New Worms Great Bet For Big Bass
May 26, 2009
Part 1
I watched as my partner in the bow of the boat came up on point.
His shoulders tensed as he leaned forward and dropped the tip of his rod. He hesitated for a heartbeat or two and then snapped his rod up and to the left. “I got him!” he hollered as his rod jerked down.
“You ain’t got him yet, partner,” I cautioned. “The time to say that is after you get him in the boat.”
My friend didn’t pay the slightest attention to what I had to say. He was too busy battling the largest bass he’d ever had on the end of his line. I halfway expected to hear what he said when he finally got the fish close enough to get a look at it.
“That fish has gotta weigh at least 10-pounds,” he yelled. “I’ve hooked salmon twice that size in Alaska that didn’t give me this much of a fight.” When the guide got his net under the fish and hoisted it into the boat he was still convinced he’d nailed a double digit largemouth. He hadn’t. His fish was indeed a dandy but it was a couple pounds shy of double digits.
My partner that morning was Marion Sundwall, of Nampa, Idaho. Marion is an experienced angler. He fishes hard in Idaho and he’s even made non-guided trips into the wilderness of Alaska. But my pal Marion had never before fished where the bass often run big.
He hadn’t, that is, until I asked him if he’d like to accompany me on a trip to El Salto Lake in Mexico in late April. Unless I miss my guess, Alaska isn’t going to see nearly as much of him as it has in the past. Why? Because he’ll be heading down south of the border for another whack at those El Salto Lake bass. Like so many who’ve been there before---the poor guy’s hooked.
I’m not really guessing when I make that comment. The folks who operate fabled Anglers Inn Lodge at El Salto will tell you the same thing. The last time I checked their return customer rate was running right at 80 per cent. This sort of thing doesn’t happen unless you love the experience and that you’re one of us bass fishing nuts who often get as deeply hooked as the fish we’re after.
I can also say that because I remember my own reaction the first time I had a chance to stay at Anglers Inn while sampling the wondrous El Salto Lake bass fishing. It brought reality to what I’d only dreamt about before. I couldn’t wait to get back. And though I’ve been back a number of times since that first trip, I still have the same urge to do it all over again before I’m 20 miles on the way home from an Anglers Inn visit.
I had a second reason for wanting to get back to El Salto on this latest trip. It was to be my first opportunity to try a couple of the latest additions to the Yamamoto lineup of plastic worms. I had more than one darn good reason for wanting to let those El Salto fish get a look at them.
The recently introduced Yamamoto products I’m talking about are the new 12-inch Curly Tail and 10-inch Kut Tail worms. I’d already heard rumbles about how some of the anglers who had been among the first to try these new worms had boated some dandy fish. I figured that if there was a better place to try out big plastic worms than El Salto Lake I’d not discovered it in more than a half century of fishing and writing about it. Like I said, I had ample reasons for feeling as I did.
Yet another reason was I’d used a 10-inch worm myself to catch my own largest bass ever. That fish was a few ounces shy of 12-pounds and came out of El Salto Lake. Before I put that fish in the boat one evening, my partner in the front of the boat and our guide who was fishing out of the stern had also caught bass of more than 10-pounds and they were also throwing 10-inch worms.
There was yet another reason why I knew going in just how productive big worms could sometimes be at El Salto Lake. Some years ago I did a feature story about my friend Les Melton, of West Virginia. Few bass fishermen have been to El Salto Lake more often than Les. He’s a tremendous bass angler and he has proven that over and over in his Anglers Inn visits, including tournaments that have been held there.
The story I wrote was about catches Les made on a late May El Salto Lake trip. In a five day period he boated 27 bass of 10-pounds or more. Two of those 27 fish were 15-pounders. And here’s something that got my attention big time: Les told me 90 per cent of the bass making up that tremendous catch were caught on 10-inch worms.
You can see why I figured throwing those big new Yamamoto worms at those El Salto Lake whoppers would be a good way to go. The clincher, of course, as countless anglers from all over the world have long since discovered, is that day in and day out you’re simply not going to find more productive plastic lures than those carrying the secret blend of ingredients to be found in the Gary Yamamoto plastic bait lineup.
Did that new 12-inch Curly Tail and the 10 Kut Tail live up to expectations? If you’re headed to where the bass run big, you better catch Part 2 of this story. I think you’ll find it of keen interest.