/tags]
MORE POWER! Magna Charger’s Radix Supercharger.
June 1, 2008
Magna Charger Supercharger Systems is my final answer.
We all have experienced the lack of power and torque from a stock vehicle, especially those of us that haul a tournament ready bass boat. The long steep grades are taxing on our tow vehicles. Constantly down shifting to maintain a decent speed makes the engine work harder as well as the transmission because of the down shifting.
We have all tried the basic power modifications, Cold Air Intake, Cat Back Exhaust and Hand Held Programmers in an attempt to increase horse power and torque as well as gas mileage without having to get into things like heads and camshaft swaps because then we start talking about voiding the vehicle manufactures warranty. Enter the Radix system. 
First off, the Magna Charger Supercharger System is not just a super charger, it is a complete system. The most complete bolt on system available, at least as of the writing of this. Everything from the blower to a replacement K&N drop in Air filter to the CARB approved sticker is included in the system.
The entire system installs in less than 1 day with just a few basic hand tools. The instructions are very detailed along with color pictures making the install pretty much fool proof. Me personally, I choose to have it professionally installed because when it comes to stuff like this, I have the worst luck. If something could go wrong, chances are for me it will.
The fuel system includes new injectors, extruded aluminum fuel rails, factory “push-lock” connectors and fuel regulator adaptor.
Computer programmer re-flashes factory ECU, spark and fuel calibration, transmission shift points, line pressure and torque converter strategies are optimized to manage increased torque, horsepower and mileage. All you do is provide Magna Charger your VIN when you place your order, they download all of the factory settings for your vehicle and any updates directly from your vehicle manufacturer. They then ship you a hand held programmer with all this information which you just plug into your OBD2 port and push a couple buttons to flash your computer. Yes, it’s just that simple.
It comes with a Standard 3-year limited warranty and an optional 3-yr. /36,000 power train warranty is available for a few more dollars. Of course if you modify the system, if you tweak the PCM tune or go to a smaller pulley for more than the 6 PSI of boost, from the configuration it was shipped to you from them, you void the warranty.
I personally did make a couple modifications to the stock configuration but neither voided my warranty. First, I stuck with my Volant Cold Air Intake. I’m not sure if doing this actually gave me any gains but in my opinion it sure does look allot nicer than the stock GM air box.
My next modification was to relocate the Heat Exchanger. The reason behind this mod was 2 fold for me. First off my truck came with the optional transmission cooler. With the stock heat exchanger mounting brackets this would have sandwiched my transmission cooler. While this probably is not an issue at all in most areas of the country, I felt because of my geographical location this could cause some heating issues. For those who don’t know, I live in the middle of the Mojave Desert close to Death Valley California. During the summer months 125 degree days are pretty common so it was just a chance I didn’t want to take.
I called Magna Charger, explained my concerns and was able to purchase a set of the heat exchanger brackets they used on the Joe Gibbs Silverado, which placed the heat exchanger below the bumper. The Gibbs Silverado is no longer in production so these brackets are very limited as of this posting. I would imagine a person could have a metal shop fabricate some custom made brackets if they are no longer available and this was something you wanted to do.
The Magnuson Magna Charger Intercooled Radix system uses Eaton components. Anyone that knows anything about automotive power recognizes the Eaton name. They have been the number 1 company for years when it comes to super chargers as well as performance differentials.
Magnuson is the OEM certified supplier to GM, Ford, Toyota, Cosworth and Lotus so obviously these 
companies have allot of trust in the Magnuson products. I give major props to the customer service at Magnuson. The employees there are beyond exceptional, they are very friendly as well as extremely knowledgeable about all aspects of their products.
The Radix system has been featured in some very respectable nation wide publications, Popular Hot Rodding, Chevy High Performance, Truckin and Super Chevy just to name a few and they all gave the product rave reviews. Legendary engine builder Kenny Duttweiler of Duttweiler Performance also praises the system stating, “Nothing Out Performs Magna Charger On The Street, Just Install It And Forget It”
Radix Intercooled supercharger system adds up to 120 hp/120 ft. lbs. torque, the system is also available in a non Intercooled version but it produces less hp and torque. The low end torque is nothing short of amazing as well as power through out the entire power band. Power and torque on demand makes passing while towing effortless.
The Internal bypass valve virtually eliminates parasitic loss and delivers a proven 30 to 66% increase in real world “under the curve” power. Best of all, it costs less than 1/3 of a horse at 60 mph. Now that my friends is what I consider real efficiency.
Also, the Intercooled Radix System won the SEMA Design Award for the Most. Innovative Product from GM at the Las Vegas SEMA show in 2002 and 2003
On a side note, yes you must run premium fuel, which by the way they provide little stickers that you place on your fuel door to remind you, but I can personally tell you that your truck will run much more effectively and if you drive your truck the same way you did prior to the install you will find that your gas mileage will actually increase. This is due to the fact that your truck won’t have to work nearly as hard to do the same job it used to and with the cost of gas every little bit helps.
Now of course if your like me, as well as allot of other people I know and still have that kid inside you then from time to time you feel the need to go a little fast. Let me make something perfectly clear. I am in NO WAY condoning street racing. It is not only VERY stupid and dangerous but innocent people can get hurt or even worse DIE. I don’t know about you but I know for a fact that there is no way I could live with myself if I took an innocent life because on my stupidity. So please, please for Gods sake, do not get involved in street racing!
If you get lucky and no one gets injured because you do something stupid you can still cause damage to your vehicle and other peoples property if you loose control. Besides the above mentioned drawbacks, STREET RACING IS ILLEGAL and you WILL get into all kinds of legal matters. You could end up in jail as well as loose your vehicle. At the very least you will receive a very hefty fine. Again, it’s just not worth it. What I like to do when I feel the need for speed is go to our local air strip, which from time to time doubles as a drag strip, and lay down a pass or 2 under controlled conditions.
The Radix system has far and away been the best power modification I have made. The ability to effortlessly ascend steep inclines while towing as well as passing that slow moving recreational vehicle is simply amazing! If you can afford this system then by all means get one. I can guarantee you that you will not be disappointed with the towing performance increase you will experience.
Thanks for visiting my site. Be sure to tell all of your fishing buddies and come back soon!
Until Next Time, Good Luck and Tight Lines To Ya!
[tags]Magnuson Magna Charger,Supercharger, Radix System, Magna Charger’s Radix Supercharger[/tags]
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