Experimenting with lures; Strike King and Yamamoto's

A couple of days ago I stopped in at Bass Pro to pick up some lures that I've never used before; Strike King's KVD jerk baits and Sexy Dawg Junior, both in the Sexy Shad pattern, and a pack of 5" Yamamoto Senko’s in the watermelon black red flake pattern. I really wanted to spend a day seeing the different action on the Sexy Dawg versus the Pop’n Image that I normally use, and to see if I could get some fish on a soft plastic which is really a foreign presentation to me.

And to all – don’t worry, I’m not going to do an “unboxing” video or description…the lures went from the packaging to the tackle box with the packaging going to the recycling bin. End of story.

I went up to Sturgeon for two separate reasons; one I haven’t fished there since opener and two, it was pounded hard last weekend during the Joey Mansholt Open so the fish would probably be a little bite shy…never a better time to try new lures then on a fish population that has seen a lot of pressure lately.

I arrived at my first spot to a howling wind, so jerk bait time it was. I caught quite a few fish, just nothing of any significant size. It’s pretty hard to tell the action of a jerk bait on its retrieve when it’s 100’ away from you. What I can tell you is that I ran the bait over a lot of rock and weed cover and it held up well with no visual scarring to the finish and the hooks remained sharp even after a few catches.

I needed to find some protected water to try out the Sexy Dawg Jr. so I headed over to Bobcaygeon and fished the canal leading into Lock 32 which was protected from the wind. The major piece of structure in the canal is a rock wall that is situated on the northern side of the canal, and one can see a few overhanging trees which provide secondary cover. The water was calm with a lot weeds floating around, however these were quickly ushered downstream when the lock was opened up for boat traffic heading east.

Normally I’d have to put a lot of effort into casting a lure to the rock wall, however, this wasn’t the case with the Sexy Dawg Jr. and its weight transfer system. A couple of times I found myself actually hitting the rock wall with my casts, but for those wondering, the chip resistant finish held up quite well with no scuffing seen. The most noticeable difference between this and my previous walking the dog style bait was the action; I barely had to twitch my rod tip and the lure sprang to life with a side to side action that I’d never seen the likes of before. While I didn’t catch many fish, the hooks remained sharp. My biggest fish came off of the point on the eastern side of the structure where it tapers down to the river.

I was fishing at the lock at about 2pm in the afternoon, and there was a lot of boat and people traffic present. In many ways I enjoy this type of fishing as it gives people a chance to see that there are fish sitting in the water right in front of them. People were actually thrilled to see me catch fish right beside them, even though they weren’t very large. If it lit a spark, who knows, but I certainly managed to show people that they could have a fun time even in the middle of the afternoon with plenty of boats around.

I then decided to go further down the shoreline to try drop shotting some of those senko’s that I picked up. I rigged them wacky style on a VMC Spinshot hook and used 1/4oz tungsten sinker, which I believe made more noise when coming into contact with the rocks that were everywhere in this location. I was using my UL for drop shotting, probably not the best choice but it got the job done. Again, nothing huge was caught but I did take some time to see the action of a wacky rigged senko in the shallower water and admittedly, I would have wanted to eat it too. I need to spend some time seeing what I can do with these baits when fishing other types of structure, and I’m hoping that in a couple of weeks I can find some docks to skip these baits under to see what I can produce. One of my favourite shows, Lindner’s Angling Edge, had an episode on this technique this past week so I plan on watching it (thank goodness for PVR!!) and learning as much as I can about proper presentation and tackle.

All in all it was a fun day with some good results and showing people what lurks in the water where they spend their time. I brought home a couple of smaller fish to fry up for dad as he misses his fish fries, so I’m hoping they’ll tide him over until my next planned fry in a couple of weeks time. The two bass I kept are shown below, the first caught on a jerk bait and the second on the topwater.

Getting things ready for my stay at Grundy Lake Provincial Park next weekend, hope to have a review posted on the Monday or Tuesday following the getaway.

Cheers!

https://c8.staticflickr.com/9/8613/2...90b2eb92_o.jpgFish Fry Smallie I by Attila Papp, on Flickr

https://c4.staticflickr.com/8/7292/2...6c9043c0_o.jpgFish Fry Smallie II by Attila Papp, on Flickr

Nice Attila! Thanks for the great reviews, two of my favorite presentations : top walkers and senkos. For me the yammi senkos are just too soft, I save them for tough days and usually go with a more generic brand BPS being the ones that I probably use the most. I tend to use them more Texas rigged, weightless because I like the option of fishing them like a soft jerkbait. When fished wacky I've started threading on 2 O rings and the crossing them over so if I pass the hook under the x the hook stays 90° to the bait, I like to think this increases hook-ups.