Phillip Gentry
When you’ve been around bass fishing for a while, the proverb “everything old is new again” begins to take on real meaning. New technology is a great thing and readily lends itself to trendier bass fishing baits and techniques, but does that mean that the old ways don’t work anymore? Absolutely not.
Carolina Rig
Two decades ago, Carolina rigging plastics was the go-to search tool to locate black bass. It wasn’t the fastest or the flashiest way to cover ground, but once an area had been fished with a C-Rig, it was safe to move on if no willing fish were found.
One reason the Carolina rig lost its fan base was due to drop-shotting. Drop shotting allowed an angler to present the bait more precisely and with greater finesse. Problem is, the Carolina rig was never considered a finesse bait per se, but considered a great way to target a general area like a deepwater flat or hump where bass were moving around a localized area.
It’s for this reason that Carolina rigging is seeing a subtle resurgence, especially in the spring, and especially with larger creature baits like lizards, beavertails, and other creature baits. Adjusting the size weight on the Carolina rig helps get the high-profile bait deeper, faster and lets it do it’s thing without being tethered so tightly to the main line aka drop-shot style.
Basic Spoon
If you want to dig deeper into the nostalgic tackle box, don’t overlook the basic spoon. Some anglers would argue that the basic concave spoon never completely went away but evolved into what was called a flutter spoon or a deep jigging spoon.
In the old days, a casting spoon did a great job imitating a wounded baitfish with it’s dipping and fluttering motion on the retrieve. The hard jerk bait with it’s more realistic fish imitating appearance did it’s best to put the casting spoon out of business, but any angler who has fished a jerkbait in concert with forward-facing real time sonar can attest that bass very frequently charge straight up to those baits then pause, and unfortunately lose interest, when the jerkbait sits still.
The big difference is the casting spoon never gave the fish the opportunity to change its mind as it dipped and darted and continued it’s get away during the pause in the retrieve. It’s also near impossible to pull a jerkbait through a patch of lilly pads or standing timber without getting hung up while a weedless spoon, maybe paired with a piece of pork chunk for a trailer excelled in that environment.
Buzzbaits
Somewhere in the bottom of your tackle box, you probably still have a couple of buzzbaits that used to wear bass out on calm summer evenings. The rubber skirts are faded and half melted, but those metal blades, the ones you worked so hard to keep tuned to just the right pitch, just need a little polish and a new skirt to revive the old magic.
The issue is not that buzz baits stopped catching fish but that other, more modern baits incorporated the same stimulus-type propeller action in a hard plastic bait causing the buzz bait to take a back seat in popularity polls. However, ask any seasoned bass fishing enthusiast and they will swear that there is a pitch difference between metal buzz blades and the incorporated plastic blades and that pitch/sound quality makes a difference to fish. Some days bass find the plastic blade more attractive and others the metal blade gets attacked.
Plastic Worm
Last on the list is the basic plastic worm. Plastic worms still see widespread usage but not to the extent they did 20 years ago. Plastic worms come in all colors and color configurations known to man and their usage has evolved primarily with how they are rigged. In days gone by, a standard plastic worm was Texas-rigged with a sliding weight. Next someone decided to peg the weight instead of letting it slide freely. Further down the line the worm was rigged whacky style which spawned a whole new genre of whacky rigged baits that no longer resembled the plastic worm.
The moral of the story is don’t overlook old school bass baits and old school presentations of those baits. They deserve a spot in your arsenal for the simple reason that nearly every modern-day angler has been or one day will be humbled on tournament day by the old man in a worn out tri-hull boat throwing 1980’s tackle within sight of the boat ramp.
