A guy from my fish & game club I took fishing last week became a believer after he caught over 30 fish on my unconventional creations. He is familiar with many presentations and lures used for bass, but not so much finesse fishing used for many fish species including bass.
The first thing I had to do was change his line to thin diameter braid. Light lures do not do as well when tied to 8 -10 lb test mono. I told him to bring a light or med. light action rods and spinning reels. The rest I supplied. Fortunately I found a shallow water pattern in the middle of the small lake where fish hung out since the week before. Hard to believe fish bit in less than 6' and mostly sunfish and crappie at that. In water 7-12' not near as many strikes even though they showed on the display.
Many fish this size were caught and put up one H of a fight:
as well as many 11 and 12" crappie caught in the same area:
The above lure it and other fish struck was a plastic
trailer to a bass jig rigged on a 1/16 oz ball head jig.
I also gave him a grub formed from a attaching a Sassy Shad tail to a round grub body and he caught this nice pumpkin and other fish:
A more conventional shape that always catches fish is this
Mann's Shadow minnow-shape:
Together we caught almost 70 fish; the following day in the same stretch, I caugh 69 fish fishing solo. If I fish there tomorrow or the next day, the same lures presented with the same retrieve will catch them. In all the years I've fished I have never seen such a thing. The guys beating the bank did not do nearly as good and I doubt they even noticed the numbers of fish we caught.
