Recently as I was going through some old tackle I got to thinking about lures I used to use back in the day that were very productive but for some reason I don’t use them anymore and wondered why. How many of you remember the days that we complained when we had to pay $2.00 for a lure? When names like Pop-R,
Zara Spook and the Jelly worm were common. Back when one would never dream of spending $20.00 on a lure, $225.00 for a rod much less $50,00.00 for a boat. Yet we still seemed to be able to catch bass.
Could it be that the bass fishing has gotten that difficult? Or maybe the bass have got smarter? Where I might believe that the bass have become more conditioned over time because of the increased fishing pressure, or maybe there are just less of them to be caught, but in my opinion I feel that we as fishermen might have made it more difficult. Whatever happened to KISS, Keep it Simple Stupid? Hence the name of this post.
I remember while growing up, dad and I fished the clear deep canyon lakes of Arizona. I know that learning how to bass fish those clear waters prepared me for the lakes in California because they are basically the same. We rarely used any line over 6 pound test and the presentation was almost always slow. My favorite plastics were either the Manns Jelly worms in Grape or Mr. Twister Twin Tail grubs in black, either Texas rigged or Carolina rigged.
For crankbaits the
Rebel Wee-R and Deep Wee-R Crankers in the Ole Bass color was the hot ticket. I wish they still produced that color because I would load a tackle box with them. Top water was either the Hula Popper, Zara Spook, Jitter Bug or
Rebel Pop-R Plus.
While fishing with dad we never had a fancy bass boat, as a matter of fact we didnt have any boat but at times we would rent aluminum boats with 9 horse power motors or a canoe with a trolling motor but they never had a fish finder yet somehow we always managed to catch fish. While we couldnt see under water structure we learned to read the lay of the land by watching the slopes of the hills and of course that in turn revealed long underwater points.
Of course if we saw birds diving this told us that there was bait close to the sufrace, usually chased there by fish. We also kept our eyes open for “nervous water”, when you see little ripples on the surface when there was no wind or current. With this knowledge we were able to figure out where the fish were or should be and we were usually right.
Anyhow, I was just wondering what caused all us to change tactics and make fishing more difficult than it really should be. Maybe the next time you go fishing try going back to basics and see if bass fishing is really as difficult as we have been lead to believe. I plan on giving it a try myself and I’ll be sure to post up my findings.
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!
