April 2009 Issue – The IMA EMAILER brings you news from IMA pro staff members across the USA and worldwide.
Anglers everywhere experience down cycles on their favorite waterways. Maybe a drought or other inclement weather conditions cause the fish population to be less than abundant. Or perhaps a shad die-off or a couple of poor spawns have limited the number of fish that are willing and able to bite. Even worse, sometimes your secret honey hole gets a reputation as a top producer and is suddenly flooded with anglers from all over the region, or even all over the country, and the added pressure causes the quality of the fishery to nosedive.
Whatever the reason, you still need to fish and you still want to have bulging livewells at the end of the day. There’s no time for excuses — life is too short to fish with subpar baits. Luckily IMA has specifically created lures aimed at dealing with these difficult conditions, and they work from coast to coast, wherever bass swim.
Our IMA pro-staffers are more than willing to fill you in on the hows and whys of fishing for pressured spring fish.
California guide Randy Pringle is on the California Delta nearly every day. When he takes a day off, it’s usually to hit one of California’s other storied bass waters, like Clear Lake. In over 20 years of fishing professionally, he has gained a reputation as an unequalled educator and spokesman for the sport. He has also gained an incredible understanding and knowledge of the finicky but often outsized bass that reside within spitting distance of his California home.
But Pringle related that this has been an atypical year on the world famous Delta: “We’re three weeks behind on the weather,” he said. “We haven’t gotten the water flow that we normally get and that has resulted in some lighter than usual tides.”
“Normally, we see a lot of 30 pound limits this time of year,” he continued. “But it’s often taking just 15 or 20 pound limits to do well so far.”
RANDY`S GO TO BAIT THIS SPRING HAS BEEN THE FLIT IN THE TENNESSEE SHAD PATTERN
He rode the Ima Flit jerkbait for a long time over the winter and spring. “It’s been a great Flit year,” he said. “When we have the types of weather changes we’ve had and the fish pull off, it’s second to none. It allows you to keep the bait in the strike zone. You can pause it at depth and the head keels itself level and that triggers a strike.”
He keeps the Flit on the deck well into the spawn, but by April his attention often turns to a small-profiled crankbait bite. He noted that the Delta is known for being a big bait testing ground, but sometimes it takes a smaller package to get even the largest predators to bite.
“We have a large population of both large fish and smaller fish and you’re trying to get as many bites as possible,” he said. “Right now, as the water starts to warm up, the fish are staging so the Ima Shaker comes into play. Especially on a high tide, you can tick the weeks with it. These fish are really protecting their spawning areas, so I usually use bluegill or crawfish patterns.”
Why the Shaker and not another flat-sided lure?
“It really has a unique wobble,” Pringle answered. “It deflects off of hard objects like rock and wood. When you pause it, it floats up rapidly out of the weeds. It has such a wide wobble that you know instantly if you’re getting down into the weeds. Your rod tip will tell you. With a lot of other crankbaits, you can’t really tell what you’ve hit.”
Even though he lives 3,000 miles away, a full country apart, Capt. Karl Bunch agreed with Pringle that it’s getting to be prime time for the Ima Shaker. The fellow educator and full-time guide recently saw his home water, the Upper Chesapeake Bay, in the national limelight when BASS held a Northern Open there. The pictures of the event showed dozens of anglers congregated in limited areas, flinging similar lures, most of them coming away with exceptionally meager catches. In many cases, anglers who caught 15 or 20 pounds one day, weighed in one or zero keepers the rest of the event. It was that tough to put 15-inch bass in the boat.
Like California, Maryland has suffered some oddball weather patterns this spring.
“It seems like every time the water gets up to 52 or 54 degrees something happens and it knocks it back to the high 40s,” Bunch said. “We shouldn’t be having these big fronts in April. So it was tough up here. It’s like the fish are waiting at the starting gate and we’re teasing them. They want to come up and spawn.”
Like Pringle, he’s put the Ima Shaker in his clients’ hands to put keeper fish in the boat when others are catching only shorts or nothing at all. He still uses the Rock N Vibe to cover large expanses of grass flats, but when he finds heavy timber or channel edges, sometimes the Shaker is all he can get them to bite. In the murky water that has resulted from abundant rain, he likes either chartreuse with a blue back or the Plemmons color.
“It works. That’s all there is to say,” he exclaimed. “It has such a wide wobble that sometimes my clients will ask me if it’s running right. But these fish have so much area to move around in, it’s almost like a secondary search bait.”
