JACOB WHEELER ’ S COMPACT CRUSHERS
COLOR : GREEN PUMPKIN
COLOR : BAMA CRAW
RAPALA CRUSHCITY NED BLT Wheeler added subtle touches to this “ turtle-backed ,” Ned-style worm , made with a tough , buoyant TPE ( thermoplastic elastomer ). He also fishes it on a dropshot rig with a # 2 VMC Finesse Neko hook .
RAPALA CRUSHCITY FREELOADER After an auspicious 2023 debut , this pintail minnow with ribs and tail rings carried Wheeler , its designer , to a win and fourth-place finish at the first two BPT events of 2024 . Wheeler fishes it on 3 / 16- or 1 / 4-ounce VMC Hybrid Swimbait Jigheads with shakes of his rod tip . “ If I want more rock , I throw more slack into my line ,” he says . “ If I want less rock and more finesse , I throw less slack .”
COLOR : ALBINO SHAD
RAPALA CRUSHCITY THE MAYOR Compact , paddletail swimbaits are universal fish producers , and this new offering is no different . “ The 3-inch Mayor is a fish catcher ,” says its creator . “ It ’ s a bait that produces numbers of bites .”
6 ounces on SCORETRACKER ® during the Knockout Round of Stage Two on Santee Cooper .
Wheeler favors a bait of his own design , the Rapala CrushCity Freeloader , for these encounters . Worked on a light jighead with shakes of his rod tip , the pintail minnow-style bait allows him to adjust his presentation to the observed response of his quarry .
“ It ’ s a natural presentation that fish haven ’ t seen that much ,” he says . “ It is super finessy .”
favorable tackle trends
Delivering small stuff to suspended bass takes tackle tailored to the task . Light and medium-light spinning rods with reels spooled with light braid and thin fluorocarbon leaders have become standard tools — and as more tournament pros have turned to them , manufacturers have delivered rods with refined actions and reels with smoother drag systems .
That said , presenting a bait to a distant fish represented by a virtual screen image calls for the kind of precision casting many anglers think only baitcasting combos can deliver . In recent years , bait finesse system ( BFS ) have added a new wrinkle to the game .
Developed initially in Japan , BFS brings highly specialized baitcasting reels and rods into play to deliver lures too small for effective presentation with conventional baitcasting gear . Picture pitching a 1 / 16-ounce Texas rig with a Ned-style plastic or throwing a crappie-sized crankbait on a casting setup spooled with 6- or 8-pound line .
Bertrand says his Abu Garcia Zenon BFS rod and LTX reel combination — a 7-foot-1 rod and 6.8:1 gear-ratio reel — enables him to get remarkable distance and accuracy even with 1 / 8-ounce crankbaits .
“ BFS started more for anglers looking to add a fun new dimension to their bass fishing , but it ’ s turning into something that can be really useful in the tournament fishing world ,” Bertrand confirms . “ When it came to small baits , you had limitations on what you could throw them on until BFS became a thing . One missing link was the really small crankbaits you might throw in the spring and fall , though . It ’ s been pretty neat to take that BFS rod and reel and throw a little bait as well as you could throw a more standard-sized bait .”
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Has added fishing pressure made our fish more wary of standard-sized bass baits ? Are smaller baits simply better bass catchers than we previously supposed ? Or is it just easier to keep a small bait hovering enticingly in the compact strike zone of a reluctant bass ? Anglers and lure makers will continue to ask such questions as they explore the intersection of FFS , finesse gear and little lures .
One more factor inviting small baits into the bass fishing arena has been a modest bend away from the once prevailing “ five good bites ” mentality — and it is not just the every-scorablebass-counts format of the Bass Pro Tour that ’ s pushing the trend .
“ Even in five-fish tournaments , I may want to catch 100 bass to get my biggest five of the day ,” says Murphy . “ More guys are thinking that catching as many fish as you can might get you five big ones , too .”
As the bass-fishing world is fast finding out , there ’ s often no better way to get numbers of bites than by tying on baits that , until recently , would have been viewed as too tiny .
APRIL-MAY 2024 | MAJORLEAGUEFISHING . COM 51