(Editor's note: The following is the latest installment in a series of fishing tips presented by The Bass University. Check back each Friday for a new tip.)
Wesley Strader said that the two biggest mistakes most anglers make when it comes to buzzbaiting is that they don’t fish it often enough and that they fish the bait straight out of the package.
He’ll start throwing a buzzer when the water hits 49 or 50 degrees in the spring. It’s a time when a lot of big females come up super-shallow to feed before the spawn, and while he doesn’t expect to get a lot of bites, “when you get bit it’s the ones you want.” He’ll often key on rock cover at this time of year because they hold daytime heat. He’ll continue throwing a buzzbait until late fall, but the one significant change he makes is in its appearance – he’ll start with a bulky skirt early in the year, switch to a Horny Toad trailer when the bluegill spawn starts, and ride that until the water cools down again, at which point he goes back to the skirt.
Strader is not loyal to any particular brand – during his seminar for Bass University he mentioned War Eagle, Boogerman, Zorro and a homemade model – but no matter which one you use, he said to make sure that it has a substantial gap between the hook point and the end of the top wire to ensure a good hook-up ratio. He’ll almost always use a trailer hook with a skirt, but never with a toad on the back. Early in the year he likes a small bait with a big blade, which allows him to retrieve it slowly and keep it in the strike zone, but as the weather warms he can speed up his retrieve.
Blades can generally be divided as either “line-thru double hinge” or a regular “double hinge” in which the wire stays away from the middle of the blade. In either case, Strader wants to make sure that the blade hits flat on the rivet. He’ll also crimp the rivet so that it doesn’t spin. On the non-line-thru model, he’ll file the wire as well, so that it creates a squealing noise. It can also help to bend the blade slightly to throw it out of balance. The effect is like that of bending an ear on your outboard propeller – the lure will pulse and vibrate the whole way back to the boat.
Sometimes Strader will take his pliers and carefully bend the blades the opposite direction of the way they came from the factory. He calls it “reversing the pitch,” and when bass are keyed in on lures that deflect off cover, he’ll keep one factory model and one reversed model on deck, picking up whichever one he needs to make contact.
While he’s a strong advocate for making many modifications to his buzzbaits, Strader keeps his colors simple. Generally he likes either black or white, using the former on bright days and the latter on cloudy days, the opposite of conventional wisdom. However, when the bass are really keyed in on the bluegill spawn he’ll switch to green-pumpkin or watermelon red, often with the tips of his Horny Toad’s feet dyed chartreuse.
If you want to learn some of Strader’s other buzzbait secrets, including why he likes braided line with a cranking rod and why a bubble trail is often the first indicator to lean heavily on this favorite lure, check out his full video, available only by subscribing to The Bass University TV.
