
(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.)
Tennessee pro Wesley Strader can fish plenty of newer techniques with the best of them, but at heart he’s an old-school fisherman, and whenever possible he’ll head shallow armed with spinnerbaits and crankbaits. Decades after he began chasing bass and cashing checks, they’re still his favorite tools.
He’s admittedly a bit OCD about his lure choices, and when it comes to spinnerbaits he has a specific blade, wire and skirt combination for every circumstance.
“If I had to carry a spinnerbait for every situation that I encounter along the way on the tours, I’d have to carry like 7,000 boxes of spinnerbaits,” he said. Instead, he carries about 150 at a time, in every blade combination he can conceive, all in 3/8- or 5/8-ounce, and builds them when he gets to the lake. He’ll research the forage and walk to the water’s edge when he arrives and build what he thinks he’ll need based on the water temperature, the season and the water clarity. He keeps his head colors simple – silver in clearer water, white when there’s a bit of stain and chartreuse when he heads up north. When it comes to building a bait, it’s mostly about a progression of blades and blade combinations.
In the spring, when the water tends to be colored or stained due to heavy rains and runoffs, he’ll often start with double gold Colorados. “They feel that vibration coming,” he explained. The Zorro spinnerbaits that he prefers use .030 gauge wire, which maximizes the thump. He’ll start on channel-swing bends in major tributaries, focusing on any kind of wood or rock he can find.
As the fish move further back to spawn, he wants a lure that’s a dual threat of vibration and flash, so he’ll turn to a Colorado and willow combination. “I want it going faster,” he said. That often triggers big non-feeding females into a defensive strike.
After the bass spawn has concluded and the shad spawn starts up, he’ll move to his favorite combination: A No. 3 Colorado with a No. 4 or No. 5 Indiana, which mimics the shad perfectly. He doesn’t care which one is gold and which one is silver, but he has to have one of each. Two gold or two silver aren’t in the playbook. The shad spawn typically lasts only a short while each day.
“They’ll spawn all night long and then you catch the last two hours of it,” he said, although on grass lakes it may last longer.
He doesn’t fish a spinnerbait as much in the heat of the summer, but in fall he goes right back to the Colorado/willow combo. “It still mimics those shad,” as they migrate to the backs of the creeks. In fall the fish tend not to hit a straight retrieve as well as they’ll attack something more erratic. When he comes to a laydown, he makes his move.
“I’m going to twitch that spinnerbait,” he said. “I’m going to make it do all kinds of crazy things.”
He fishes all of his spinnerbaits and shallow-diving crankbaits on a Powell 755CB Endurance rod, paired with a Lew’s Pro Ti (7.5:1 gear ratio). He spools it up with 14- to 20-pound Sunline Shooter when he wants something more abrasion-resistant, and Sunline Sniper in more open water.
If you want to learn the ins and outs of Strader’s shallow-water program, along with an easy trick to make thin-wire spinnerbaits last much longer, check out his full video, available only by subscribing to The Bass University TV.