Lizzard dragging
When I finally jumped on the tournament fishing bandwagon in my early 20s , the Carolina-rigged Lizard was the jam . You guys who have been around a while know the one I ’ m talking about : the Zoom 6-inch pumpkin lizard with a chartreuse tail , trailed behind a 2-foot leader , a swivel , a glass bead and a 1-ounce lead weight – pure bass-catching magic .
By this time , I was in college and fished as a non-boater in the Auburn Bass Club , long before there was College Fishing . No matter what lake we went to , what time of year , what depth we fished or what the weather was , all I had to do was wing that lizard-drowning rig out of the back of the boat , drag it along the bottom and wait for something to peck it . Points , pockets , sand , gravel , mud , vegetation – it didn ’ t matter ; it caught all species of bass in any lake in the Southeast .
I owned two Carolina rig rods , a small box of terminal tackle , a duffel bag full of Zoom bags , and I was on top of the fishing world . And I wasn ’ t alone . In every lake we fished , every point had a bass boat on it with two guys whipping Carolina lassos far out into the air . They were usually the same guys who hung around the weigh-ins the longest waiting for their checks to get printed .
To this day , when I open a package of Zoom baits , I stick my snout in the bag , take a whiff of that salty goodness and it floods my brain with great memories of dragging lizards .
neon madness
From there , my lizard-dragging dreams came crashing down with the advent of floating worms . These bright , neon-colored worms were yet another stark introduction to a fundamental bass fishing law : Never question how dumb a lure looks . The floating worm was purposely made in the gaudiest of colors : white , bubble gum ( pink ), school bus ( bright yellow ), sherbet ( pink and yellow swirl ) and a real winner , Merthiolate ( orange ). A package of these things looked like a bag of Skittles .
The first time I fished with a guy who pulled “ pinky ” from the rod locker and began casting it around – during a tournament – it was so surreal I thought it was a joke . When he culled to 17 pounds by 10 a . m . and I had not had a bite dragging my lizard , my head became wobblier than a wheel on a Walmart shopping cart .
That afternoon I would come to find out that , unbeknownst to me , the entire top 10 guys in the club event were all throwing the colors of the rainbow for impressive catches . Floating worms were hot , and I ’ m not going to lie : that whole freaky color deal kept me awake for hours at night in the following weeks . I should have been studying something important like calculus , but instead I so was obsessed as to why a bass would clobber a worm dressed like a clown with such reckless abandon ? There is nothing in their natural environment that even looks like that !
Honestly , it was at this point that I should have quit bass fishing altogether . If a bass eating a Skittle-colored worm with no rational explanation bothered me so much , I should have just stuck with something that made a little more sense – like calculus .
Next time we ’ ll work into the mid-90s with some more throwbacks that took the fishing lure market by surprise .
APRIL-MAY 2023 | MAJORLEAGUEFISHING . COM 59