“If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.” - Frank Sinatra... New York, New York

Frank Sinatra may have been singing about the entertainment business in New York, but the lyrics are just as appropriate to bass fishing in the crystal clear reservoirs of the southwestern United States. Indeed, the bass swimming in lakes like Casitas, Castaic, Pyramid, Mead, and Powell are among the most pressured and conditioned in the world.

Throw in the burgeoning population of water worshippers, a dearth of structure and cover, a 365-day fishing season, and clear water with extreme water-level fluctuations and you’d better have some good tricks if you hope to catch fish consistently.

Western anglers like Aaron and Carol Martens, Gary Yamamoto, Roy Hawk, Jerry Hansen, and Jarrett Edwards have been doing just that. Over the last decade, they’ve won just about everything there is to win on the western bass fishing scene. When the bite has been big they’ve done it with gigantic limits. When the fishing has been tough, they’ve weighed in squeakers.

Now, many of these pros have joined national tournament trails. Here they’re turning heads and proving that techniques that work on the toughest bass in the west produce just as well, or better, on fish in the north, south, and east.

SHAKE IT UP BABY

Shaking a worm, dragging a split-shot rig, and drop-shotting are presentations that come to mind when the subject is finesse fishing in clear water. According to Aaron and Carol Martens, the most famous mother-and-son fishing team in angling history, what confuses anglers about these three techniques is their reliance upon the same rods, reels, lines, hooks, weights, and soft plastic lures. Granted, you rig the terminal tackle differently, but the basic ingredients are the same, leading many anglers to believe that the rigs are interchangeable. They’re not, the Martens say.

“It's easier to shake a worm,” Carol Martens explains as she slides a tiny 1/8-ounce tungsten bullet weight onto her 6-pound-test monofilament line and down to the eye of a 2/0 Daiichi Bleeding Bait Red hook. She Texas-rigs a 4-inch Robo worm. Color? What else, Aaron’s Magic.

“You can cast this rig more precisely and hit your target more easily than with a split-shot or drop-shot rig,” she says. “And shaking a worm often is more effective around flooded brushes and trees, and when bass are on beds.”

“If bass are close to shore,” Martens adds, “cast a slim Texas-rigged worm up on land and drag it into the water without making a sound. There's less chance of hanging up, losing fishing time, and spooking the bass with a shaking worm setup.”

Where shaking really differs from split-shotting and drop-shotting, though, is in the manipulation of the bait. Martens says the key is keeping slack out of your line so you can feel a strike. And she never stops shaking the bait, but not in radical hops, pops, or twitches. Instead, her hand motion is like an unsteady senior trying to sip a cup of coffee.

GET THE DROP

“Drop-shotting,” interjects Aaron Martens, the man Guido Hibdon calls the best drop-shotter in the world, “is most effective when bass are suspended off the bottom. A drop-shot rig lets you adjust the weight of your sinker and the length of your leader. In that respect, it’s the most versatile setup.”

Martens says that while many anglers believe drop-shotting to be a vertical, straight up-and-down, deepwater presentation, it’s just as effective when cast and retrieved. And he says there are no depth limits to its effectiveness. He has drop-shotted bass in water as deep as 80 feet and as shallow as 2.

“But,” he emphasizes, “I don’t shake a drop-shot worm. I use a heavy enough weight so that I'm ticking the cover on the bottom about one third of the time that I’m retrieving the lure. The bouncing sinker provides all the action you require. Sometimes I’ll even go to a heavier weight and retrieve the lure as fast as I’d retrieve a crankbait.”

Martens cautions about two things: knot failure and worm rigging. “Because of the way you tie a drop-shot rig,” he says, “the knot frays more quickly than with a shaking or split-shot setup. If you’re not careful, you’ll break off fish, especially if you use fluorocarbon line as I do. I check my knot and retie often.”

Martens also is a stickler when it comes to threading on a worm. It must be arrow straight. “If it’s crooked,” he says, holding it up to the light like a jeweller inspecting a fine cut diamond, “it’ll spin, twist your line, and impair the action of the worm.”

And has the 32-year old San Fernando Valley native, who has fished the Bassmaster Classic four times in the past five years, finishing second on Lay Lake and winning the FLW event on Lake Wheeler last June, noticed any differences or made any drop-shot adjustments since moving to Alabama?

“The lakes out east are bigger,” he says, “and the bass are more spread out. There aren’t a hundred fish in one spot as in California. And they’re not there all the time as they are out west. As far as adjustments are concerned, I use heavier drop-shot weights when I’m fishing in the east, typically 3/16 and 1/4 ounce, and I often use 10- and 12-pound-test line, especially around cover.”

Still, the main difference he’s seen is the way bass react to the sinker. Out west, they shy away from a heavy, noisy sinker. “But that’s not a problem in the east,” he says. “They literally eat it when you move it.”

ONE-TON TUBING

While Aaron and Carol Martens are noted for using light lines, compact weights, and slim soft plastic lures, all the top western anglers caution against equating fishing for finesse bass in clear water with light terminal tackle. Indeed, Nevada angler Roy Hawk, Utah lure maker Jerry Hansen, and even light-line specialist Jarrett Edwards epitomize this new wave of thinking. They typically throw super-heavy lures on powerful baitcasting outfits to catch finesse bass from crystal clear water.

