Robbie Latuso consistently peels bass off the top of the water column during October. He throws a buzzbait, and when it stops buzzing, so to speak, the game is on with a hookup.
“When the weather’s cooling off, it’s hard to beat a buzzbait. You can throw it all day long; you don’t have to put it down,” Latuso said, noting he loves retrieving the sputtering topwater lure around cypress trees in the Atchafalaya Basin.
“It’s hard to beat down south. I love going to the Atchafalaya Basin that time of year. The water’s usually down, and the fish are feeding,” he said.
Latuso, 52, who owns Service Master Fire and Water Damage Restoration, has been fishing professionally 25 years. He’s competing on the Bassmaster Elite Series circuit in 2019 for a third-straight year.
His go-to buzzbait is a black, ½-ounce Delta Lures LLC buzzbait with an anodized black blade or anodized gold blade. He ties it to 40-pound Fitzgerald Vursa Braid green line loaded on a Shimano Metanium reel (8:1 ratio because “you need a fast reel”) mounted on a medium-heavy, 7-foot Fitzgerald Casting Rod.
Where he fishes it
He fishes the buzzbait, introduced by Delta Lures in 2011, mainly around cypress trees.
“Buzzbait around cypress trees or any kid of vegetation you can find … lily pads, grass,” he said.
Also, he suggested, check around sloughs for moving water, always a plus in the nation’s last great overflow swamp,
If a bass swings and misses at the buzzbait, Latuso said he always has a comeback bait ready: a Missile Baits D-Bomb.
There are times he takes the buzzbait’s black skirt off and replaces it with either a black Stanley Jigs Ribbit, he said.
Why?
“When they’re feeding hard, sometimes they want a bigger profile, a little more meat,” he said.
And he’ll often stick a black Horney Toad on the buzzbait.
“With a Horny Toad, you can go down to ¼-ounce. On a ¼-ounce with a smaller blade, the weight of that Horny Toad allows you to cast it farther, he said.
If the buzzbait he’s throwing does have a black skirt, he’ll use a chartreuse, soft-plastic trailer, either a Mann’s Classic Trailer or a Yum Twin Tail, he said.
Latuso varies the retrieve to find out what speed the bass are turning on to the buzzbait. When the preferred speed is dialed in, it’s time for setting the hook on bass after bass.
