(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.)
Black and blue jigs in your boat?
Check.
Black and blue worms?
Of course.
What about black and blue spinnerbaits? Most bass anglers fish spinnerbaits, because as Florida pro JT Kennedy said: “Jimmy Houston, smiling Jimmy, giggling Jimmy, he’s been catching bass on a spinnerbait for God knows how long and he’s like a hundred and still catching them on it.” Nevertheless, most serious anglers, even those on one of the major tours, would answer “No” about that color pattern.
That’s a mistake, Kenney said. He estimates that he has won $250,000 on these odd-but-not-really patterned spinnerbaits. That includes $125,000 in a single FLW event on Lake Toho. “I am sure that if I didn’t have this bait I wouldn’t have been able to close out that win,” he said.
If you fish any tannic water, which exists on the East Coast from New York all the way down to his adopted home state of Florida, and the upper reaches of any tidal system in between, you'd better have them in the boat. While they won’t always beat standard colors like chartreuse and white, more often than not they’ll outfish them easily, often by a ratio of 5-to-1.
His favorite model is a half-ounce Nichols Pulsator, which he can fish from ankle-deep to more than 10 feet down. By changing the blades, he can affect how it runs on the same line and retrieve speed – by going smaller, the bait will run deeper, even with the same line and reel speed.
Of course, you have to have spinnerbait conditions. “A good spinnerbait day is still a good spinnerbait day,” he said, but when there’s little or no cloud cover and wind, you can switch to a swimjig in the same colors to achieve the same moving-bait effect.
“This is something people haven’t exploited,” he added. “It’s pretty freaking amazing.” Once you think about it, the same reason dark jigs and plastics work in dark water makes them effective in moving-lure profiles, too, but most of us are too entrenched in tradition and habit to make the move. Once you do, you’ll likely never be without these colors again.
He typically fishes his spinnerbaits on a 7’3” Halo TI medium heavy baitcasting rod, although he’ll sometimes go up to a 7’6” model when he wants to make long casts (he describes it as “really Long Tomming it”) and then still be able to control the fish with a lot of line out. The vast majority of the time he’ll use 17- or 18-pound Sunline fluorocarbon, occasionally going up to 20-pound if he’s around extra-large fish or extra-thick cover. His reels of choice are usually in the 6.5:1 gear ratio range, because he said that when he goes to something faster than 7:1, “I tend to overwind it.”
If you want to learn more about when and where Kenney uses spinnerbait colors that are out of the ordinary, and why he still carries conventional patterns, too, check out his full video, available only by subscribing to The Bass University TV.
