April 7, 2010
By Gary Dobyns
GYCB National Pro Staff
The sports show season is winding down, and I’m looking back on the many questions and conversations I had with anglers I encountered at the shows. Again and again I was asked, “What are your go to baits? What baits can I fish that always catch them? If you had one or two stand-by baits, what should they be?”
Well, everyone has their favorite baits they catch a lot of fish on. One of mine is the Lucky Craft Staycee 90 ver. 3. If you have confidence in a bait and fish it more than others, you are naturally going to catch more fish on it. But what are my can’t miss, catch them every single day baits? I actually have two baits that will catch fish every day, all year long. How can this be? Mainly because they are baits that can be fished many different ways using completely different techniques.
One Bait – Multiple Presentations
Roboworm makes the most consistent “hand poured” worms on the market. They are robotically poured and each worm is the same as the next. They have plenty of color choices to fit any water color or situation you may be faced with. My best advice is to pick four to six completely different colors your favorite style. Mine is the six inch standard straight tail or new “fat body six inch straight tail”. My personal favorites are hologram shad, warmouth, oxblood, MM 3, and green shiner. This gives me a subtle shad color, a brown, a red, a purple, and a green worm.
Many guys will add a few more to their box but I have all the basic colors covered and have used these for years. They are my confidence colors and I “know” I will catch them on these colors every day.
How am I going to fish them? Well, there are lots of ways and this is one of the reasons these baits always work. I can drop-shot them, dart-head or shaky head them,
Ain’t Nothin’ Like the Real Thing
Yamamoto Senkos are next in my lineup of “always catch them” baits. This bait has been knocked off more than just about any on the market, but nothing catches them as good as the original Senko. Confidence factor? Maybe. A good fishing buddy said it best, “When the bite is red hot, they all work. When it’s tough during a tournament or I really want to catch them, I only fish the original Senko."
This bait could very well be the best “idiot” bait of all time. What’s an idiot bait? That’s a fisherman’s term for a bait you simply throw out and let it do all the work. It takes no thought or skill. You just reel them in. I like that part.
Yamamoto makes hundreds of colors and they all work. I have netted partners' fish on hot pink, red, peanut butter/jelly and some of the weirdest colors you can imagine. More important than color, I believe it might be more about the action of the bait that induces strikes.
I have a few confidence colors. I simply can’t carry them all. My favorites are #306 Natural Shad, #297 Green Pumpkin, #912 Green Pumpkin/Watermelon Laminate, and #305 Baby Bass. I also catch them on plain black, clear, watermelon with red/blk flake and many more. Whatever your favorite color is, they will eat it.
There many ways to rig a Senko and this is another reason this bait is an everyday bait for me. The most popular ways to fish the Senko are weightless
Of course there is more to fishing than just a couple of “go to” baits. You need to figure out the location of the fish and what presentation you’ll be offering. My point is there are lots of ways to fish the same bait, at various water depths, with or without weight, in open water or the nastiest cover, under docks, on points or in backs of coves. You still have to find the fish but they will eat Roboworms and Senkos. every single day. I always have these baits in the boat and would not go fishing without them. They are my go to, catch them every day baits.
Good luck fishing, I’m off to dunk a few Senkos.
