By Matt Stark
She looked so darn good to me. She might not have been the girl of most guy’s dreams, but for me, this girl was everything I was after….until I saw her twin sister. Her sister had my heart pumping too. She was working it. Her swagger was alluring and hypnotizing. I couldn’t wait to get into her bed. She was overweight like me, so I definitely wasn’t going to hold that against her. Like her sister, I guessed she was about six and half to seven pounds, and as you may have guessed, “she” was a bass.
She was settled up some buck brush in some skinny water that somehow was a bit clearer than the water on the main lake. I almost past right past her, but her moving shadow drew my eye. There was no discoloration of a bed, but I could tell by her mannerisms, she was there with a purpose. I took several attempts to coax her with a jig, but she wasn’t a player. She turned her head up at a craw, and a beaver style bait. I even worked a topwater from over the bed, but this girl didn’t get that big being indiscriminate in her eating habits.
I watched her, fanning in the buck brush (or as some call it, “I’m stuck brush”) for a few minutes as I continued providing options for her to reject, when it dawned on me to try tossing a weightless worm. A wacky-rig in this type of cover is going to hang up on the brush 99% of the time, but the Riot Baits’ Baton is a worm that was designed to provide an enticing death shimmy wacky or Texas-rigged weightless, and it just so happens, I had one tied on. I pitched it directly into the buck brush. It landed flat on the surface of the water. I let the line stay slack and watched it settle on the surface. The Baton immediately started sinking. As it fell, it started undulating unlike any other Senko-style worm on the market today. I watched as my dream girl engulfed the worm and turn. I set the hook, and we had our first argument since we met. She was mad, but she lost the fight just like her sister had moments before.
Spring time or during high pressure fronts bass often get finicky, even when they are guarding their beds or fry. It’s during these times that a weightless worm like the Riot Baits’ Baton can produce heavy stringers of bass by enticing these reluctant feeders during the latter part of the spawn, you might not find bass on beds. Instead, bass will suspend on hard structure like docks and laydowns leading out of the main spawning areas. Sometimes, the evidence of fry at the surface can giveaway their location making them an easy target. It’s important that when using any weightless soft stick bait that the worm be allowed to fall on slack line so as not to interfere with the worm’s natural action. Worms like the Yamamoto Senko have a subtle quiver when wacky rigged while newer worms like the Riot Baton are designed to have a pronounced shimy. Regardless of the brand, be patient and maybe you will hook into your dream girl.