the Components
for suspended fish and
shallower than 20 feet
1/16- to 3/16-ounce
darter head with
No. 1 hook
Top plastic colors: green pumpkin, green pumpkin watermelon, sprayed grass
Reaction Innovations The Flirt 4.95
Reaction Innovations The Flirt 6.95
for bottom fish, Cover or deeper than 20 feet
3/16-ounce Frenzy Baits NAIL
gutierrez says not to shy away from big finesse worms.
even though the fish are neutral, if they do eat, they’ll often
take a bigger forage imitator first. he helped design the
Reaction Innovations the Flirt with a flat “planing” bottom
and twitching tail bulb specifically for this type of finesse
application. the bigger Flirt 6.95 has more drag, and thus
can be fished slower.
the pro uses a custom darter head that he designed
and unfortunately is not willing to show, but other darter
heads will work if you balance head size with speed and
depth. For instance, a heavier 3/16-ounce head can be
fished 10 to 15 feet deep at a higher speed for covering
water, while a 1/16-ounce head can be fished deeper and
ultra-slow for truly negative fish. Rig the hook exposed. the flat face of the NAIL, which gutierrez designed
and sells, helps this rig “plane out,” or increase its water
resistance, which allows it to be fished slowly just like the
standard darter head version. yet, by rigging it tex-posed,
the combo will sneak through woody snags. gutierrez
says it also crawls over rocks well without rolling and
potentially hanging up.
In situations where Gutierrez wants to scrub bottom or
follow a contour, he works it with the same basic retrieve. On
steep-falling banks, where it’s tougher to maintain bottom
contact, he’ll let it touch down once in a while to ensure he’s
staying in the strike zone and might alter the retrieve to a lift-
and-fall technique, shaking the bait as it falls back down.
“You’ve gotta have a little belly in the line, or it won’t touch
the bottom,” Gutierrez adds. “It’ll stay on contour if it’s tight.” Feeling bites: With any deep-water, light-line technique,
bites can be subtle. Gutierrez says to focus on the drag and ten-
sion in the line. If 8-pound-test line suddenly feels like 6-pound
test (less drag) or 10-pound test (more drag), that subtle differ-
ence might have been caused by a fish sucking in the worm.
“It’s a very subtle bite because you’re fishing for very neg-
ative fish,” Gutierrez says. “You’re not getting that really hard
tonk when a fish hits.”
keys to success
Rod: Gutierrez uses a 7-foot, fast-
action, medium-power spinning rod
with a “really light tip.” To him it’s per-
fect for making long casts and setting
the hook in deep water.
Big worms: To fish accurately, it’s
important to experiment with sink
rates and countdowns to make sure
you know where your bait is in the
water column. Retrieve speed is also
important, with slower usually being
better, but the plastic plays an impor-
tant role, too.
“I prefer a bigger piece of plastic
that has a slower fall when you’re mov-
ing it horizontally through the water
column,” he says. “It has more water
resistance. The way the Flirt worm is
designed with the ribbing, it ‘tightens
up’ my line a little more, so I can feel a
little better. I can feel a little bit more
tension on the line.”
november-deCember 2017 I flWfIshIng.Com
Keitech 4-inch Swing Impact
Top plastic colors: male perch, crystal shad, smallmouth magic
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