A day in the boat with two top pro’s.

Guido and Dion have found that the combination of a 3/8-ounce black jig and this worm trailer often is unequaled around the docks, logs, and brushpiles in the upper half of Lake of the Ozarks. His other trailers were the twintail Dion Classic made by Gambler, dyed special shades of green, brown, and black in the Hibdon’s lure laboratory, which abuts Guido’s home. In contrast to Brauer, none of Dion’s jigs sported rattlers. With the water rather clear, he considered sound to be no advantage.

On Dion’s other rods, he’d tied: a Texas-rigged multiappendaged creature bait of greenish hue, rigged on a 1/4-ounce black bullet sinker with two yellow eyes painted on; a 1/2-ounce spinnerbait with two large copper Colorado blades and a white-chartreuse skirt; a 1/2-ounce single-spin with a #7 nickel Colorado blade and a dark skirt; a 3/8-ounce single-spin with a #4 silver Colorado blade with a white skirt; a brown-yellow Bagley DBII; a silver 5/8-ounce Bagley Balsa B; and a bone-and-blue suspending Smithwick Rogue. Dion used no plastic trailers on his spinnerbaits.

Like Brauer, Hibdon relied on his jig flipping prowess for 90 percent of his presentations, as he probed boat docks of all sorts. After pitching the jig and letting it fall to the bottom, he hopped the lure by raising his rod from 2 o’clock to 1 o’clock, virtually identical to Chad Brauer’s presentation. And like Brauer, he focused on boat ramps, casting a chosen spinnerbait at several angles before moving on.

He regularly targeted the back end of the docks, despite the chilly conditions, and connected with bass there. He also aimed at every gap between the white Styrofoam logs that floated the docks. After pitching several times, he skipped the jig many feet below the dock through the gap in the Styrofoam, powering the large jigs with his flipping rod. He said that to skip with a flipping and pitching rod, it’s essential to use at least a 3/8-ounce jig to avoid backlashes.

When Dion came across visible brushpiles, he retrieved the tandem spinnerbait across them from several angles, so the blades made a subtle wake on the surface. Shallow logs received the same treatment. He commented on one particular log that had produced scores of bass in past seasons.

Dion also recalled how shallow largemouth bass may hold in the dead of winter, reciting tales of how his grandfather often came across gargantuan bass in a foot or two of water while he jigged suckers at night in January near the mouth of the Gravois arm. Thus it is that Dion does not rely on a temperature gauge or any fancy electronics to tell him where the fish may be. He knows where they are and must only figure out how to make them attack a lure.

As Dion worked through the many small pockets, he retrieved his baits from shore out to about 10 feet. According to Dion, bass hold in the same places in November as they do in April. Over the years, Guido and Dion have found that small coves receive less fishing pressure, especially at tournament time. And since the Hibdons are basically “contrarians,” favoring whatever most anglers don’t like, they have plied these small spots religiously.