| ___________________________________________________ December 20, 2005 - Vol. 6 No. 32 __________________________________________________ NOT MUCH TIME BEHIND A DESK ~ STORY OF GARY YAMAMOTO We received a note last week from Mike Swain at Bass Fan. Mike let us know they posted a feature story about Gary Yamamoto on their web site. The story combines several aspects of who Gary Yamamoto is - a world-famed lure designer, top international tournament competitor with Gary's love for working with heavy equipment - bulldozers, backhoes and dumptrucks - to create stock ponds and thereby turn wooded swampy areas into prime pastures for Yamamoto's 6,000 head cattle herd, the basis of Yamamoto's healthy beef business. If you get a chance, read the story and find out several fascinating aspects of who Gary Yamamoto is at: YAMAMOTO DEFIES AGE THROUGH WORK, FRESH AIR http://www.bassfan.com/news_article.asp?id=1545 __________________________________________________ TYLER MORNING TELEGRAPH ~ STORY ON BEVERLY'S RESTAURANT Another news story came across our desk this week. This one published in the Texas hometown newspaper, the Tyler Morning Telegraph. The article features Mrs. Beverly Yamamoto's restaurant and inn overlooking the couple's ranch. Read the story at: KOBE BEEF PRODUCED, SERVED IN EAST TEXAS http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15704474 __________________________________________________ THE GIFT TO LAST FOR A LIFETIME ~ Holiday Story by Russ Bassdozer The coming holidays are the season for giving. Hopefully Santa or someone nice will give you a gift of Gary Yamamoto Custom Baits for the holidays. Amidst joyous choruses of fond Christmas carols and sonorous peals of Olde Lang Syne, an ancient Chinese proverb rings out... "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." As in the wise old adage, if someone nice gives you a bag of Yamamoto baits, you can fish for a day. In this holiday issue of the WEEKLY NEWS, we've wrapped up the gift of giving you not just bait to fish for a day, but the information to help teach you how to fish, to last you for a lifetime. We hope you like the gift we give you in the words below, to teach you to fish, to last for a lifetime. FROSTY THE DROPSHOT Most everything we read or others tell us about dropshot is to use a gossamer thin worm no bigger than a 3 to 4 inch string of vermicelli. To the contrary, spring through fall, I fish way bigger dropshot baits than used by other anglers. It astonishes them when I tie up to the weigh-in dock with full-sized 9-series Senkos pinned on my light dropshot rods. Apprehensive lip curls of denial greet me such as, "You don't dropshot with those, do you Russ?" I expect the tournament director to run down the dock and DQ me because all the rules say you have to dropshot with emaciated weenie worms. I dropshot big baits spring through fall because there are far too many small fish attracted to small baits, and I have no desire to dink around with them. Ratcheting up a bit in bait size will discourage many small fish from accosting you. If you want to see something that looks wrong, you should watch me dropshot a Yamamoto Kreature on 6 lb. test. It looks like half a ham hock hanging off the hook. It's a very unsettling image, except to the better-than-average bass that hammer it. In winter, the vast hordes of small fish migrate off the traditional fishing grounds. They retire to deepwater sanctuaries to wait out the winter. The traditional fishing banks don't hold the noisy, boisterous and distractive smaller fish in winter. The only blips on the radar screen tend to be better-than-average bass in winter. With the absence of small fish, smaller baits are easier to dropshot for the few and far between but larger fish that remain up in winter. Add the fact that bass metabolism slows way down in winter. Winter bass tend to consume about thirty percent of what they eat in other seasons. So smaller baits in winter make more sense in theory. More importantly, smaller baits often prove better in practice. Two winters ago was a great example. I had to trim down in size to jet black hand-tied chenille Wooly Bugger crappie flies on black 1/2 oz jig heads for bass. The whole bait was only an inch long, but it was by far the most productive lure for bass that winter. Each winter varies. Like snowflakes, no two fishing seasons are the same, yet smaller lures than other times of the year are almost always a productive part of my success every winter. To dropshot in winter, I position the boat on the shallowest part of the chosen fishing grounds and I hurl my dropshot rig out at the deepest part. What this usually means is the boat is only in a few feet of water, yet I could be reaching who knows how deep on the end of the cast, and I am hoping the dropshot rig hits bottom in the 20 to 35 foot