Welcome to the IMA Emailer — October 2009 Issue – The IMA EMAILER brings you news from IMA pro staff members across the USA & worldwide.  Find all your Ima baits at BassTackleDepot.com

Whether you’re fishing in Maine, Mississippi, Missouri or Montana, it’s time for a change in the patterns. Fish that were settled into their summer haunts for several months are now itching to put the fall feed bag on and fatten up for the cold lazy days of winter.

If you’re in New England or the Pacific Northwest, the signs of autumn may be immediately apparent in the form of changing leaves and cool nights. If you’re in the Deep South, the changes may be less obvious, but either way, get ready for the bite to go off the hook.

Of particular importance to those of us here at IMA is that fall is a time when hard baits become a dominating factor. If you put them away at other times of year, shame on you, they work year-round — but right now is when they come into their prime.

For many of our pro-staff, particularly those who fish the Elite Series and the FLW Tour, their main tournament gigs for 2009 are done, but none of them have stopped fishing. Fred Roumbanis has returned to his western roots, fishing the US Open on Lake Mead and an FLW Western Series tournament on the California Delta. This week he’ll fish another one on Clear Lake. He was so excited about that tournament that during his pre-practice he didn’t even bother to get a hotel room. He kept his boat in the water and slept in it at night. Bill Lowen is staying closer to his Ohio home, but he’s still fishing any event that doesn’t bar pros.

Even though the Elite Events are finished for 2009, Fred is still hitting it hard.

Michael Murphy ended the FLW Eastern Series tour with a bang, finishing 36th on Dardanelle and 16th on Clarks Hill, pocketing a cool twenty grand for those two tournaments. In the latter event, he relied on the IMA Flit. While others reported having trouble hooking up with soft lures like Flukes, Murphy never missed a fish thanks to the Flit’s razor-sharp trebles.

Even the pros continue to learn all of the different and novel ways to fish IMA lures. Murphy’s success on the Flit at Clarks Hill was somewhat unexpected. He’d been catching some fish on a swim jig and the Skimmer, but then his co-angler keyed him into a new way to fish his signature bait.

“He was throwing a fluke, but where most people will slowly twitch it back to the boat, he was just throwing it out and reeling it back in,” Murphy recalled. The amateur was getting bites, but they were barely grabbing the tail and with a Texas-rigged soft plastic he was missing most of them.

The designer of his own bait figured out a new effective technique for the flit 120. Here he holds the Original Flit 120 and the soon to be released Flit 100.

He continued to use the old jerk-jerk-pause cadence, but then as he got ready to leave a spot things changed. “I made the same cast, same angle, one more time,” he said. “It was real windy and the wind grabbed it, so I just started reeling it back as fast as I could and halfway back a three-pounder clobbered it. It was then that I realized that I was matching the hatch, it swam exactly the same way the bluebacks were scooting around.”

So he found a new way to fish it, and one that cannot be utilized with most other jerkbaits. “I’d never looked at it as a bait just to throw and reel it in,” he admitted. “It’s made to rip. But it’s so balanced that you can reel it as fast as you want and it won’t roll. It actually swims like a herring, either a blueback or a gizzard shad.”

Whether you’re going to be fishing for five or six figure checks or just for fun, the fall and winter are great times to work on your tackle — and to purchase new gear that will increase your efficiency in the years to come. We receive dozens of emails from IMA fans every month asking what rods, reels and line the pros are using to maximize their IMA lures’ effectiveness. We sat down with some of the brightest young minds in fishing and got their answers directly from the source:

Roumba
When Fred Roumbanis and Bill Lowen tie on this deadly wake bait (either the rattling version or the silent one), they tailor their tackle to the situation at hand. It’s not a one-size-fits-all deal. They keep their rods and reels the same no matter what. In Fred’s case that means an Ardent XS1000 paired with a RoumBASStik 7’6″ Toad Stik. “It has a pretty soft tip that lets the fish load up,” he explained. For Bill it’s a 7′ Heavy rod with a Revo baitcaster, but they switch up their line to deal with the cover and other factors.

“In heavy cover I like 40-50 pound braid,” Fred said. “But in open water I prefer PLine CXX, usually from 15-20 pound test, although at Mead I went down to 10 in the clear water.”

Lowen uses his line choice to vary the Roumba’s depth. When he wants it to wake, he’ll use 20 pound Berkley Big Game, but sometimes he prefers the bait to run subsurface, so he’ll use 20 pound Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon. “A lot of people see it only as a wake bait,” he explained. “But with the right line you can get it to dive to where you can’t see it. It all depends on where in the water column the fish are.”

When you want it to wake…

Murphy likes 20 lb. Berkley Big Game mono too, to keep the bait higher in the water column, but he had a neat suggestion about rod length — go with the longest one you can get away with. He typically starts with a 7′ medium-heavy, “but I may go even longer to keep the rod higher and get the bait to walk even better,” he said.

