Tag: Trilene

The Best Rig for Spawning Bass

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The Best Rig for Spawning Bass

No matter where in the country you live, at some point during the spring the bass are going to be on the beds. Spawning bass can be really challenging to catch and I know that frustrates some of you, but I’ve got a system and technique that works just about everywhere. It drives them nuts. They’ve got to have it. I’m telling you, if you think that you suck at sight fishing, this is one bait you’ve got to try. There’s already been a lot of chatter about this lure, the soft plastic Berkley Gilly, a dead-on imitation of a […]

The Best Fall Lure!

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The Best Fall Lure!

The fall season is here. The nights are getting cold, the water temperature is dropping and the water is getting clearer. That all adds up to mean that bait is what bass fishing is all about. With that in mind let’s talk about the best fall bass lure. And yes, there is only one. It’s the great baitfish imitator — the spinnerbait. The way we need to fish our spinnerbait is by burning it. That can be done the best with an ordinary, but heavy, size spinnerbait. The key to this technique is weight and a size that’s not too […]

My World with Martin Truex Jr.

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My World with Martin Truex Jr.

OK, here’s the deal: I’m filming My World with Mike Iaconelli. My guest is Martin Truex Jr. We’re going to drive some fast cars and then try to catch a couple of big bass. Martin is the real deal. I’ve known him for some time. We’re friends. In the first part of the show he spends some time teaching me how to drive fast in go-karts indoors. And then, we went to the Airport Speedway in Maryland to do some dirt track driving. I had a blast.        I can’t say I beat him on either track. But I did […]

My Secret Spring Bass Lure

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My Secret Spring Bass Lure

This is one of the toughest blogs I’ve ever written. The bait I’m about to tell you about has been my money springtime bait for many years. I’ve always kept it a secret. I hate to give it up, but you’re my fans. I want to help you catch more bass this spring. I guarantee you this will do it. It’s good for prespawn, spawning and postspawn bass as well as when you’re fishing behind another boat. You’ll catch bass that you didn’t know were there and bass that won’t bite anything else. And, it’s inexpensive and easy to rig. […]

Try Spoons for a Hot Winter Bite!

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Try Spoons for a Hot Winter Bite!

Here we go: This is the last of my three-part series on heavy metal baits for wintertime fishing. It’s going to cover the venerable spoon. It’s a lure that’s been around for hundreds of years but it still catches bass. We’re not talking about just any spoon, though. It’s winter. The water is cold. I’m talking specifically about a flutter spoon. It’s the perfect imitation of a big dying baitfish. The one I like the best — it’s elongated, cupped and for the most part already tricked out — is the Molix Mike Iaconelli Lover Spoon. It comes in a […]

Winter Water Jerkbaits

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Winter Water Jerkbaits

One of the best winter lures in the whole world is a suspending jerkbait. Now, when I’m talking about winter conditions. I’m talking about water temperatures below 50 degrees all the way down into the 30s. That’s right now in most of our country. I use two models depending on the depth of the water I’m fishing. In water that’s less than 8 feet deep I go with a short bill Rapala Shadow Rap. If the water’s deeper, maybe up to 15 feet, I’ll go with a long bill version of the same lure. They both have an internal, fixed […]

Just When You Think You Know It All…

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Just When You Think You Know It All…

Just when you think you know it all something comes along that you’ve never heard about, not even thought about. That’s what happened to me this winter on the Upper Mississippi River when I was fishing Pool 2. I was introduced to the tumble rig. We were fishing near a power plant with a warm water discharge. Typically that’s where you find a lot of fish in a small area, and that’s exactly what we found. But, even though we were catching fish, the bite wasn’t anything close to what we expected. That’s when the fellow I was fishing with […]

My Second Favorite Winter Bass Bait

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My Second Favorite Winter Bass Bait

Last time we talked about jerkbaits, my favorite bait in the winter.  This time I want to talk about my second favorite, the Rapala Rippin Rap Lipless Crankbait.  But you should know this: Just because it’s my second favorite doesn’t mean I don’t use it all the time.  In fact, when the water’s cold I never leave the dock without one tied on and ready to go. I fish this little jewel two ways. The first is with a traditional yo-yo type retrieve.  I just cast it out, let it fall to the bottom and then make it lift and […]

Winter Bassin’ with Hard Jerkbaits

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Winter Bassin’ with Hard Jerkbaits

Becky and I got back from vacation last Saturday and I decided to fish a Winter League tournament up here on Sunday. The air temperature was really cold and the water was in the low 40s. The bite was tough. Nevertheless, we won with four bites that put four bass in the livewell. They weighed 6.86 pounds. Here’s how we did it… We used what’s probably my favorite winter bass lure — a hard jerkbait. But, we didn’t fish with just any jerkbait. We spent a lot of time matching size and figuring out how we wanted the bait to […]