Since 2004, Shinichi Fukae of Osaka, Japan, has spent many March and April days on Beaver Lake in Arkansas in pursuit of largemouth, smallmouth, spotted, and meanmouth bass, competing against hundreds of top anglers of the Wal-Mart FLW Tour. The meanmouth, a natural cross between smallmouth and spotted bass, is caught increasingly in reservoirs of this region. On April 1, 2006, I accompanied Shin as he explored Beaver’s crystalline waters, his ninth day of prefishing for the event.

At the first light of dawn, air temperature hovered around 51°F in the countless steep coves and hollows of this highland reservoir. As the sun rose over the eastern horizon, hints of redbud and serviceberry blossoms embroidered the reservoir’s 497 miles of shoreline. Water temperature throughout the lower portions of the reservoir was 53°F and the water’s clarity at some spots neared 20 feet. The reservoir’s level was rising a bit each day, but its elevation of 1,107.78 feet put it about 14 feet below normal.

His preparation would involve seven more days of prefishing. But by the end of his sixteenth day of fishing, his name would adorn the top of the tournament leaderboard.

Fukae’s Tactics

Shin Fukae’s strong suit is finesse fishing, and many observers call him a wizard at wielding a medium-action spinning outfit that sports a shaky-head jig and a 4-inch plastic worm. April traditionally is a grand time to utilize that combination in Beaver’s clear depths. Even though he’s adept at manipulating spinning tackle, he also relies on a football-head jig and deep-diving crankbait fished on casting tackle for Beaver Lake bass. In fact, he’d used a football-head jig to finish sixth at the 2004 Wal-Mart Open there.

His Tackle: Throughout our day on the water, Fukae had 6 casting and 5 spinning outfits on the front deck, all St. Croix rods matched with Shimano reels. He primarily used two spinning and two casting outfits. The only modification Fukae makes to his rods is reducing the diameter of the cork handles with sandpaper so they better fit his small hands.

One casting outfit was a St. Croix Crankbait AD70MHM rod fitted with a Shimano CTE200DC Conquest reel spooled with 14-pound-test Duel fluorocarbon line, for casting a wide-bill HMKL crankbait with a long transparent bill. His selected bait was semi-transparent with a gold hue, and Fukae customized its color by adding red polka dots to its back and black polka dots to the belly. To attach crankbaits, he uses a #1 Cross-Lok snap to the lure’s split ring. He tied the snap to the line with a Trilene knot and used that knot on all his outfits.

He fished football jigs with a St. Croix EC68MXF rod and Chronarch CH100MG reel spooled with 14-pound-test Duel fluorocarbon line. The brown 3/8-ounce jig was thickly dressed with a brown-and-black silicone skirt and devoid of a weedguard. The skirt was trimmed so it didn’t extend past the bend of the hook. The jig was backed with a customized green-pumpkin Berkley Power Hawg. This jig is similar to the one that Fukae used at the 2004 Beaver tourney.

One spinning outfit was an ES70MLF St. Croix rod and Shimano Stella STL3000FB reel spooled with 8-pound-test Duel monofilament. On this set-up, he fished a 3/32-ounce shaky-head jig Texas-rigged with a 4-inch greenpumpkin 68L Yamamoto Shad Shaped Worm available only in Japan. His shaky-head jig is called the Mayukyu Skip in the Shade jighead, designed by Japanese pro Norio Tanabe. It has a special collar designed to keep the head of a Texas-rigged worm in place. When Fukae fishes 15 feet and deeper, or if the wind howls, he often relies on an 1/8-ounce jighead.

His other spinning rig was an ES66ML rod and Stella reel with 6-pound-test Duel fluorocarbon. It sported the same jigworm combination. Fukae used his 7-foot rod and 8-pound monofilament when he fished spots littered with flooded timber. The 61⁄2- foot rod and 6-pound fluorocarbon was reserved for spots devoid of timber.

His Approach: During the week before my visit, Fukae had checked deep pockets along the main body of the reservoir, hoping to find groups of big bass. He caught some hefty fish, but no bona fide lunkers, not unusual for anglers at Beaver. Though he never found a cache of lunkers, Fukae continues to think the bulk of Beaver’s big smallmouth and spotted bass inhabit deep, main-lake flats year-round, spawning on long, flat, main-lake points connected to the flats.

