It was a rare sight to see a guy who spends 99% of the season on his boat telling his clients where to cast standing in the surf on a perfect late-May morning, but for anyone who knows Capt. Corey Pietreszek, he has proven himself as a master of the artificial bait. He was casting a yellow Tattoo Sea Spook, the big one, and looking over at his bait while working my own, I began to see that my lure looked incredibly fake.
He worked the bait in bursts that varied in intensity and length. His first few feet of the retrieve were erratic, drawing attention to the bait and from there he worked it with long pauses interrupted by slow swims and erratic, frantic bursts.
We didn't catch much that morning. But the next day, was rainy and I had the day off. I went down there with my leadfoot spook, (the only big spook I had handy at the time) and began working it with the image of a dying bunker in my head. I caught fish until my arms hurt, nothing huge mostly 14-17 pounds with a few 18-20.
There were two eye opening experiences that day, #1 probably 80% of the fish hit the plug while it was standing motionless, and I believe that your spook should sit flat on the water, nose slightly above the tail, not up and down like a pencil. #2 that when a bass nudged the bait or swirled on it, whipping the rod down toward the water while zipping a fast crank on the reel would make the plug leap, 1-3 leaps in succession followed by a short pause... BAM! I was able to recreate this scenario many times during the season, in the canal and all along the south coast. I never broke 30 on a spook this year, but I had my share of 15-25 pounders.
I always worked my spooks to look alive, never in a rehearsed pattern, but the chages in intensity, pauses and leaps, took it to the next level for me.
Why'd you have to make me tell that story, that was like writing a Penthouse Letter for fishermen, now I'll be staring at my rods all day frustrated!
Is it spring yet?
-Dave
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