Smallmouth and Corndog, 6/29/22

[Will Wetline]

What? No, I didn't have a corndog for lunch nor did I use one for bait. And I don't have a passed-down family recipe to share. You see, Corndog is my favorite color of Reaction Innovations "beaver" baits, a wide-bodied, appendage-added version of a spade tail grub. I TX rig it with a Gamakatsu 2/0 #584 EWG standard wire hook, a 6mm faceted glass bead (red) and a 1/16 oz. - 5/16 oz. tungsten bullet. Drag and pause. Deep.

 

. . . Have your eyes glazed over yet? Sorry. I have no pics of hefty smallmouth hoisted this trip, so I'm offering rigging details of a bait that has worked well for a number of seasons.

 

Let's go back to early morning. First cast produced a keeper on a 4" wacky rigged Senko. Shortly after another said hello to Mr. Ned Z Man.

 

 

About 10:30 the wind came up producing a nice chop. I positioned to reach a 10' depth over a rocky bottom thinking a hungry smallie might have moved up, and soon spotted one eyeballing the popper I was gurgling and splashing. It took the bait under but only by the long tail I think because it didn't hook up. Bah.

 

Spent the next several hours doing a lot of nothing. I had gone back to Z-Man's finesse baits then decided to rig a chartreuse tailed Sweet Beaver. Cast to deep water, I stripped line off the spool. After a while I said to myself, "The water's not that deep," engaged the reel and set. 

 

 

One more hard fighting littlun took a TicklerZ at 4:00.

 

Sun, wind and a few tugs had  made another fine day on the water.

 

 

[islandbass]

Nice report. I will admit however that I was hoping corndog for a recipe, ? lol. Sweet beavers are killers. ?

[softwateronly]

As a Big Texan, I'm gonna walk my tramp stamp over to the taco truck for some payback.

 

scott

[Sphynx]

I use a whole lot of the RI "Beavers" of one style or another, still haven't tried the double beaver or whatever it is called, but the sweet and smallie beaver's are regular options in my trailer and texas rig setups.