Shaker
The Shaker gets its name because its wide wobble will rattle your fillings out when you bang it off heavy cover. Because it’s so good in the thick stuff, Fred puts it on his 7’4″ Toad Stik, spools up his Ardent with 17 lb. PLine fluorocarbon, and fishes it in places most people wouldn’t throw a jig.

Lowen, the Ohio cranking king, prefers mono. “That little bit of stretch is good and allows it to wobble more,” he said. “It’ll act more natural and with a flat-sided bait mono lets it work better.” He likes 12 pound test Big Game and a 7′ medium-heavy cranking rod.

Chesapeake Bay guide extraordinaire Karl Bunch uses 10 pound Izorline Platinum Green Copolymer with all of his crankbaits, whether they dive deep or shallow. He said it’s the ultimate cranking line and paired with a St. Croix Mojo series crankbait rod there are few tidewater battlers he can’t corral.

Using 15 lb mono, the wide wobbling Shaker did the trick for this nice CA black bass.

Murphy noted that many anglers need to use spinning tackle with most balsa baits, but the weight-transfer system of the Shaker allows baitcasting tackle if you prefer. He likes a medium or medium-light, half graphite, half glass cranking rod, and like many of his peers, this is one situation where he’ll use mono — “It holds up to the rocks a little better,” he said.

Rock N Vibe
As we’ve told you before, the Rock N Vibe lipless crankbait differs from the competition because whether you “slow roll” it or burn it back to the boat, it maintains its action. Accordingly, depending on the mood of the fish, Bunch will mix up 5:1, 6:1 and 7:1 reels, but he just about always spools them with 12 lb. Izorline.

“You can’t fish this lure too fast or too slow,” he said. “It’s important to be open-minded.”

In grass, Lowen will fish the lipless crank on 30 lb. Stren Sonic braid, which enables him to “rip it out” of the greenery, but if he’s making long casts on open water flats he’ll go to 15 pound Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon. In either case he uses a 7′ heavy rod and a Revo reel.

Roumbanis also varies his line choice depending on the presence of vegetation, but typically he won’t use braid. “In grass I like PLine fluorocarbon, usually 12 to 15 pound test, but if I’m fishing around a lot of rocks, I like the copolymer because it doesn’t wear down as fast. Fluorocarbon can have problems if it gets nicks in it.” In either case, he still uses his trusty Ardent and the RoumBASStik Swim Stik.

Murphy does them one better. He has three different line combinations. If there’s a lot of vegetation, typically he’ll use 30 lb. Spiderwire braid. In open water, he likes 15 lb. Big Game. But sometimes in vegetation, if the bass aren’t real aggressive, he uses something different: a main line of braid with an 8 foot fluorocarbon leader. “If I’m missing a lot of fish, sometimes that can help,” he said. He attaches the leader with a double uni-knot.

Flit
With the Flit, our pros usually use 10 or 12 pound line with the larger model and 8 or 10 with the new “Baby” version. At Clarks Hill Murphy used 12 to keep the lure higher in the water column. He’s tall — 6’5″ at last measurement, so he said he can get away with his 7′ medium-heavy Fenwick Techna AV rod, but if you’re shorter, you may need to go with something slightly less lengthy.

“It depends on your height,” he said. “You fish this with your rod down, so add 6 inches to your height and that’s the right length. You don’t want your rod tip to drag the water.”

He fishes this lure exclusively on fluorocarbon, in his case Spiderwire 100% Ultracast.

Skimmer
In some respects, the Skimmer is the unsung hero of the IMA line of lures, and that’s a shame because it might be the most exciting lure to fish. It walks the dog like a champ straight out of the package and its slender profile entices strikes when fat-bodied walking lures are ignored. It’s also exceptionally forgiving when it comes to tackle choices. In fact, you can get a lot out of it with a wide variety of choices.

Lowen again uses a 7′ medium-heavy rod and 12 pound Big Game for the Skimmer. Bunch uses his Mojo Topwater/Jerkbait rod with 12 to 15 pound test Izorline. Fred uses — yes, you guessed it — the Swim Stik, as he does with every IMA lure except the Roumba. “It’s a medium-heavy rod and the baits from Japan work so well out of the box that you don’t want anything that will hamper their action,” he explained. “This rod lets the Skimmer do its thing.”

Fortunately, IMA lures are very forgiving when it comes to your tackle choices — the actions and qualities are so integral to the baits’ construction that they can overcome even a slight misstep in tackle choices. But if you want to get the absolute most out of them, every possible bite even under tough circumstances, it pays to heed the advice of the IMA pros, provided above. Try out their suggestions and you’ll be surprised at how much more efficient you can be.

Until next time, keep casting!