A day in the boat with two top pro’s.

Due to the cold November morning, he allowed the jig to fall to the bottom after each pitch, then holding the rod at 2 o’clock, he’d gradually raise it to a 1 o’clock position. During the lift, Chad shook the rod, activating the jig’s rattle chamber. Along the sides of a dock, he’d pitch back past the shallow corner, then hop the lure along the entire length, several yards past the front corner.

In doing this, he constantly prospected for brushpiles. When he found one, he moved the jig slowly through the innards of the pile, shaking it repeatedly. He’d typically make several pitches to the pile, working different angles and corners. But this particular day, brush didn’t hold appeal.

Chad noted that at Lake of the Ozarks, few docks hold more than one catchable bass. To take two or more, the dock must be unusually large. He feels that the commotion of catching a bass spooks other fish. But in brushpiles adjacent to a dock, several bass can be taken.

Between docks, Brauer fished horizontal baits, hoping to lure a fish from a hidden brushpile, rock, or other cover. His spinnerbait, by the way, was a standard 1/2-ounce Strike King model with a #21⁄2 gold Colorado blade in front of a #5 silver willowleaf, and a white skirt. He paid particular attention to the many small boat ramps in these well populated coves. To keep the spinnerbait down, he held his rod at the 4 o’clock position and reeled just a tad faster than a slow roll.

Since pitching a jig is Chad’s specialty, he wished for ultramarine skies that would position bass in more predictable spots in shady recesses of the docks. His inherited skill at pitching a jig, honed by countless hours on the water, gives him an advantage over nearly all anglers when it comes to this art.

As he went along, he tried to formulate a pattern from the feedback the bass gave him. Each subtle bump and each caught fish made him consider depth, bottom type, dock structure, and shade where the action was best. Eventually a pattern would emerge that would enable him to skip low-percentage spots on a dock, whole docks, and even entire coves.

Dion On The Water

On the day I fished with Dion, he removed nine Team Daiwa baitcasting rigs from his rod box before he made a cast. Six were the same 71⁄2-foot flipping and pitching rod young Brauer had chosen. Dion was spooled with a range of 15- to 20-pound Berkley Trilene XL.

Chosen lures included a variety of jigs from 1/4 to 3/8 ounce, with plastic trailers and brown Uncle Josh #11 pork rind. One noteworthy trailer was a four-inch piece of the tail section of a black-silver Gatortail Worm, a big twistertail model. Before affixing it, Dion told me he had dipped the plastic into boiling water and then dropped it into cold water. This is a family trick to make plastics more flexible.