depths somewhere in between where I am parked and where I cast. At the end of the cast, I will feed line, feed line, feed line until I feel maybe it's too much line. Then I will engage the reel and let the line and sinker pendulum the bait back in to me until it strikes bottom. Once you get the range right, the bait will be snuggling itself right up into the most productive zone where the edge of the sloping base of whatever you've got the boat on segues into the flatter bottom in general. That's the transition zone where the fish will most often hold in winter, and dropshotting using this combination of boat positioning, casting and bait-nestling onto the slope berm is the only way to maximize the time when the bait will be snuggled down in that narrow band where winter bass hold. To cast from any other angle, your bait will often bypass that productive zone - often the only productive zone in winter. There's no other way to keep a bait there, except as described. The Yamamoto baits I use to dropshot in winter are smaller than I use in other seasons: 1) 9B SENKO ~ The smallest of Senkos. Indeed, the smallest of all available Yamamoto baits. Use an extra short shank exposed point hook. Bend the 9B back so both tips touch and spear the hook directly through the middle. Use a very light dropshot weight, say 3/16 oz. As this falls, the 9B practically parachute-glides, hovering over a light weight. Most importantly, the two tips will squiggle unlike any other bait, giving an incredible illusion of a small baitfish swimming, flexing its body in an S-shaped movement that makes it appear to be swimming like a minnow. The light weight makes it drop slowly, and many bites come just before it hits the bottom. This is a great set-up to drop slowly through fish suspended mid-depth off main lake points in winter. There will almost always be some fish off deep primary points in winter, often solos, yet they tend to be big tough rogues. Some of these primary points can be pretty deep, and these bruiser bass tend to hit baits as they settle into the 20 to 35 foot mid-depths, even if the point is in much deeper water. Never neglect a main lake point in winter. If that turns out to be a pattern, don't hesitate to cut the dropshot weight down to 1/8 oz. Attracting fish on the fall like this, you're not using the weight to hold bottom but just enough weight to pull down the 9B and thereby generate enough water resistance to make the 9B swim and flex like a minnow. No other bait I know swims and struggles so lifelike on the fall as does the 9B Senko rigged this way. You'll hardly ever feel the hit from these suspended winter fish, just that uncertain sixth sense that something has taken the bait. 7 KUT TAIL ~ This is the original 4" Kut-Tail first made by Gary Yamamoto over twenty years ago. I tend to hook it in the worm band, which is the flat section about 1/4 of the way back from the head. I fancy this gives the Kut-Tail a kind of disoriented equilibrium - a teetertottering see-saw effect. I tend to use the 7 when I feel bass want a smaller, subtler presentation. Except for the 9B, it has a smaller profile than the other dropshot baits mentioned here. 7F FLAT TAIL ~ I pin this active fellow through the shoulder on a short shank exposed point hook. This is the most lively and active presentation of all the dropshot worms mentioned here. It curls and uncurls like one of those red cellophane fish you used to get as prizes in Cracker Jacks. At times, you do need this extra movement of the 7F as a strike-enticer. 9J SENKO ~ Can be nose-hooked or hooked exactly in the middle (wacky) with a short shank exposed point hook - or it can be Texas rigged on an offset shank hook in slightly snaggier cover. 9M SENKO ~ One of my favorite dropshot worms due to its full-size length, but I can't always get away with using it in winter. Some winters, the smaller baits are better. Still, I try the 9M because at 5-1/4 inches, it tends to attract a better grade of fish than smaller worms. I almost always wacky rig the 9M exactly in the middle on a short shank exposed point hook. 7L KUT-TAIL ~ Like the 9M, this is a bigger dropshot worm that tends to whet the appetite of bigger bass. Like the 7, I hook the 7L in the worm band. That's the flat section about 1/4 back from the head. This gives the 7L a kind of unbalanced motion. Oh yes, I almost always dip the tails of my 7Ls in a contrasting color tail dye. That contrasting color flat spade tail appears like the worm is waving a little bite-me flag at the bass. I tend to use darker colors of dropshot worms in winter. Dark green pumpkin (297) or dark smoke with purple (157). Not all models come in all colors. For instance, white can be a steady winter color some years. In the 9B, my only viable option is the #300 white, whereas #031 white is available to me in other