When B.A.S.S. members think about throwing a bladed jig, such as a Z-Man ChatterBait, they’re probably thinking about shallow water, weeds and cover. Fred Roumbanis is a bit different.
He’s one of the most versatile pros on the Elite Series — the direct result of his California upbringing and Japan-influenced tackle sponsorships — and over the past few years he’s dialed in an unusual way to fish a bladed jig.
Roumbanis doesn’t have a flashy, sexy name for the technique, but he swims a bladed jig in deep water — both along the bottom for belly-to-the-bottom bass and up the water column for suspended fish. He uses his Garmin Panoptix, which shows sonar returns on a grid, to swim at the exact depth of the fish, and thus presents a completely new look to fish that have simply never seen a bladed jig at that depth.
“I was throwing it at the Mille Lacs [Toyota Bassmaster] Angler of the Year Championship, on the north end of the lake, with an Optimum AA shad as a trailer, and thought I was going to win,” Roumbanis said. “I was slow rolling it along bottom and catching an unbelievable size of fish. But the south wind got me, I got stubborn and never adjusted — probably because of how well I can catch them on this technique. And I used it, along with a big spoon, to finish fifth at Kentucky Lake in 2015 using an Optimum Victory Tail as the trailer.”
Roumbanis said he throws the rig all throughout the Tennessee River chain, plus the Ozarks lakes and “anywhere else I’d throw a deep swimbait. I think it’s one of the most versatile presentations there is for deep fish. You can let it sit on bottom and then rip it up. You can slow roll it. You can get it down real deep with 12-pound line. And you can experiment with the size of the trailer to match the size of the bait.”
