Senkos Take Judy Wong to
WBT Title
Feb. 23, 2008
By Steve Price
If you’re looking for a different way to rig a Senko, talk to Judy Wong.
Wong, a Yamamoto Pro Staff angler from Many, LA, captured the 2008 Women’s Bassmaster Tour championship on Lake Keowee, SC, with a three-day total of 15 bass weighing 26 pounds, 10 ounces, nearly all of them caught on Senkos.
Fishing a large, warm-water discharge cove known as the Hot Hole, Wong rigged her five-inch Senko on a ¾ ounce football head jig with the hook embedded and gently bumped it along the bottom in 30 feet of water. Her best color for the technique was green pumpkin.
“I had never rigged a Senko that way,” she laughed later, “and I really don’t fish a football head jig much, either, but when I went to American Rodsmiths to pick up some rods for the tournament, they told me about the technique. Given the conditions we were facing, I decided to try it.”
The Senko/jig combo produced a four-pound spotted bass the first morning, anchoring her five-bass, 12-13 catch that put Wong into the lead. She followed with successive catches of 7-8 and 6-5, as the weather changed daily with conditions that included cold rain, wind, dense fog and bright sun. Water temperature in the Hot Hole, however, remained near 70 degrees, while temperatures in the rest of the lake hovered in the 50 degree range.
Winner of successive WBFA titles in 2001 and 2002, Wong also fished five-inch Senkos wacky-style when she encountered schooling bass chasing blueback herring, the lake’s primary forage species, near the surface. She used a 4/0 Daichii hook and occasionally a split shot if the discharge current was strong, and just twitched the lure as it drifted in the current. Her most productive colors were watermelon/red and silver/metal flake.
“There were a lot of baitfish in the area and I wanted a lure that would imitate a dying shad,” Wong explained, “and whenever I encounter those conditions, a wacky-rigged Senko is one of my first choices. The bass usually hit it right away.
“When the fish weren’t that active, I fished deeper with the jig.”
She used 14-pound Triple Fish fluorocarbon line with the wacky rig and 20-pound for the jig/Senko combo.
Wong beat last year’s WBT champion, Pam Martin-Wells, by just six ounces. Martin-Wells finished with 26-4, while Dianna Clark, the leader after day two, fell to third with 23-15.
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