models. Another color that is a factor for me in winter is chartreuse. This may mean #169 chartreuse in some models, and #156 in other worms, since not all worms are made in all colors. I'll usually start in an area with the dark green pumpkin, the smoke with purple or a little white worm. If I get a few fish that way, when I stop getting bites, that's when I'll throw something chartreuse back into the active areas. The way I think of it, chartreuse is a brighter, bolder color than others, and chartreuse often proves to get another fish or two after the bite on other colors fades out. So I use the other colors to start the bass biting, and then use chartreuse to provoke another bass or two that has already seen and refused to strike the other colors. This chartreuse ruse has added countless "extra" fish to the livewell for me in winter. But overall, black has always been the most reliable winter color for me. Black is the most visible and contrasting color of all, the color that can be most easily sensed, and therefore one of the most productive colors in winter. When fish body senses are clogged and dulled by cold, black is the sharpest to see and easiest to track. In the heart of winter, when all the other bites die out and go cold, the smallest, blackest bait will still work in my shivering gloved hands. If you're serious about dropshotting, you ought to get Gary Yamamoto's short-handled dropshot rod. It's what I use with Gary's 6 lb test dropshot fluorocarbon. Over the last lustrum, more or less, I'd say I have tried a dozen different dropshot rods. These were not just dropshot rods that I tried indiscriminately nor on a whimsy. The rods I tried came highly-recommended by some of Japan's top-winning dropshot pros, US pros and expert rod manufacturers. It was not cheap for me to try so many rods, but dropshotting is one application that requires a specialized rod for peak performance. I've not yet found a better or comparable dropshot rod to the short-handled Yamamoto dropshot rod. What brings out the ultimate sensitivity in this rod to me is to add a Rod Balancer (available at Bass Pro Shops) with two weight balance discs. The Rod Balancer is a rubber butt cap that slides snugly over the end of the dropshot rod. You just fit the two balance weights inside the butt cap first. This balances the Yamamoto dropshot rod so perfectly that the rod almost feels weightless when fishing with it, and the sensitivity to feel bites and what the bait is doing increases exponentially. I've tried dozens of dropshot fishing lines too - most of them. I've not found a more manageable, better dropshot line than Yamamoto's 6 lb. test fluorocarbon. I'm not trying to sell you anything here, just set you straight on what I've found works best after years of trying most of the others. If I found a dropshot rod or line that worked better, trust me, I would use it. I've not yet found anything better. Dropshot rods, baits, line we've covered. Let's complete the package. I use a 2500 size reel. The Team Daiwa 2500S is great to dropshot as are several of the Shimano reels in the 2500 size. I favor the black nickel Gamakatsu splitshot/dropshot hooks, mostly 2, 1 and 1/0, matched to the bait size. There's the best equipment I can tell you about. The rest is totally up to you. Oh yes. I use the long, thin, cylindrical Mojo "Pineapple" knotless dropshot sinker. The Bakudan dropshot sinker sold by Lunker City is also this shape. Some say a squatter teardrop-shaped or round sinker gives better grip and feedback on the bottom, and that's true. Some even go so far as to attribute better bait action and hence more bites are gotten due to round or teardrop sinker bottom friction, and that sounds mighty impressive. But none of those claims come anywhere close to compensating you for the lost downtime being snagged and retying rigs made with teardrop or round dropshot sinkers. No, I've hardly ever caught a bass while backtracking the boat to recover a snagged sinker. Never caught one while rummaging through my tackle box searching for elusive components to re-rig. I've always found I've gotten more bites by having my bait working in the water. That's why the Mojo Pineapple is the preferred dropshot sinker shape for me. It simply snags less and thereby catches more. THE NEXT BIG THING If you can get past the fact it comes in a bag with a big saltwater label, then Gary Yamamoto's new 3-1/2" swimbait is going to be the next big thing for bass for 2006. This bait's been in research and under development for most of 2005. Yet it has only been the last six weeks or so that enough swimbaits have been mass-produced for me to go out and fish them heavily. Since about early November, I've caught and released over 1,000 freshwater gamefish, including stripers, smallmouth, largemouth and walleye on Yamamoto's new