Fukae’s thinking parallels that of such knowledgeable Ozark anglers as Guido Hibdon of Gravois Mills, Missouri. It’s Hibdon’s contention that most of Beaver’s big spotted and smallmouth bass behave like those at nearby Table Rock Lake, living year-round on main-lake flats in depths of 25 to 60 feet and feeding on shad. Because these bass are often suspended and roaming, they’re highly elusive, making them difficult for tournament anglers to consistently pinpoint and catch. According to Hibdon, these roaming bass are an ideal quarry for local anglers who are experts with electronics and have time to pursue them for months on end.

In tournaments, Fukae says his daily goal is to catch 20 bass, with the total weight of the five biggest about 11 pounds. He’s calculated that if he can achieve that goal at every tournament, he’ll always be in the running for the Angler-of-the-Year laurels.

April 1 was the third day after a new moon, and Fukae wanted to explore some of the reservoir’s shallow areas, where Beaver Lake bass traditionally spawn. Many of these spots were secondary points inside creeks and hollows. He suspected that the effects of the new moon might have provoked some bass to invade the shallows in preparation for spawning. Most secondary points he fished were relatively flat and composed of gravel and chunk rock. Flooded cedar and hardwood trees embellished many of them, and their topography was often littered with massive boulders, as well.

While he fished the shallow areas, he wore a pair of Swan polarized sunglasses with brownish-yellow lenses to periodically search the underwater terrain, hoping to spot bass. He began looking for them at his first stop of the day, a shallow spot on the main lake about 6 miles east of the Prairie Creek boat ramp. This gravelly area featured a boat dock and flooded timber, but no visible bass.

Fukae twice complained that it wasn’t sunny enough to do a thorough job of spotting fish. Nevertheless, by the end of the day he’d managed to see two dozen of them. Most were seen during the afternoon as water temperatures gradually rose, and several looked to be 3-pounders. It was the first day he’d seen any shallow bass. He enticed two of them to engulf his jigworm.

As he searched and fished, Fukae explained that he likes fishing clear lakes and relishes sight-fishing, but wind, clouds, and low-light conditions can confound this approach. Moreover, it can eat up too much of an angler’s day, causing him to spend too much time looking rather than fishing. And during a tournament, when scores of other anglers are sight-fishing, good areas can become too congested, making the bass wary.

Besides focusing on flat secondary points, Fukae explored some secondary bluff banks and steep points inside a large feeder creek. The terrain here consisted primarily of boulders, rocky ledges, and gravel. During his exploration of the bluffs and steep points in that creek, he also ventured about three-quarters of the way inside two large hollows, probing their steep shorelines with a jigworm and deep-diving crankbait. Their topography consisted of gravel on one side of the cove and massive boulders upon rocky ledges on the other.

On April 1, Fukae traveled more than 70 miles and explored more than 40 spots. From Prairie Creek boat ramp, he ventured downlake to Penitentiary Hollow and still farther down-lake to Moulder Hollow, where he spent more than two hours. Along the way, he probed a point inside Fords Creek and two points inside Cedar Creek, as well as seven main-lake sites.

At 1:30 p.m., a violent lightning storm sent Fukae to seek shelter at Rocky Branch Marina for about 30 minutes. Other than that brief storm, the wind was mild and the weather balmy. By 5 p.m. the surface temperature of the reservoir had climbed to 58°F, and the air temperature rose to 71°F.

During the course of the day, Fukae elicited 24 strikes from Beaver’s mixed varieties of bass. He hooked 17 of them, though two shook free before he could lift them across the gunnel. He estimated that one of the largemouth bass that he failed to land weighed about 4 pounds. His catch included 1 largemouth, 2 meanmouth, 2 smallmouth, and 10 spotted bass. A 31⁄2-pound smallmouth was the biggest bass he landed that day, a fish he extracted from a maze of cedar trees in four feet of water on a secondary point in Moulder Hollow. The total weight of his five largest bass was about 111⁄2 pounds. His most productive spots were secondary points with gravel, chunk rock, and occasional outcroppings of massive boulders, along with hardwood and cedar trees.

