Dustie Latiolais had armed himself for the morning with two casting and two spincasting rods. One baitcaster was rigged with a Rat-L-Trap and the other with his favorite bass lure, a 5-inch Zoom Finesse worm rigged wacky worm style on a weighted 3/0 hook.
Red bug color is “the best in the Basin,” he explained, closely followed by watermelon seed.
He fished his worm slowly, letting it sink to the bottom, and then twitching it a couple of times, pausing and repeating the presentation.
But it soon became obvious to him that this wasn’t going to be a bass day, which left him completely unperturbed. He shifted to his spincast rods, equipment seldom seen in the hands of an experienced fisherman.
“I like spincasts because they are easy for my whole family to use,” Latiolais explained. “There are just less incidents with the line. And they catch fish.
“I use them mainly for bream, sac-a-lait and catfish.”
With either piece of equipment, Latiolais believes in going light. The casting reels were spooled with 8-pound-test line and the spinning reels held 6-pound test.
Terminal tackle on the spincast reels was simple: a small gold wire hook snapped onto a snap swivel suspended below a small foam cork. A small split shot clamped on the line just above the swivel completed the rig.
His preferred live bait was live worms — not just for that day, but all of the time — for one simple reason.
They stay alive well.
“I can keep worms in the refrigerator at home,” Latiolais said. “Crickets don’t last — same with shiners.”
Later in the year (July and August), Latiolais will shift to artificials for bream fishing, primarily beetle spins. His favorite grub colors for the lures are chartreuse with black stripes and white with a red dot.