“Gary Yamamoto probably was the originator of this thinking,” explains Jarrett Edwards, who at 23 is the youngest touring pro on the BASSMATER tournament trail. Edwards also caught the Colorado state-record largemouth bass, an 11-pound 6-ounce behemoth, when he was just 17 years old.

“Gary invented one-ton tubing,” Edwards explains, “which involves stuffing 1-ounce jigheads inside standard 4-inch soft plastic tube baits and then retrieving them down the steep banks of desert lakes like Mead and Powell. You’d think a big bulky bait would spook cautious bass in clear water, but it doesn’t.

The heavy weight lets you cover water thoroughly and quickly. It hugs the bottom and mimics a panic-stricken crayfish. Plus, it intimidates the bass. When a one-ton tube drops into their house, they have to decide quickly what they’re going to do about it.”

“Gary was the first to do it in 1995 when he won the U.S. Open,” Edwards says. “One-ton-tubing is a 10-year-old technique that no one knows about. But it works in 6 inches of water all the way down to 60 feet. Turn the trolling motor on high and cast in front of the boat and up toward shore, just far enough ahead so that you’re finishing the retrieve as the lure comes under the boat.

Cast any farther ahead or behind the boat and you’ll snag bottom. Is it effective? Some day we’ll be talking about 5-tonning and 6-tonning. If anglers think that finesse fishing only involves light tackle, they’re making a big mistake. You have to think of it in terms of fooling cautious bass in clear water. That is a huge distinction.”

THE HANSEN HOP

Jerry Hansen wouldn’t argue with that assessment. The owner of Big Boys Baits and a perennial western tournament winner, Hansen modified Yamamoto’s heavy tube tactics, creating the Hansen Hop. He starts by threading a 6-inch Hula Grub onto a 1/2- to 11⁄2-ounce football jig equipped with a wire weedguard. Then he ties the lure onto a stiff 7- to 71⁄2-foot baitcasting rod and reel spooled with 16-pound-test Sugoi fluorocarbon line. Hardly the equipment most anglers would equate with fishing for educated bass in swimming-pool-clear waters. But that’s not the half of it.

After Hansen casts the lure out of sight into a brush-filled cove or onto a point, sloping bank, or weedy feeding flat, he waits until he feels the lure crash onto the bottom. Next, he palms the baitcaster with his reeling hand while he wraps his other hand around the cork handle immediately above the reel and below the first line guide. Then he pops the jig so hard you can hear his line crack, quickly ripping the rod tip from the eight o’clock position to the 12 o’clock position. He rapidly retrieves the heavy jig like this all the way back to the boat, pausing only long enough to feel the jig smash to the bottom after each pop.

“It triggers reaction strikes,” Hansen observes. “When one of these sophisticated clear-water largemouths grabs the bait, it almost rips the rod out of your hands. Strikes are ferocious.”

FINESSING FISH WITH A BUBBA BAIT

“I’m familiar with Yamamoto’s and Hansen’s techniques,” says western bass pro Roy Hawk, who seems to have a lock on Lake Mead bass tournaments. “I believe the success we’ve all enjoyed is connected to several interrelated details that most anglers who fish for finesse bass in clear water totally miss. First, summer water temperatures are often 85°F or warmer.

Bass are active in those conditions. That’s why the warmer the water the faster most western bass pros fish. When you use a heavy lure like Gary Yamamoto does when he one-tons a tube, or Jerry Hansen does when he pops his football jig, you’re attracting bass with speed.

In a lake like Mead or Powell, the water is crystal clear, so bass can see your lure from afar. But you don't want to give them a chance to get a real good look at it. Speed masks the lure. Then the jig crashes to the bottom, sending up a smoke cloud that the bait hides within. That’s both a powerful attractant and a trigger.”

In addition to one-tonning tube baits and popping football jigs dressed with hula grubs, Hawk employs a technique he calls, “finesse fishing with a bubba bait.” He takes a hard-for-the-fish-to-see semi-clear rattling Lucky Craft LV-100 lipless crankbait and carefully drills a hole in the top of the lure. Then he stuffs 30 or more BBs inside—enough split shot that the bait weighs over an ounce and now is totally quiet. Then he seals the hole.

“I can cast the lure a mile,” Hawk says, “so I can keep my distance from the fish and maintain a stealthy approach in crystal clear water. But my lure size is still small and compact—the perfect match for a Lake Mead shad—and it’s quiet. Most heavy lures are too big and noisy.

Hawk throws his doctored lipless crankbait anywhere he thinks a bass might be hiding, but he favors moderate and steeply sloping chunk-rock banks. He drops the lure tight to the shoreline and slow rolls the vibrating lure quickly down the bank. Like Hansen, he says there is no mistaking a strike.

Not quite what you’d expect from highly conditioned, highly pressured bass that have seen every lure and presentation imaginable in these gin- clear waters. But it's precisely what these knowledgeable western pros expect every time they fish the lakes. And since they’ve made it here, they know they can make it anywhere.

*Gord Pyzer was for more than 20 years an Ontario resource manager. He’s an In-Fisherman magazine field editor who has written numerous articles for In-Fisherman publications and has appeared on In-Fisherman Television.