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Tight Line Sliding The One Ounce Jig
By Jerry Puckett

November/December 1993

When popular wisdom suggested downsizing and finessing during the recent WON Las Vegas Open, Gary Yamamoto looked in the other direction and discovered a solid bite on a real heavyweight: A one ounce leadhead combined with a skirt and five-inch grub.  But, as is Gary's custom, it was not only the bait that he chose but an entire system of bait and tackle designed not only to get the bite, but to land the fish. We'll look at each piece of the Tight Line Sliding System.

Leadhead

No ordinary head; this is a football head produced for Gary that incorporates an Owner hook with its patented triple-edge cutting point. The lead shank area of the jig is much longer than normal but rather than a molded spike to hold the grub this head incorporates two recessed areas. The first securely holds a full double skirt in place. The second recess terminates in a reversed truncated cone at the hook shank.  This reversed cone allows the soft skirt and grub to be slid onto the head without damage but holds the grub body firmly once it is in place.

Skirt

For the one ounce rig Gary chose the separate double skirt rather than the one piece Hula Grub. This not only added bulk but allowed him the opportunity to customize the color combination.  For Lake Mead we were utilizing the clear/silver sparkle skirt (11-20-136).

Grub

Gary tried a variety of grub trailers including the single and double-tail "Bacarrac Special" before settling on the standard five-inch single-tail.  Although colors 150 and 135 produced fish we settled on color 187 as the top producer. This clear/black pepper grub (18-20-187) was perfect in combination with the 136 skirt.

Scent

The use of the Yamamoto Fish Attractant was a vital part of the combination.  Once the fish got the bait in their mouth they would not spit it out.  It was amazing to bring a fish up in the clear water of Lake Mead and not be able to see any part of the huge jig head or bait.  They just ate this bait.  In addition to applying the scent to the grubs and skirts in a plastic bag each night (the salt impregnated grubs will absorb the scent) we re-applied the scent every 20 to 30 casts. We also experimented with injecting the scent into the body of the grub. Although this approach seemed to work very well it was a little tedious in practice.

Rod

With the one ounce rig casting is, of course, no problem. You simply choose the zip code in which you’d like the bait to land.  Managing the heavyweight is another story. You must have sufficient rod strength to "shock" the bait to cause it to hop over the cracks and crevices. You also need a reserve of rod strength to handle the fish.  If you have extinguished the rod’s power on the bait you have nothing left for the fish. You will find that a correctly balanced seven-foot  trigger stick is mandatory with this bait. A perfect choice is the Yamamoto Grub Rod in action IV. The ultimate in sensitivity, strength and balance, this rod seems to have been made for the one ounce. Use of a lighter or poorly balanced rod will only frustrate or tire you unnecessarily.

Reel

This heavyweight would seem to call for a low speed power reel  wrong, wrong, wrong!  That approach will cost you fish  We Guarantee It! You must use a high speed reel such as a Daiwa PT-33 at 7:1 retrieve or a Daiwa TD1 at 6.3:1. Once the fish is hooked you are in a race to the surface with a bass that is in the process of going ballistic.  You cannot allow the fish to use the one ounce head as leverage. If the fish is coming up the only factor in your favor is speed.

Line

Gary swears by Mason's T-Line and chose 14-pound test for the one ounce in the relatively open cover, clear water conditions at Mead. My personal preference is Trilene XT green in 14-pound test. Either seems to combine the necessary qualities of low-stretch and abrasion resistance for this system. You might opt for heavier cover but you don’t want to unnecessarily impede the fast drop of the big bait.

Presentation

The one ounce jig is used to cover a large area in a fast and efficient manner. The jig is worked along the bottom in much the same fashion that you would slow roll a heavy spinnerbait but at a faster speed than would be possible with the spinner. At Lake Mead we were keying on chunk rock and gravel banks that sloped at about a 45-degree angle or less to a maximum target depth of about 35 feet. The majority of our fish were caught between 15 and 35 feet.  Based on the general slope of the banks we were working, these fish were about the same distance from the bank that they were deep  15 to 35 feet out.

Gary simply stood on the trolling motor at about half speed as he worked down these banks, positioning the boat about 40 to 50 feet from the bank as he moved steadily along. Quartering casts were made at about a 30-degree to 45-degree angle to the bank.  The fast dropping one ounce jig would pendulum toward the boat quickly as it closely followed the bottom contour, kicking up silt, gravel and banging into the rocky structure as it sped its way downward. Line was retrieved as necessary to maintain the tight-line slide down the bank.

When the bait would stop, the tight line and sensitive rod would let you know immediately with a resounding thump. Gary would immediately retrieve any slack and sharply snap the bait over the ledge or obstruction. Even though the bait was making a sharp jump of a couple of feet its weight would place it immediately back in touch with the bottom as it continued the tight-line slide.

If you will visualize the quartering cast to the bank and the tight-line slide down the structure as the boat is in constant motion, you can see that by the time the bait has worked down to the maximum target depth of 35 feet the line is perpendicular to the bank and the bait is beside the boat. A few fast turns on the high speed reel and you're making your next presentation.

Two anglers working this technique in a leap-frogging, staggered-cast method can absolutely vacuum up a mile of shoreline in short order. If the boat speed and length of casts are coordinated you will be making a tight-line slide at about 20 to 25-foot intervals all the way along the bank.

In the case of the Las Vegas Open we were addressing late July summer pattern fish situated from 15 to 35 feet deep. These quality fish (all two pounds plus) were active but in extremely low densities. It was rare to catch more than one from any spot and in most cases it was a long way between spots.

In a major tournament it will astound you how quickly a shallow cover bite will simply vanish into thin air. If a spot looks good to you, it also looks good to the other 200 pros and their amateur partners. The pressure on those "good-looking" spots is incredible and after the first couple of hours of day one, everything has been hammered, even on a lake the size of Mead. If you haven’t found a hideout (doubtful) you are in trouble (probable).

This thought process is what motivated Gary to seek out an efficient method to work the miles of "nothing banks."  Again, these were high quality fish by Mead standards that had seen little pressure due to their location, but you had to cover a world of shoreline to produce a limit.  Every fish that came on the one ounce jig was in the two-pound class or over. In a tournament that only took 23 pounds to place in the top 30 you can see that ten or eleven fish in three days make a check. Four out of the seven pros fishing for Team Yamamoto were on a Top Thirty pace using this technique; two fell out due to motor failures on the last day but the other two finished 16th and 24th. The pattern held and the one ounce system worked to perfection.

Now this was very tough fishing under heavily pressured tournament conditions that you may never encounter. But on the other hand, you may run into this scenario more often than you think on your home lake. Post spawn and summer pattern fish can be some of the most fickle, particularly during the late morning through early afternoon hours. When the pressure is on, the one ounce bite is frequently in place.

When working the system the bite is normally not tentative. The fish simply eat the bait. Who knows whether the skirted grub looks like a baitfish fleeing for safety or a crawfish scurrying along the bottom away from the shallows? All you know on your end of the line is that the bait gets heavy when the fish inhales it. In most cases when the fish chooses to stay down and slug it out with you, we think you’re better off not to rush the fish. Play him against steady pressure and bring him to the boat when some of the green has worn off.

One thing is certain. If your equipment is not suited to the task you will not be happy. Not only will you be fatigued but you will dump fish. Arm yourself with the tools for the job and let the Tight Line Sliding System work for you.

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