Dan: Now we've talked about lots of different ways to catch calico bass. And one of the
popular ways and one of the hot technique that has been for last couple of years
has been the innovation of soft plastic baits. And one of the hottest anglers on the
west coast is Dave Lashima, his one of our anglers here with us, instructors on our
fishing school. And Dave is going to give us a little information and some of his
tips and secrets for fishing different types of soft plastics for calico bass.
Thanks Dave.
Dave: Okay. I guess the classic plastic bait was the twin tail.
Dan: Field skampy.
Dave: Skampy, mojo. But in recent years I guess there's been a changed over from that
type to grubs. And right now what's really been hot is swim baits. Here's an old
swim bait here. This is a scrounger, they're no longer being made. There's another
company making heads of this type, but this have a lot of action. Here's a different
type of herald tail grub. But this is the classic swim bait type with the knob tail
and it goes through the water, this tail articulates back and forth. And it actually
looks like a fish swimming. I guess the interesting part about swim baits is, it’s
not that classic jig fishing where you're getting motion hits on the retrieve,
plastics many times you're going to get on the sink. And so, because of that, in
some ways it’s similar to bait fishing.
Anyway, on plastic, you have several factors. I think the weight of the head, the
design of the head. Here's different types of head here, pyramid heads, bullet type
heads, heads with eyes, football heads. Each head of those, I think each style of
head has a different types of swim. And people have favorites, I have my favorite,
and it’s a bullet type head. I like them because the bullet type head tends not to
lodge in the kelp as much. This pointed type heads, they tend to get buried in the
kelp. With calico fishing, you're fishing as close to this structure, the kelp, the
rock as you can. And because of that factor, you tend to lose a lot of heads. That
means you're in the zone. When you're in the area, we've been a lose tackle, that's
where you want to be.
Dan: The old twin tail is more, this bait, when we use to fish this in the early days, this
is more a bait that you would fish hopping it from stone to stone, big structures.
Real popular and still is today for the sand bass. But these other baits, like you're
talking about the swim baits, this is more to fish like in the heavy kelp beds and
above the structure, right?
Dave: Yeah. Well, in the lot of fishing, this type of bait, what you do is you spot a piece
of kelp out in the water and what you do is you try and cast out next to the kelp.
As close to the kelp as you can, if the fish are up top, you just immediately put it
in gear and start a slow grind. If the fish are deeper, what you do is cast it out.
What I do is I nearly put my rod in my reel in gear. Pick up the slack, then put it
in free spool. The reason for that is, if you're hit right on the drop, right after you
cast, you won't be able to feel it if you don’t take out that slack. So what I do is
put my reel in gear, take out the slack, go to free spool again, and then watch my
spool. And usually when you feel the tap and you see the line coming off your
spool and you nearly put it in gear. What I do is when I put it in gear after a hit, I
grind. Lot of people. What they do is set up the hook. Me, what I do is I grind
because I'm quite a bit away. You’re trying to take the stretch out of the monofilm
line. With monofilm line, you just set your hook, lot of times the bait on the other
ends only moving in small amounts. Whereas if you grind, what you do is you
take off the slack, and then what happens if you take out the slack, you feel the
fish. I keep grinding until I feel a lot of weight, then I might set the hook. But I
think that’s important part, because lot of times, I think people swing and they're
missing fish.
The other part is if the fish hit on the sink, what you do is put it in gear. And what
you could do is slowly crank. Sometimes I crank slow, sometimes a very nice
speed. A crank, go in free spool. Crank, go in free spool. Other times what I’ll do
is, when they're really active and you can crank faster.
Calico bass tend to change their metabolism. When the water is cold, they're not
going to move much, so you have to go real slow. Summer time, they're going to
move faster so you can wind faster.
Dan: Big thing with grubs now is a lot of different grubs that you see have formula in
them like this one has got a gag-a-bite like river side bait. And what that does is
it’s an agent that’s put inside the bait, so when the fish bites it, it tells the fish’s
brain that this is real and they keep eating it. And lots of times we’ll find fish, and
we're fishing the same grub, if we use a grub we find the actual grub in the fish.
That’s kind of weird.
One thing I just want to point out what you're talking about, when it comes to
setting the hook. What you have to remember is when you're working your grub
through the kelp, the fish bites and you feel that bite. You got to remember, the
fish have no hands. So when you feel it, what you normally feeling is your lead
head hitting the back of the fish throat. I mean, I've seen guys who are working
jigs, they get bit, they put it in free spool when they work a large bait, put it in
free spool. And you can hear them getting bit, the lines are ripping off the reel.
When you feel that bite really good, like Dave said, get all that slack out of the
line and then pull the head in. pull really hard. I pull as hard as I can, I've never
brought in just the fish head. So you got to really drive that hook in there.
Dave: With the calico you can't rip their lips off.
Dan: It’s not possible. And when they're biting baits like this, that means it’s more of
like spring, summer, late summer, the fish can go in there really active. So they're
not going to be, when they bite this, they don’t like get lazy with it. They really
just attack it. And this is one of the few baits that you wanted to look life like.
Lots of times you fish iron jigs, we're trying to make the bait look crippled. This
kind of bait fishing, swim baits, you're trying to make it look like the real bait just
swimming by.
Dave: The other factor of it is you can vary the weight of the head. Lots of current,
heavy head. If you are on a day like today where you got pretty slack current, you
might try a lighter head. Because what you want to do is keep your bait in the
zone. If you have a heavy head and the fish are on top, your bait’s going to
accelerate right pass the fish. If you have a light head, then it’s going to stay in the
zone where the fish are.