(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.)
Florida is known as a place where soft plastics are king, and lipless crankbaits often run a distant second. But JT Kenney says that any time you’re fishing in the Sunshine State – or tannic water anywhere, for that matter – you better have a spinnerbait on the deck.
One of his go-to models from Nichols comes in black and blue or purple. It makes sense. Colors like junebug, plum and tequila sunrise are exceptionally productive in tannic water for slow-moving baits, so why not in moving baits, too?
“All your lures are tools and you have to use each one accordingly,” he said. “One tool unlocks a door to the next school of bass.”
As for the dark colors, he believes that “day in, day out they do better” on tannic waters than traditional patterns like chartreuse and white, perhaps because they resemble bluegills better. He said that in Florida other baitfish like needlefish and mullet “get almost a purple hue,” which may further explain it, but he’s found the color to work in South Carolina, Louisiana and up the East Coast as well.
In grass beds, he fishes or drifts around until he finds the sweet spot, noting that the fish are usually ganged up. “Once you find an area, you don’t keep going,” he said. He’ll try to stay off the trolling motor as much as possible in shallow water, especially when fish are spooky. “I’ll idle upwind of the spot,” he said. “I use the wind to move us around and cover the water if I can.”
The goal is to reel the spinnerbait just quickly enough to keep it from getting hung in the vegetation.
“I literally want that bait to be ticking along the top of the grass,” he said. When he feels the blades stop turning, he’ll give it a quick little snap to clear off the grass that has bogged them down. While the arm-breaking bites are obvious, sometimes anglers miss what he calls “slack bites.” That’s when a fish comes up behind the lure moving faster than your retrieve and keeps coming at you after he’s inhaled. If you don’t react quickly, he’ll bite down on the wire or lead, realize it’s a fake and then spit it out.
When the fish are biting the spinnerbait funny, or seem less interested than normal, that’s when Kenney goes to his secret weapon. “I always have a Mag Ned Head on the deck,” he said. He’ll throw it into likely areas, or places where he missed a bite, and then crawl it back to the boat. The key is to avoid putting too much action into it. He’s been surprised at how incredibly versatile this odd-shaped lure can be, noting that not only does it come through sparse grass well, but it can also be skipped under docks and dragged across shell beds, among other applications.
If you want to learn some of Kenney's strategies for tannic water, including some surprising lure choices he employs a couple of days after a cold front, check out his full video, available only by subscribing to The Bass University TV.
