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Ben Matsubu Squares Bill to Win BASS Wildcard
Story by Russ Bassdozer

At 44 years of age, a veteran of 59 BASS events since 1999, Ben Matusbu has placed in the money 57% of the time (34 out of 59 events), with one second place, three third place and eight top ten BASS finishes.

This past weekend, Matsubu "squared the bill" by winning first place in the CITGO Bassmaster Elite Series Wildcard tournament on Harris Chain of Lakes, a chain of ten interconnected lakes in Leesburg, Florida from November 16th to 18th (a three day event).

"Ninety-nine point two percent of this event, I used the Lucky Craft Rick Clunn Crankbait, the RC2.5, made exclusively for Bass Pro Shops. The chartreuse one with a black back," says winner Ben Matsubu, one of Team Yamamoto's top pros. "I just could not put that crank down. During practice, it proved phenomenal. I just kept on fishing it through all three days of competition," chuckles Ben.

It was a good choice. Sticking with the square-billed crankbait earned Ben Matsubu his first BASS first place finish. He received paid entry fees (a $55,000 value) to the 2007 Elite Series, and Ben was awarded a Triton boat package valued at nearly $50,000.

"I learned a lot from Tommy Martin about how to fish square-billed crankbaits. It is a lost art. The whole key is the season. There are two strong seasons for square-billed crankbaits. Late summer and early fall. The months of August, September, October and November, the square-billed crankbait is a powerhouse. Few anglers have the gumption to use it the right way (meaning all day), however. To find the kind of fish you need is not easy. You have to commit the whole day, possibly the whole practice period to fishing the square-bill only. Especially if there are a lot of laydown logs, grass beds and standing timber in shallow water, you've got to commit to covering many miles of water with the square-bill. You may go down a mile stretch of bank, casting to every laydown, tree or grass patch to get one fish, then go down the next two miles of shoreline with not one hit until you find a small group of bass where you fill a limit in minutes. Lake Eustis, one of the connected lakes on the Harris Chain, I square-billed the entire bank of the lake. It took the entire day. Lake Eustis is not a big lake, but it still took the entire day. I fished down one, two, three, four miles of the bank with not even a strike, until I got into a 1/4 mile stretch that had fish. In that 1/4 mile stretch, the big fish spot was not even fifty yards long. Maybe forty yards is all. Mowing down the miles, finding that big fish spot, that's what square-billing is all about. If you catch just one fish, there's no reason to stop. Just keep going. That's what Tommy Martin taught me. What you want is to all of a sudden come upon a group of fish as they are starting feeding. Most every day of the Wildcard event, I had a four to five pounder as I went down that one little forty yard stretch of bank. They had a lot of small bluegill spilling out of their mouths that they regurgitated when trying to throw the crankbait," says Ben Matsubu.

"If you are not catching anything, that's no reason to put down the square-bill. Just keep going until you find a group of active feeding fish sooner or later. It may take all day until you do."

"Takahiro Omori is probably the number one guy to throw the square-bill. Obviously, he won the Classic on it, in the last few minutes, on practically back-to-back-to-back casts. Takahiro fishes the square-bill often, and locates a lot of fish with it. The key is to put the trolling motor on high and keep going. Don't stop," says Matsubu. "That's what I learned from fishing with those guys (Tommy Martin and Takahiro)."

"On big lakes, it's different. You target the backs, creeks, anything back there that's a piece of cover - a laydown, clumps of grass, cuts in back of coves. You can go to the very back or the back half of one area and catch them, shoot to the back of the next one, don't catch anything... jump to the back of the second area, nothing... get to the back of the third area, nothing again... until finally, in the back of the fourth or fifth or sixth place, you cast into a pod of feeding fish."

"There could be an area with 500 standing trees, and you must fish it all down, says Matsubu. "It's very, very tough but the dividends are incredible when you cast to the 501st tree that has a group of feeding fish on it. It's all contingent upon the right time of the year (late summer and early fall). You can go four hours with only one fish, but just keep going until all of a sudden you hit that one stretch that is amazing, and you load the livewell."