saltwater swimbait. They love it. I've settled on only one way to use it, and it is almost monotonously effective. I fish it on ten pound test spinning gear with a 1/4 or 3/8 oz stand-up jighead. I simply find some productive shoreline cover - gravel bed, chunk rock, weed bed, brushy, small protrusive point or anywhere else that a wintertime bass would possibly come up at regular intervals during the day to check for and hopefully make a meal of any vulnerable critters. If I can find a "back door" to sneak the boat up onto this shallower feeding stretch, then that's best. I will quietly sneak in through the back door and thereby put the boat directly on top of the feeding grounds. From there, I fan cast the swimbait out to the deeper water beyond where the shallow edges drop off, where winter fish comfortably hold during the majority of the time when they're not up cruising the area looking for a lucky morsel. Finding the back door means to shut the big motor down at a distance and far off to the side of the spot in relatively unproductive water. I get a rod in my hand, get all ready to land a fish, and then use the electric motor to try to ease the boat up onto the high spot from one hundred yards away from where fish may be holding. That's what I mean by getting in through the back door. If I cannot detect a back door access up onto the feeding grounds, then I hold the boat in deeper water off to the side of the edges where deeper bass are staging off the area. I never, ever want to encroach on this major fish-staging location, which is off the banks and deeper out than most anglers fish. This is the overall biggest mistake I see bass boaters make. Almost to a man, they will pull up on a spot and stop the boat directly right over the deeper, off-the-edge holding areas where the fish linger most of the time. They scatter most of the fish out of the fishable area before they even click the engine off. Then they cast up where they should have maneuvered the boat in through the back door. Like a well-trained cow horse or sheep dog, a bass boat can be used to help herd bait, move bait, ease idle bass into active feeding opportunities without alarming them. It can get them interested in grabbing a snack - or even used to coax them into an all-out surface-frothing feeding frenzy. A bass boat, used properly, can do all that. However, misuse of a bass boat, like an untrained dog or horse and rider charging wildly only serves to panic and scatter bass away from you. Most bass boaters need to totally rethink how they are using their boats. Until you do, you are chasing away far more fish than you'll ever catch. Forever, we've been unthinkingly instructed to find bass in shallow water with nearby deep water access. That's not right. Never has been nor will be. We need to retrain ourselves to do the exact opposite - to find bass in deep water with nearby shallow water access - and ease your boat quietly in through the back door into the nearby shallow water. Then fish from the inside out without disturbing the bass staging in deep water. The tail on the Yamamoto swimbait paddles simply falling through the water on a jig head. Like a Senko as it is sinking slowly, you just don't need to do anything except wait for bites as the swimbait paddles its tail all by itself down to the bottom. As with a Senko, the initial drop and the first time the swimbait touches bottom is a highly productive part of the presentation. There are many days you will get more bass on the initial drop and touch-down then on the entire rest of the retrieve. With the swimbait, it is good to cast out and let it sink about halfway down the water column on a slack line. Then engage the bail and let the slack line come semi-tight so the swimbait pendulum arcs toward you and the bottom for the remainder of its descent. You do not need to reel in. The swimbait tail paddles enticingly just from the weight of the jig head pulling it down. A high percentage of strikes come during this parabolic free-fall slide toward bottom. Once it hits bottom, just start slowly sliding it along. Any time you lose contact with the bottom, just stop doing anything. Do nothing and the swimbait will pendulum arc toward you and the bottom with the tail paddling. Many hard hits will come - thunk - while you do nothing but wait for the jig head to scrape bottom once again. As I say, it is almost monotonously effective. The stand-up style jig head I've been using with it enhances the bottom-sliding posture of the swimbait. Even still, there are many times I feel bass are scraping the swimbait off the bottom as it feebly flips and flops there, fallen over on its side. As I use it, I envision it as a dying shad falling toward and lying on the bottom gasping its gills. There's no doubt to me that the swimbait is the next big thing from Yamamoto