I remember an older kid who stopped me in the hall and asked, "Do you want a piece of abc gum?" Immediately, I was suspicious - upperclassmen don't deign to speak to those beneath them.
"What's abc gum?"
"Already Been Chewed!" he yelled in my face. Then he spun me around and gave me a wicked noogie.
Chalk that up to a rite of passage.
Let's fast forward fifty years and float me on Quabbin Reservoir. The weather had been kinda funky for a stretch and this day was supposed to be cloudy with variable winds. Maybe the smallmouth would like an abc TRD. One great feature of Z-Man's proprietary plastic, ElaZtech, is that dozens of bass can chew on a piece before it needs to be replaced. It's likely the jig will be lost long before the appeal of an ElaZtech bait is gone. I've read that you can remove a TRD from a Ned head jig and put it back on bassackwards for a few more fish.
Game plan for the day was to check my milk run of flats, ridges and humps, but I wasn't expecting particularly active late pre spawn smallies (water temps: 55.4º - 56.1º) without sun and wind.
At the first location, a sandy, rocky ridge that drops off into deep water, I tried a deep Shadow Rap Shad, a T-rigged Hula Grub and a Biffle Bug on a football swing jig. What they wanted was a TRD on a 3/32oz. Ned head cast from Do-its Midwest Finesse Jig Mold.
At another spot I was really ready for them to go nuts over a Super Fluke Jr. walking the dog a foot under the surface. They ate a Ned rig that was dragged, paused and made to tremble on the bottom at depths of 10' - 20'.
On a long time favorite rock hump with a precipitous drop off one side, I hoped the smallies would be on top looking for prey. That meant the Fluke or Duo Realis Spin Bait 80 would get 'em, right? Wrong. There were a couple of good fish here but I needed to go over the deep edge to show them a bait. The first took the TRD differently than most of the other bass' bites on this bait: during a pause, I saw the line jump. I reeled down and swept the rod to the side. Remember, when using fine wire hooks (.031) and light line set firmly but don't overdo it.
She weighed 4.89 lbs.
I lost a second fish, another good one. I had been bumping rocks and hadn't taken the few seconds to check the hook. The point had turned. When I got home I stripped to bare skin and gave myself 40 lashes with a 7" Senko for this lapse of diligence.
So, in all it was a fun day. There were five smallies landed beside the ones who got their pictures taken. I would have preferred the fish to have been up and active enough to have taken a livelier presentation than the drag-and-pause, but I'll tell you this, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls: When the fish are non-aggressive . . . Ned rules!