"The big Yamamoto Kut-Tail Worm was also key to my Wildcard win, even though I only had two bites on it the entire tournament," Ben admits. "On the one bite, I pulled in a 4-1/2 pounder on the Kut-Tail. The other fish, bit the square-bill first. I threw the crankbait back in that little cut four of five more times until I had another hit, which I felt was from the same fish, possibly a big one. I put the square-bill down and threw in there with the Kut-Tail Worm. This big bass wails it right away. I missed that bite too, but now I knew for sure that there was an aggressive big fish in there. When I got up to that same spot the next day, I threw in there ten times with the square-bill until I caught that five-pounder. So although I missed that bite on the Kut-Tail, it helped pinpoint that big bass for me, and I caught it the next day," beams Ben.

"What the bass were doing during the Wildcard tournament, they were moving into little cuts in the grass beds. It was a perfect tournament for me, and the RC2.5 worked absolutely awesome. The retrieve is the key with the RC2.5. The biggest mistake most people make is to retrieve it slowly through the grass. At a slow speed, all the RC2.5 will do is wobble methodically. Nor can you burn it in rapidly. It's not stable enough to burn it. At the correct, moderate speed, the RC2.5 will wiggle, wiggle and then veer off or track to one side or another. The term for this is that the crankbait is searching or hunting. Too slow and all it does is wiggle. Too fast and it flips out. Just the right speed and it acts like an unsteady sailor sauntering from one side to the other on a ship's deck in high seas," laughs Ben.

"One weakness of the RC2.5 is you can't throw it into and expect it to come out of a tree or laydown every time. However, another square-bill that does come out of trees easily is Bagley's Balsa B2, which is made of buoyant balsa wood. So when it starts to get hemmed up in a tree, just stop reeling so the Balsa B2 pops up to the surface, above the snaggy spot. Since the RC2.5 is made of plastic, it dives faster and does not float back up as fast. I had also tried the smaller RC1.5 and bigger RC3.5. How I settled on the RC2.5 is it perfectly matched the size of bluegill being spit up by the bass."

"In the Wildcard event on the Harris Chain, I was not fishing tress, however. I was fishing shallow eel grass. In closer to the bank, the eel grass was practically up to the surface, which was about where I would land the RC2.5 on each cast. I keep the rod tip high (about 11 o'clock) to start. After 3 or 4 cranks of the handle, I begin to gradually lower the rod tip as I figure out the depth above the grass. As the RC2.5 swam out further, and the tops of the eel grass dropped off deeper, I'd drop the rod tip lower, causing the crankbait to submerge deeper. Some fish hit closer to the bank, some halfway back, others right next to the boat. There was a critical spot out further on the grass beds, where the tops of the eel grass dropped lower suddenly and disappeared under water. The RC2.5, being plastic, I could get that to dive down faster at that critical breakline in the eel grass. In comparison, the Bagley Balsa B did not dive down as quickly at that depth change line in the grass beds. So I felt the RC2.5 was a bit better in this particular application, to suddenly dig it right down to the deep eel grass. The bass were grabbing the crankbait right in the grass. Many had mouths full of eel grass" reveals Matsubu.

"Occasionally, you'll need to rip the square-bill out of the grass. In this kind of situation, I use a medium action fiberglass seven foot stick. Because of the grabby grass, it's not as limber a stick as I would use in open water crankbaiting. On the other hand, it's not as stiff a glass rod as I use to rip Rat-L-Traps in grass."

"I used 16 pound test clear Sugoi fluorocarbon line. I did lose one 5-1/2 pound bass. I think it had somehow cut the line on its gill plate possibly. Otherwise, I can't explain how the line broke. I switch the hooks out on the RC2.5 to two size #2 Mustad Triple Grip trebles. I put a red one on the belly, and black nickel on the tail. I think both these finishes (the red and black nickel) are somehow stronger than the bronze Triple Grip hooks. The bronze ones seem to bend more easily."

"I like that the Triple Grips are long in the shank. That seems to get the hook points further away from a crankbait's body, out into the clear where they are more apt to snare a striking bass. The Triple Grips are very easy to go in, but far harder to get out. They do grip and hold hooked bass better than standard treble hooks. There's no doubt about that."

"One other thing I did was mark the very end of each grassbed, the outside points of each grass bed or isolated grass clumps. I use a Lowrance LMS-480M unit up front, and the Lowrance LMS-332C in the cockpit. For 2007, I plan to switch to dual LCX-26C-HD's front and back. During practice, I waypointed the tips of every piece of grass I planned to fish. This paid off big come tournament time. There was a gusty gale wind that made it hard to fish, and impossible to find these choice spots on the spots if I had not marked them precisely with the electronics," explains BASS Wildcard winner, Ben Matsubu.