As with most things in life, timing is everything in fishing. You might be throwing the perfect lure in the perfect spot, but if you’re there at the wrong time, you won’t catch anything more than a hitch in your shoulder from all that fruitless casting.
But if you’re there at the right time with the right bait, you’ll have more fun than a healthy politician jumping to the front of the line to get a vaccine.
That’s what happened to me on my most recent trip. I love catching fish on hard-plastic lures, but there are certain situations when these baits are more productive for me than others.
Some anglers throw them in the heart of summer — and they certainly work then — but I feel an irresistible urge to fish them when water temperatures are in the sweet spot between 52 and 58 degrees.
Mother Nature had cooled waters to the lower end of that range, so I opted to start the day with a Bill Lewis SB-57 in Tennessee shad color. It was a good choice. The fish simply couldn’t resist it.
Although it’s a crankbait, I do only intermittent cranking of the lure, preferring to twitch it and then take up the slack. Nearly all of my hits come at the beginning of each twitch. In my mind, the fish are looking at the paused bait slowly rising, and their feeding instincts kick in when they see it race forward.
Whatever their thought process is, they hit it like it’s their last possible meal, and it’s about to get away. To me, that’s what makes fishing the SB-57 so fun — the intensity of the strikes.
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