My Senko Has Gone A Little Wacky!

For the better part of ten years now the Senko or some form of a soft stickworm has been a staple in my bass fishing repatoire.

It catches cold front bass, summer bass, staging & bedding bass and fall schooling bass.

You can throw it shallow or deep, flip it, deadstick it or twitch it.

I’ve caught fish with it drop-shotting, carolina rigging and texas rigging. Basically, if you put it on a hook and throw it in the water it’ll catch bass.

However over the past 4 years I’ve been fishing it almost exclusively one particular way and that’s the “WACKY-RIG” way.

For years I texas rigged my senko and caught tons of bass.

I knew of the wacky-rig but I was doing so well texas rigging it I didnt see the need to bother changing. Besides I didn’t believe that hooking the bait through the middle could catch me anymore bass than my standard rig would. The whole idea I thought to wacky rigging was to get the worm to fall horizontally through the water instead of nose first like traditional texas rigged plastics.

Since soft plastic stickworms did that on a texas rig anyway I figured there wasn’t a reason to do it. Maybe with a trick worm or a strait tail but with all the salt in my Senko it fell perfectly horizontal without the hook in the middle of the bait.

Boy was I WRONG!

I began to realize the value of the wacky when I fished a club tournament on a small pond in Delaware called Waggamons.

Myself and a few other boats had located a big school of bass out in the middle of the pond on some brush piles dropped on the old creek channel. This is a very small spot on a small pond so you were able to see every move they made down to the color of the fleck in their Senko. We all were throwing senkos up on a flat and working to and down the edge of the channel where there were 6 big brush piles in about 8 ft of water.

The Senko was the deal.That’s what I caught them on in practice and every angler in the top 5 caught them on a Senko or Dinger.

The anglers I was competing against were locals and fished this and other small ponds like it in southern Delaware almost exclusively.

I caught 1 in the first 20 minutes on the spot and every other boat had a limit. I was working the bait in the same cadence, at the same speed, same angle and even the same color.

In fact we all were using light line on spinning reels as well. After an hour I had 3 bass and the other boats had been culling for a half hour. What was the difference…………..You got it… wacky rigging!!!!

I changed and immediately got bit and within an hour I had culled to a 13lb bag that got me 3rd place.

Since then I’ve done the same thing to other anglers. Sometimes competitors, other times to friends in the boat with me who refused to change their texas rig.

I’m telling you this technique works and it seems like the tougher the fishing gets the more it works. As far as tackle I like the weedless wacky rig hook that Gamakatsu makes but any small (2) hook works. I throw it on 8 lb flurocarbon on a 6 1/2 ft M action spinning rod( ST CROIX) with a quality spinning reel (Shimano Stradic).

Rigging it is simple, you just hook it in the middle of the bait. In one side and out the other. As far as fishing it throw it out and let it sink. The only real difference in working it from a texas rigged senko is instead of lifting up to move it , you give it little twitches to the side with your rod. That makes both ends of the tail quiver like crazy and they can’t take it.

So give it a try and you will be pleasantly surprised at how many bass you’ll catch. I PROMISE YOU THIS TECHNIQUE REALLY WORKS BETTER THAN THE TRADITIONAL WAYS!!!!!!!!!!!

StevevonBrandt Big Bass World Champ/NAFC Hall Of Fame angler

Justin Riley Breaks Maryland State Record For Largemouth!

If you could pick the conditions under which to catch a new state record fish, you’d be hard pressed to top the real-life set of circumstances under which Justin Riley broke Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay largemouth bass mark.

For starters, the Woodbine, Md., angler was fishing with his father, Ed. For another thing, he was fishing a team tournament, so there were plenty of witnesses, a set of scales nearby and money on the line. Finally, it was under super-tough conditions that few would have picked to produce a trophy bass.

January 26th started slowly for the Rileys. They had decided to fish a section of the river called “the Spoils” and found their favorite spot covered with ice. Relying on their boat to break up the thin sheet of ice and the river’s currents to carry it away, they soon had water to fish, but nothing was biting.

