Now that the season is behind us, I get to focus on cleaning up my gear, filming my Mark Menendez Bass TV show and playing with tackle. Like many of you, I find playing with tackle to be a lot of fun, and it’s relaxing too. Some of the things I’ve done in my offseason tinkering have become some of my tried-and-true bait modifications for competing on the Bassmaster Elite Series.
Strike King makes some of the best lures in the business, and if we look back on the number of tournaments won on their lures over the past 20 years, I bet the statistics would surprise most of us. But, as good as the baits are, and with the variety of colors we offer, some situations still need a little bump. As an angler, I’ve learned making some slight “performance enhancements” can make a big difference.
Spinnerbaits are a category I play with a lot. The one change that I make is to upsize my blade one size.
Most “Tandem” spinnerbaits come with a No. 2 Colorado Blade on the wire and a No. 4.5 willowleaf blade on the swivel. I like to change the willowleaf blade to a No. 5 because it gives the bait a little more lift in the water. This helps me to slow the retrieve down, and it gives a bait a little different profile.
That change is typically from the prespawn to the early summer when bigger profiles can make big females get aggressive. I also tend to use a ribbontailed worm as a trailer a lot because it adds bulk and increases the presence in the water.
In the summertime, especially when we are fishing up north, burning a spinnerbait can be deadly. In that case, I like to swap the blade to a No. 4 so I can really wake the bait over their heads to trigger reactions. While I typically use a trailer hook, it is especially important during this retrieve, so I will add a 1/0 to 3/0 Gamakatsu Trailer Hook to my baits, with 2/0 being my most common.
I carry about a thousand different skirts in my Skeeter to tweak the color schemes on baits, or to make something more translucent in clear water, or appear brighter in dirty water.
Soft plastics come in a plethora of colors, but using my Dyeing2Fish colors I can give a different appeal to my offerings. I carry all of them in my DyeSafe box, which is the size of a Plano 3700 tacklebox. It has a foam insert in it with slots for five bottles of Dyeing2Fish bait color and a center hole for standing a bottle up in the box. I stand the color of choice in the middle, dip my bait and lay it on the foam so it doesn’t stain my carpet.
I carry red, chartreuse and orange in my DyeSafe, and I also carry some Q-Tips for applying colors. I use the red mostly early in the season because it seems to trigger strikes, and I use chartreuse in spring and summer to mimic a bluegill. I use the orange up north a lot, and I know it plays out west on those red-clay banked lakes too.
I dip the claws or tails, but I also will use the Q-Tips to put dots on the body of soft baits. They add some contrast, and I’ve seen that make a difference at times.
Along with the color mods and tweaks to baits, I also use this time to work with our lure designer at Strike King, Mike Russell, on new projects some too. Mike is now the source for new baits at the company, and he is a genius.
I worked with Mike for nine months on the Hardliner 57 that was released at ICAST. We went back and forth during that time, testing and tweaking, and it is the most precision-designed bait I’ve ever seen.
The Hardliner 57 is a flatsided crankbait — it is made of plastic but has all the action of a hand-built plug. It has a harder, tighter wiggle that mimics a Thunder Cricket, and it runs a little deeper on 12-pound-test Seaguar Invizx than any of the other flatsided baits I throw.
Handmade baits are amazing, but due to their nature, they can be inconsistent. When you get a good one, they don’t last as long as you’d want because they are balsa and can be brittle. Being made of plastic, the Hardliner 57 casts really well and is durable. It is the most versatile shallow crankbait I’ve thrown in a while, and Mike and I worked really hard on it.
I’ve made tweaks to baits for years, and it has really helped me perform throughout my career. Play around for yourself and I bet you’ll find that it makes a difference for you too.
