A day in the boat with two top pro’s.

Shortly after 8:00 a.m., Dion revealed one of his top lure choices for shallow cover, including docks. The bait was a 3/8-ounce white jig with a white pork chunk. Before pitching it the first time, he told me how it can be both extremely exciting and frustrating. He swims the jig just a foot or two below the surface and can watch bass, often Kentuckies, charge out and roll on the bait, but they often fail to get hooked. During good conditions, Dion says it easy to catch a good limit by swimming the white zjig. And he hoped that would work during the tournament.

During his swimming retrieve, Dion twitches the rod tip three times as if he were jerking or twitching a Rogue. Following the three twitches, he lets the jig glide for a few seconds, then imparts three more twitches and a glide. He executes the triple-twitch-and-glide routine until the jig is several yards past the outer edge of the dock. It’s a quick retrieve, meant to emulate the frantic motions of an injured gizzard shad and is designed to entice suspended bass.

Dion also reported that a couple years ago, he’d discovered that docks that float over deep water are always good spots to catch Kentuckies by swimming the white jig. The best possible dock sits alone along a bluff, with no other dock within 100 yards. He showed me an isolated dock along a mile-long bluff near Turkey Bend where he’d taken seven good-size Kentuckies on the white jig.

With his jig, Dion ascertained that many bass were suspended under docks, while others held to the bottom in up to 12 feet of water. Like Brauer, he had no success in brushpiles that day. Dion says that every dock has a prime lair, which he calls a sweet spot, at which bass normally abide. To find the sweet spot, an angler often must pitch to a labyrinth of tangled cover—sticks, cables, poles, angle irons, and cross beams. And that sweet spot may be affected by the position of the sun, or the direction of the wind, or baitfish position, algae growth, and innumerable other factors.

Once a bass is caught and removed from a dock, his neighbors usually are too spooked to bite, but another bass will soon take over the sweet spot. Dion returns day after day to productive corners. If a bass swirls at his jig and misses, he continues to the next dock, but makes a point to return about half an hour later.

It was inspiring as well as educational to watch these two sensational young anglers fish. They show the persistence of a machine, combined with the dexterity and grace of a dancer. And they continuously absorb information about their surroundings, and particularly the reactions of bass to their presentations.

*Ned Kehde, Lawrence, Kansas, is an archivist for the University of Kansas, an avid angler, and a frequent contributor to In-Fisherman publications.