It was a half-hour before check-in during a U.S. Angler's Choice tournament at California's Clear Lake in early May, and my partner and I needed one more fish to fill out our limit. Our final stop would be a horseshoe-shaped seawall that defined the front yard of some well-off family's lakefront home.


The elongated north side of the wall was getting pounded by waves generated by a 20-mph wind. We set up parallel to it and about 15 yards out, doing everything we could to keep from being pitched into the drink whenever the boat rolled downward to the starboard side.

I bounced a Big Bite Baits Cane Stick – a bait I'd recently been introduced to on a trip to Georgia's Lake Lanier – off the wall and then let the boat rock through yet another wave cycle before reeling in the slack. As I was about to catch up with the bait, the line began moving toward me. I made a few furious cranks on the reel and then set the hook on a 3-pounder that was quickly in the boat thanks to some fancy net-handling by my partner.

I wish I could say that fish won the tournament for us. It didn't. I wish I could say it got us into the money. It didn't do that, either – we ended up 26th out of 89 teams and the payouts stopped at 18th. But it did allow us to finish more than a dozen places higher than a cocky acquaintance who'd all but guaranteed that he and his partner would bury us. Non-tangible things are sometimes more valuable than money.

Comes Through When it Counts

Soft stickbaits aren't the best choice for covering a lot of water, but they'll produce a bite from a known fish-holding area when a lot of other offerings won't. There are dozens of them on the market now, most of them closely resembling the overwhelmingly successful Yamamoto Senko.

The Cane Stick, designed by Bassmaster Elite Series competitor and Big Bite pro-staffer Dean Rojas, is one that's a bit different. For one thing, there's a lot going on along its body. Whereas most baits in this category feature a uniformly smooth surface, the Cane Stick is rife with ridges, grooves and slots that all play a role in its attractiveness to the fish and the angler's ability to drive the hook point through a bass' stubborn jaw.

And here's one of it's best features – it's actually two baits in one. The main body is non-tapered and it has a solid-plastic head at both ends, so when one end gets torn up after catching a few fish, the angler can simply rig it up by the other.

"The bottom line was we wanted to create something that was unique, that was fisherman-friendly and that catches fish," Rojas said. "With a head on both ends, hook slots on both the top and bottom and the same grooves cut into both sides, all you have to do is turn it around and you've got a brand new bait to use."

Had to Have Faith

Rojas said the folks at Alabama-based Big Bite were initially hesitant to enact his design because of its moonscape-style surface.

"They thought I was nuts," he said. "I told them, 'Build it and try it. It'll work.'''

That it does. The rubber that's been removed to form its grooves makes it extremely pliable, which gives it a nice action on the fall. When Texas-rigged, just a slight raise of the rod tip brings the tail end to life, and the hook channels allow the point to be Tex-posed without picking up debris off the bottom.

When wacky-rigged, both ends wiggle with any type of angler-induced movement. In either case, the cutouts cause the bait to collapse under pressure from a fish's mouth, leaving the hook point free to find a home in the cartilage.

The grooves that run along the top and bottom are briefly interrupted at the center of the bait, which provides a little more "meat" for a wacky-style presentation (even a skin-hook if the angler desires, but that'd be a bit risky without an O-ring due to the momentum the bait carries during a cast.). And the dense heads at each end make long-distance presentations easy.

The Cane Stick comes in 4 1/2- and 5 1/2-inch versions and in 12 colors, including several laminates. At $4.99 for a pack of 10, they're not expensive – even before you fully grasp the concept that because of its design, each one is actually two.

Notable

> For more about the Cane Stick, click here.