"Out with the old, in with the new." That saying doesn't always work for today's bass anglers. Some like to keep that old stuff close by, because they've learned there are times it can come in handy.
One angler whom I know keeps at least some of those tools from bygone days at the ready is Don Mc. We swap emails from time to time, and he provides fishing reports, as well as blog items like I received from him yesterday, including the above photo. What you see in the photo is a 1979 Garcia 5500C (first thumbar reel), a 1983 Fenwick Eagle II five-and-a-half-foot casting rod (6 power), and a 1983 Strike King grass frog.
Don Mc fished this rig last week on Northwest. "It was scary using mono," he admitted, "but I survived many years on it. Actually caught four and missed two," he continued. "When the action started to heat up a bit, I switched to the newer stuff (better frog and newer tackle, including heavy braid)."
As Don Mc went on to note, he plans to fish a Johnson spoon, a devil's horse, and a Bill Plumber super frog...all late 70s baits...for his next trip to Back Bay. "Gonna do it just for the heck of it," he explained, adding, "I think there should be at least one tournament a year with the requirement that everyone use baits that are 30-plus years old. The three earlier mentioned baits won a lot of tournaments in Back Bay during the late 70s and early 80s."
Someone who shares Don Mc's affinity for the tools of bygone days is Ken Duke, managing editor of Fishing Tackle Retailer, The Business Magazine of the Sportfishing and Marine Industry. As he has written, "There's a new generation of bass out there that hasn't seen the 'old stuff.'"
According to Duke, "Bass anglers have a penchant for what's new, a lust for the latest, and a thirst for what's fashionable in bass lures. "When was the last time you heard about a bass tournament being won on a single-spin spinnerbait?" he asked. "Did bass stop striking single spins all of a sudden? Of course not. But anglers stopped buying and using them. They traded them in for square-billed crankbaits, bladed jigs, and other lures du jour.
"You might think fish are fickle, but they have nothing on us, and that makes no sense," continued Duke. "Bass have short lives and even shorter memories. If you last caught a bass using a Johnson Silver Minnow 20 years ago, rest assured that no bass in your state today is old enough to have witnessed it. But those same bass have the same genetic makeup that made the Silver Minnow a bass slayer almost 100 years ago and that keep it effective today."
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