Spoonin' For Spots
By Mike Bucca
Southern Staff Writer
December 23, 2008
Spoon fishing is either feast or famine - you either love it or you hate it. But regardless of how you feel, spoon fishing is by far one of the best tactics for catching deep and/or suspended fish.
Most of my spoon fishing revolves around using my Humminbird electronics in extreme detail. In fact, most good spoon anglers are experts in using their electronics. Over time there’s just something about seeing your spoon dropping and falling and then watching a fish eat it that gives you supreme confidence in your sonar abilities. By spending time on the front deck with your sonar and spoon rod in hand you will quickly be able to decipher things like plankton line, air bubbles, and differences between different species of fish, thermocline and structure.
In the grand scheme of things all spotted bass anglers need to be proficient with their sonar and become extremely versatile when compared to the hard core largemouth anglers. If you aren’t comfortable at targeting deep or suspended mid-level fish you will find, sooner or later (probably sooner before later), a situation where you wish you’d spent more time learning about it. I have always believed that if you're not proficient in targeting mid-level fish you will always be fighting an uphill battle because I strongly believe the biggest of spots spend the majority of their life in a suspended state.
Spoonin’ Advantages
There are a few advantages that spoon fishing has over many other deep water type baits. The biggest advantage is the profile and spoon weight. The simple fact that a spoon has a similar profile as our most common baitfish makes it very appealing to bass. And, the fact that you can so easily vary your profile by going smaller and bigger in size makes it that much more appealing in the “match the hatch” game. 
The weight of the spoon is in itself an advantage. I can’t tell you the number of times that I have been casting at the shoreline with another style of bait and looked down at my sonar to see a school of fish under the boat. With a 1-ounce spoon you can get down to the level of the fish before they disperse. Even after the fish disperse you can many times call the fish back under your sonar cone with the initial drop of your spoon. So, in essence, the faster you get your spoon down to the fish the better your chances are of catching the particular fish that you are seeing on your graph.
Another great aspect of a spoon is the action that it generates. There isn’t any other lure that I know of that can emit as much erratic action as a spoon does when in 30-feet of water. Ask any person that has fished for spots for a while if a spot isn’t a sucker for baits with extreme action. Granted, spots can be extremely fickle, but they are extremely curious fish that have a passion for lures that emit a lot of action.
The next time you get a chance take a handful of spoons to a swimming pool and have a buddy jig a spoon up and down while you are under water and you will be amazed at how many spoons have almost no action while others can glide as much as 4 to 5 feet on a normal lift and drop.
I think spoons that glide on the drop are better than those that wobble on the drop. I like to take my chances of making that spoon glide right into a spot’s strike zone (face). One thing you will notice is you do snag quite a few fish while fishing with spoons. This tells you a little about the curiosity of spotted bass. They are always investigating and trying to “pick-pocket” lures of all types.
Spoonin’ Situations
There are several situations where I would recommend using a spoon. In my boat I have a spoon rod ready at ALL TIMES. A spoon is just too dangerous of a technique not to have one tied on.
Like I mentioned earlier much of my spoon fishing revolves around sight fishing with my sonar and side imaging. There are situations where I am working down a shoreline with various baits and I look down at my graph and find schools of fish under the boat and I quickly grab my spoon rod and drop it down to the level of the fish.
There are other situations where I will hunt for these schools of fish with my Humminbird 1197SI equipped with side imaging capabilities. Without getting into a side imaging infomercial the side imaging units put out by Humminbird are the best thing to happen to a fish finding unit since sliced bread. The side imaging makes finding concentrations of fish not only much easier but ten times faster to find them as well. You can literally cover a 720 ft span (360 ft either side of the boat) in one sweep while with traditional sonar it would take hours to zig and zag up a creek arm. With sonar with side imaging capabilities you can cover that same creek arm in a matter of one pass through an area. For more info on side imaging and how it works visit www.sideimaging.com. 
Basically what you are looking for while using your side imaging is schools of fish on either side of the boat. Once you find them you can GPS them with a waypoint off to the side of the boat then double back with the boat with your mapping screen split screened with your sonar viewable. As you approach the waypoint you are trying to re-find those fish that you just marked. Once I get them showing up on the graph I present them a spoon at the appropriate level.
Many times you can catch multiple fish out of one school depending on the size of the school and how fast you are at releasing a caught fish. The key here is speed. Once you catch a fish you need to be extremely quick in getting that fish unhooked and either throwing it back or put into the livewell and get your spoon back down to the fish before the school moves on or disperses. I strongly recommend having pliers very accessible to speed up this process. I keep several pair in my boat with one pair in my back pocket to speed up the release process.
Pliers also help out when you get into the schools of spiny-finned hybrids and white bass. With those fish it’s extremely easy to get finned and/or get a hook lodged into your hand or other body part. Been there and I got the scar to prove it. There are times when you can catch fish out of one school for hours, but it varies from school to school. Sometimes you just have acres of fish and you can catch them as fast as you can drop the spoon - other times it’s a one or two fish per school.
Spoonin’ the Piles
One of my favorite ways to fish a spoon is in brush piles. I know quite a few of you are shaking your head, thinking I’ve gotta be nuts and have a very generous spoon sponsor. Rest assured; I have neither. When most anglers fish a brush pile they drag a worm or a jig over the brush which in its own right is a very effective technique. The problem with that technique is you won’t catch the fish that are suspended over the pile - remember that big spots like to suspend!
So what’s the secret to not staying hung up and investing a small fortune in spoons? The key is to fish the brush vertically. Once you find the brush or timber on your sonar, drop the spoon down to the top of the brush or timber and starting jigging vertically. If you hang up all you do is take advantage of the weight of the spoon. The weight of the spoon itself acts as its own lure retriever.
By shaking the spoon on a semi slack line very rapidly you are making the spoon bounce around vigorously and eventually the spoon’s weight ends up dislodging itself. This process can also attract a lot of fish. However the second you start casting a spoon at brush and not working vertically you will surely hang up due to the angle of your cast. To dislodge the spoon you will have to get directly over the spoon and repeat the rod shaking process described above.
The advantages of fishing a spoon over and within a brush pile are several fold. The biggest advantage is you can keep the bait (spoon) in the strike zone longer and more effectively using a vertical presentation versus horizontal. The second advantage is the tease factor. The longer you can keep a bait yo-yo’ing up and down in front of a fish the more apt your chances are of making that fish mad and convince the fish to attack your lure.
This is partly about the curiosity factor that spotted bass have as was mentioned earlier. Kinda like dangling a donut in front of Gary Dobyns. You just KNOW he’s gonna eventually eat it if you keep it there long enough and when he does… set the hook!! J (Sorry Gary this is the only example the Western folks would understand). By the way, you do tend to snag a lot of fish on the spoon in the tail or in the sides due to spots getting too close as they investigate the bait.
The last and final advantage to fishing brush with a spoon is the simple fact that nobody else does it. Sometimes something different makes all the difference in the world.
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