COLUMN : NEWELL ’ S NOTES
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
As a freelance writer and photographer , Rob Newell has been reporting on fishing tournaments for 20 years , finding the stories between fish and angler to be a stretched line of heroes , heartache , triumph , torture , inspiration and exasperation . pooling data
If you ’ re ever invited to a bass pro ’ s pool party , you better bring a rod
B ack in the 1980s and ‘ 90s , there was a joke among pro anglers who had swimming pools : “ That ’ s not my swimming pool ,” they would say . “ That ’ s my ‘ lure-testing facility .’”
Today , a pro angler installing a swimming pool to test lures is not a joke – it ’ s a reality . Some have even made their pools into tax write-offs in the name of “ testing lures .”
If you ’ re with the IRS and that sounds like a stretch , consider that in 2003 , pro angler Takahiro Omori put a large pool in his back yard for the sole purpose of testing lures . Measuring in at an odd 40 feet by 15 feet , the pool is not a normal backyard pool by any means ; it ’ s a long lane of water with a depth that slowly descends from 3 feet in the shallow end to 8 feet in the deep end . He had a line painted on the bottom , straight down the middle , the entire length of the pool .
“ I had it built that way to allow for a long cast , which is important to really see how a lure runs ,” Omori said . “ I put the line down the middle to help me tune the baits to run certain ways .”
Omori has an obsession with squarebill crankbaits , and after the pool was built , he spent hundreds of hours studying , tuning and experimenting with crankbaits . In August of 2004 , Omori won the Bassmaster Classic on Lake Wylie with a squarebill .
“ There is no doubt that studying those crankbaits for so many hours in that pool helped me win that Classic ,” he added .
A big advantage he derived from the pool was specifically tuning his crankbaits to run slightly one way or another , to match the speed of his boat as he fished down a bank .
“ If I am cranking down a bank and the boat is moving from my left to right , I want my bait to run just a little bit to the right to keep up with my boat ,” Omori explained . “ Same when I go the other way ; I
18 MAJORLEAGUEFISHING . COM | APRIL-MAY 2022