While Fukae was snaking his way through a labyrinth of flooded timber, he mentioned that he wouldn’t fish flooded timber if he had his ’druthers. Instead, he’d rather fish his medium-light spinning outfit with 6-pound-test fluorocarbon on a treeless terrain. Yet, despite his dislike of plying timber, he beautifully demonstrated how to entice, hook, and land bass on 8-pound test and spinning tackle in a quagmire of limbs, trunks, and rootwads. In the flooded timber, he elicited all of his strikes with the 3/32-ounce jig and 68L worm. He has an unusual approach to retrieving this combination.

Fukae’s Unique Retrieve

The essence of his retrieve is keeping the jigworm from touching bottom. If it touches, Fukae rues the mistake. Throughout the retrieve, he tries to slowly swim it a foot or two above bottom. At times, he prefers it to be as much as 3 feet off bottom, depending on the depth he’s fishing and the position of the bass.

As the lure swims, he occasionally lifts and drops the rod about a foot, causing the jig to rise and fall. On some lifts, he pauses halfway through for a second or two. During the entire retrieve, he shakes the jig about 70 percent of the time by subtly twitching his wrist. He sometimes shakes it while he raises the rod, sometimes when the rod is dropping, and sometimes while he’s slowly turning the reel handle to take up slack line. Fukae says most bass strike when the lure is falling and that the initial fall often is most productive.

At some spots, he used the shaky-head jigworm in water as shallow as 4 feet. At other spots his boat rested in 18 feet of water and he fished depths from 6 to 14 feet, making some casts towards the bank, some parallel to it, and others 180 degrees away. While he was fishing some deep points and bluff banks, his boat floated in water as deep as 27 feet, where he’d cast the 3/32-ounce jig on 6-pound fluorocarbon to the shoreline and retrieved it into about 14 feet of water.

When Fukae worked his 3/8-ounce football-head jig, he employed the same style of retrieve that he used with the 3/32-ounce shaky-head jig. At times, however, he’d begin shaking his rod as soon as the jig hit the surface of the water. On April 1, he cast the football jig only about 6 percent of the time, working it on deep main-lake spots where his boat sat in 17 to 23 feet of water.

Fukae says that his retrieve of the shaky-head worm and football jig is an attempt to replicate the rapid, panicked swimming of a crayfish. He explained that as he retrieves those lures, he’s constantly envisioning what his lure is doing. He calls it the ”image factor,” and he maintains that his concentration is heightened on every cast and retrieve by constantly imagining the movements of his lure.

A harsh wind typically plays havoc with anglers’ abilities to properly control their boats and present lures, and its effect on most finesse anglers is negative. Fukae, however, usually finds a way to work with the wind. In fact, rather than hindering him, the wind sometimes aids his presentations, he says.

Fukae is a master at boat control, which is one reason he’s such a maestro at finesse tactics. On April 1, the wind wasn’t a problem and his Z20 Ranger was always in the proper position to make an accurate cast for retrieving the lure at the correct angle, speed, and rhythm.

During the tournament, he fished areas that were similar to the flooded-timber ones that he’d fished with me, and employed identical presentations with the shaky-head jigworm. The wind, however, became a significant factor on several of those days—especially on April 7, when it howled at 20 mph, at times.

When the wind turned pesky, he found that the best way to control the boat and correctly present a 3/32-ounce shaky-head jig was to quietly wedge his 20-foot boat against one or two partially flooded trees. This scheme kept the boat in place and allowed him to properly execute his unique and seductive retrieve, working the jigworm at a variety of angles and depths of water. 

Even in the wind, Fukae found a way to successfully employ his finesse tactics—and across the four days of the tournament, his 20 biggest bass weighed 43 pounds, 12 ounces, leaving him $200,000 richer.

*Ned Kehde, Lawrence, Kansas, is one of two In-Fisherman Field Editors and longtime contributor to In-Fisherman magazine on a variety of topics.