Fishing tip of the week

Fishing Tip of the Week

Wednesday, 30 June 2021 08:43

Use your bladed baits
by Mike Gerry

This summertime heat and weather conditions seem to drive everything as the weather changes throughout the different seasons.
Every year, when we hit that in-between time, when the water is too hot for fast moving baits or to clear, most of us don’t realize it, but the blades on many of our baits help slow your retrieve and give you an advantage in many different ways.

The blade acts as a resistant force to the water, slowing your bait down as you move it across the bottom of the river or over a deep shell bed. The blade can also aid in keeping the bait off the bottom as the bigger the blade the longer it takes to get that bait to the bottom. A presentation we all hear about in water temperatures of the low 50’s, are slow rolling a big spinner bait. This can also be effective in warm water. This presentation, just by name, tells you that if you retrieve your spinner bait with a slow reeling action that the bait stays up just slightly off the bottom, allowing you to attract fish with flashy blades yet move it enough to bring a reaction bite.

The industry, over that last several years, has improved these blade-action baits by producing many different types of bladed baits. An example is the under-spin produced with a small willow leaf spin blade.
Many manufacturers have also produced swim jig heads with small blades allowing for some flash along with the action of the swim bait or even a worm; if you combine the willow leaf blade along with the buoyancy of a worm or top water bait then you are creating a solid, slow-retrieve on a bait that already can be fished slowly moving water and producing vibration along the way.

Take a slow retrieve and combine it with flash and movement just by adding bladed baits to your fishing arsenal in that 80-degree water allowing for some of the biggest fish catching you might see any time of the year. The bass are not real active, but the flash moves them and causes strikes. The slow-flash action gives them something to react to which causes lethargic fish to feed, giving you some reactive fishing.
Captain Mike