for freshwater bass - even though it is a saltwater bait. As a new product, it's only available in limited colors for starters, but already a few new colors have been added, and expect more colors will be added over time. To start with, daiquiri (237) was the shad-like swimbait color I favored most. Within the past few weeks, blue pearl white with silver (031) has now become available, and 031 has practically replaced my use of 237. It's simply a better shad color (031) most of the time. As water temperatures continually creep down daily, shad retreat deeper and deeper beyond reach of most catchable bass. Increasingly, young-of-year sunfish and crappie are replacing hard-to-find shad in the diets of the winter bass I am catching, and colors like 298 (motor oil with gold) or 925 (laminate watermelon with red) are two of the closest colors available in the swimbait at this time to mimic such forage. GO TO CAROLINA IN THE WINTER A Carolina rig can be quite dependable in winter. With a heavy rod, heavy line and a heavy weight, say 3/4 oz, a Carolina rigged bait spends much of its time anchored down at the depths where winter bass hold. Two baits I've been consistently catching bass on this winter are the new 3M series Medium Craw in black with blue claws (520) and the green pumpkin/lemon laminate (919) 13-series lizard. MOST DEPENDABLE BAIT OF 2005 In years to come, when I think back on the 2005 season, I'll smile as I recall the spinnerbait, the most dependable bait of 2005. I tied a spinnerbait on shortly after New Years, and a spinnerbait has caught fish for me on every fishing trip I've taken this year. Now when I say "spinnerbait" I collectively mean about thirty different skirt colors, dozens of head shapes, weights, and blade combos. Collectively, spinnerbaits haven't always been the absolutely best bait every day, but I have caught at least one to many good bass on spinnerbaits almost every trip this year. We often get so much pabulum passed along to us as the inside dope. Prescriptions such as "Oh, you use a spinnerbait (or substitute whatever bait you care to name) under such-and-such conditions." Well, I've used a spinnerbait one way or another under every type of condition imaginable these last twelve months with satisfactory results. I can fondly recall years gone by when I've used a buzzbait productively almost every trip or a tubebait every trip or a Senko. Most of all, bass are programmed to bite at things - any things. It's what bass do, just like dogs are programmed to bark at things and cats are programmed to pounce on things. It's what cats and dogs do. They aren't all that hung up about what they are biting, barking or pouncing at. Don't get so hung up on whether conditions make it a textbook spinnerbait day (or whatever bait you care to name day). Just remember, most of the time, under most any and all conditions, bass do really want to bite something, anything. A spinnerbait is as good a bait as any, most any day. A GOOD WINTER SPOT IS GOOD FOREVER I read something last week in the latest issue of a prestigious national bass fishing publication. A prestigious national pro was quoted by a prestigious national writer as saying that ledges that produce bass in winter don't necessarily remain productive for the rest of the year. Like there are spots that are only good in the winter. That was the crux of the matter. In my experience, the spots I find in winter prove to be the most productive spots all year. Why? Winter is the harshest season, and any location that can sustain bass over winter is an extraordinary oasis of life. It's a flourishing location with its own self-sustaining micro-ecosystem that doesn't flicker out but keeps on harboring bass year-round. These spots are few and far between, but easier to find in winter. Why? Because the distraction of small fish are not present lake-wide. Small fish from spring through fall are like static on the radio, blocking out and distorting the true underlying signals. Without the presence of small fish in winter, plus the harsher winter environment making most parts of the lake inhospitable to them, winter bass can only remain catchable in the most productive and life-sustaining locations. These same spots support that same high quality of life for bass during the rest of the year and for years to come. That's why I say if you find a good spot in winter, you've found fish for a lifetime. It's almost the night before Christmas. This is the last issue of Gary Yamamoto's WEEKLY NEWS we'll send you for 2005. Thank you for reading along. We hope we've given you the information not to fish for a day, but to teach you to fish for a lifetime. May your next fishing season be your best ever. Regards, Russ Bassdozer __________________________________________________
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