Justin realized the most productive spot in the area — that key spot within the spot —was still covered by ice, so he backed their boat into the ice to break it up.
“I was looking at my electronics and saw some fish on it as we backed into the ice,” he said. “When we pulled forward, I pitched my bait (a 1/2-ounce Bass Pro Shops XPS Lazer Blade in chartreuse and lime) back to the spot and let it fall to the bottom.”

Special to Bassmaster.com/Clifford Magnus
Justin and his father, Ed Riley, landed a limit that weighed better than 26 pounds to win the tournament.
Riley lifted and dropped the blade bait twice, then let it sit still on the bottom. That’s when the big bass decided to make a meal of it.

“She picked it up off the bottom, and I set the hook,” Riley said. “At first I wasn’t sure it was a bass, but after several minutes she surfaced and turned so I could see the lateral line. Even then I had no idea how big she was.”

With Ed Riley manning the net, Justin led the fish to the boat. She came aboard at about 8:15 a.m.
“I still didn’t know I had a record fish,” Justin said. “I had caught a nine-pounder from the river a couple of years before and knew this fish was much bigger but didn’t know how much bigger.”
It didn’t help that their on-board scale was malfunctioning in the cold or that it didn’t register weights over 10 pounds. So, with a very big bass in the livewell, the Rileys kept fishing.
And they proceeded to fill out a tournament limit that weighed better than 26 pounds. It was good enough for the win and, naturally, Justin’s lunker took big bass honors.

Special to Bassmaster.com/Clifford Magnus
Riley at the tournament scales.
On the tournament scales, Riley’s bass weighed 11-9, but they weren’t certified. Once he realized the fish might exceed the state record, Justin and his dad went looking for some certified scales. They found them at a UPS shipping center where the bass weighed an official 11.18 pounds.

For most trophy catches, the story would end there. The fish would either be taken to a taxidermist or released in the waters from which it came, but the Rileys contacted the Bass Pro Shops store in Hanover, Md., and asked if they’d be interested in the fish.
They were, and after an hour-long drive to the store, the Rileys and store manager Aaron Frazier spent the next three hours gradually warming the water the bass was in to the same temperature as the store quarantine tank — a 35 degree difference!
After a quarantine period, visitors should be able to view the state record in the store’s aquarium.

Technically, although Riley’s catch is the biggest largemouth ever certified in Maryland, it’s not the freshwater record. Because his fish was caught in tidal waters, Riley’s bass is the Chesapeake Bay (or tidal waters) record for the state. The previous tidal waters record was caught in 1975 from the Pocomoke River and weighed 9-1. The Maryland freshwater record largemouth weighed 11-2 (about an ounce less than Riley’s bass) and was taken from a farm pond in 1993.

Justin Riley is no stranger to tournament competition or fishing success. For three years he fished the Bassmaster Opens series before an automobile accident sidelined him in 2007. Now he’s ready to get back on the trail and try to qualify for fishing’s big time, the Bassmaster Elite Series.

“My dream is to become a professional bass fisherman,” Riley says.
In the meantime, he’s pretty happy with his state record.

Angler: Justin Riley, Woodbine, Md.Date: Jan. 26, 2008Species: Largemouth BassWeight: 11.18 poundsLocation: Potomac River, Md. (“The Spoils”)Bait: Bass Pro Shops XPS Lazer Blade (chartreuse and lime)Rod/Reel: Shimano Curado and medium-heavy Shimano casting rodLine: 12-pound-test Berkley Big GameDetails: The bass hit at about 16 feet deep on a drop that fell from 11 to 19 feetStatus: Maryland state record for tidal waters

To read more about this and other bass fishing stories and participate in great tackle contests visit BASSFISHINGSTORIES at http://delawaretrophybass.com

StevevonBrandt Big Bass World Champ/NAFC Hall Of Fame angler