THE SHAKER`S WIDE WOBBLING ACTION HAS OPENED UP A LOT OF ANGLER`S EYES THIS SPRING.
He hopes that things will “settle up” in the next few weeks and expects that when that happens, “it should all bust out at once.” Then the Roumba will become his primary search tool, but until then he’s confident that he has something that can distinguish him from the crowds.
Bill Lowen and Fred Roumbanis come from different ends of the country and from very different home waters, but the one thing they share is their exposure to tough competition. Bill calls the Ohio River home — it’s probably the stingiest of the major tournament fisheries from coast to coast. He’s developed a keen sense for what makes a bait stand out for fish that can name the size, model and serial number of almost every lure in the book. Fred now calls Oklahoma home, but he was raised fishing the monster bass waters of northern California, storied hawg factories like Clear Lake and the Delta. Those bodies of water may be prolific producers of monster limits, but they’re also home to some of the best local competition in the country, so winning is never easy.
Now they’re both on the Elite Series, fishing against the crème de la crème of the nation’s best professional anglers — and they’re still kicking butt, thanks in part to Ima lures.
After three events, Lowen is 16th in the Angler of the Year standings, the exact same position he was in after three tournaments last year. Over the remainder of the season he actually managed to improve his standing. He moved all the way up to 11th. That same climb would be especially welcome this year, when all but the top twelve anglers will call it a season after eight events. The remaining twelve will fish for all the marbles in two no-entry fee tournaments.
Lowen’s success dates back to the end of last season. Combined with the first three events of this year, he’s cashed a check in six straight Elite Series tournaments. Last year, when he had not yet signed on with Ima, he was already using the baits to catch bigger than average fish, but now that he’s on the team he’s depending on them.
BILL LOWEN HOLDS A HEFTY BASS HE GOT WHILE TOSSING THE ROUMBA
He used the Roumba at all three events this year. Most recently, at Wheeler, where he finished 25th, it was part of his arsenal in practice but played less of a role during the tournament. But at Amistad, where he finished 33rd, and at Dardanelle, where he was 17th, it was a critical part of his game-day strategy.
He’s seen every crankbait under the sun, from mass-produced models down to the garage baits that his home state of Ohio is famous for producing. What makes the Roumba so effective? “It comes through cover like no other crankbait,” he said. “Particularly aquatic vegetation, like water willow and lily pads. It still amazes me.”
We’ll share some more of the Ima pros’ Roumba secrets next month, but for now Lowen did want fellow anglers to know that he’s throwing it on a 7′ heavy-action All-Pro APX Series rod and 15-20 lb. test Trilene Big Game monofilament. He doesn’t want to give all of his secrets away quite yet, largely because he expects it to be part of his successful tournament at Guntersville in a few weeks. It should also be deadly at the Mississippi River in Iowa later this year, as should the Ima Shaker.
Like Bill, Fred Roumbanis is within the Classic cut after three events, sitting in 33rd place overall. He started off with a check at Amistad(44th) and recently stumbled a bit at Wheeler (with a not-all-that-miserable 69th), but in between he unlocked the code at a difficult tournament on Lake Dardanelle in AK and cashed an 8th place check. The Ima lures, particularly the Flit rip bait, have been key search tools for him during practice. He also filmed an episode of ESPN 2’s “Day on the Lake” television show where the Flit showed its colors as a true fish-catching machine.
IT`S HARD TO BELIEVE, BUT THE FLIT GETS DOWN TO 8 FEET.
“It has helped me tremendously,” he said. “Especially if they’re on the beds, even if they won’t bite it, they’ll come up and chase it.” Accordingly, he fully expects it to play a role at this week’s sight fishing slugfest at Virginia’s Smith Mountain Lake. While he said on the first morning of the tournament that he had nearly 50 beds marked on his GPS, consensus wisdom is that it’ll take some hefty pre-spawners or fish that aren’t fully locked down to have a top showing in this event.
But once the spawn ends, Fred won’t put the Flit away. “I have it tied on and ready to go year-round,” he said.
While he’s not looking past the next few events, Fred is particularly stoked to hit the Mississippi River near Ft. Madison, Iowa, later this year. It promises to be a backwater brawl, and while flipping and frogging will be key, he also believes that his signature bait, the Roumba, will prove to be a critical element in his success, and his ticket to another Classic appearance. Again, we’ll report more on the Roumba next month, including some tweaks, tricks and new models that you’ll need to add to your arsenal — in the mean time, keep on cranking.
ROUMBANIS WILL BE RUNNING AN IMA WRAPPED BOAT FOR THE `09 SEASON.
