speed of approach
In the prespawn and spawn, especially, Watson fires casts
into areas where he thinks there might be a bed or a staging
fish, works the worm a few times quickly, and then hits the
next target, effectively covering water.
“It doesn’t require a lot of twitching. Just throw it, let it sink
a little bit and keep your foot on the trolling motor. A lot of
times the fish will come up and show themselves. That’s the
key, too. It’s critical that you see which direction he’s coming
from. That’s why I love my Costa sunglasses – for being able
to see the fish boil on the worm. That is a catchable fish. It
might not be catchable right away, but you need to make a
waypoint or mental note of where he is and come back and
make a really long blind-cast.
“I mostly keep it just under the surface,” he adds. “Very
rarely during prespawn and spawn do I let it go too far down.
Sometimes after the postspawn I’ll tend to let it sink a little bit
more. It just depends on what I’m seeing at the time.”
In the postspawn, the “spot” that a bass is using gets big-
ger, says Watson, because the fish is no longer locked down.
They “loosen up” in an area. He still covers water with the
worm, but instead of making a specific, targeted cast, he fires
a blind-cast out in front and slowly works the worm back to
the boat with soft twitches or pulls.
Settling on the perfect cadence takes trial and error, but
in many cases Watson believes less is more.
“I catch a lot of fish I see just by throwing it in front of him
and letting it sit,” he says. “Usually, it’s just a twitch-twitch-
pause. Just keep on watching it. It’s important that you watch
your bait all the way.”
hooking up
Watson’s gear is chosen particularly for getting good
hooksets, but technique is important, too.
“You need to watch them turn on it,” he says. “Let them
eat it, turn and move on it, then use a sweep-set.”
If he’s missing too many fish on the weightless worm,
Watson adds a No. 2 mosquito stinger hook with about a 1-
inch-long (or shorter) piece of 50-pound-test braid. The
stinger gets attached to the bend of the worm hook and dan-
gles freely behind.
“That makes it impossible to thread the nose of another
worm on the hook, so you have to cut the line off and
reverse-thread the hook – pushing the [worm hook’s] eye
through the underside of the worm,” he says.
feBruary-marCh 2018 I flWfIshIng.Com
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