oumament angler J. T. Kenny rarely loses a fish on a structure spoon because bass

usually inhale the bait and get hooked in the back of the mouth. However, fish weighing

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3 pounds or less can come unbuttoned, as they ing in a tournament on Lake Barkley with her husband. They were fishing a main-river ledge with jigs and crankbaits when a school of bass suddenly started busring big shad on rap.

often grab the front of the spoon. Kenny solves the prob­lem by placing a second hook on the spoon's nose.

He attaches a barrel swivel to the spoon's lead split ring to reduce line twist, and then adds a No. 2 treble hook to the split ring. Most of smaller bass he lands are hooked on the nose treble.

"I chucked a spoon to the school and hopped ir three to fo ur fee t under. the surface," she says. "I loaded the boat in 10 minures . My husband didn' t have time to fish because he was too busy net­ring my bass."

even when other anglers were struggling. Fishermen fo llowed him aro und in hopes of getting a glimpse of the secret lure, and a local radio station even invit­ed him to go on the air and reveal the bait. T hey we re ti cked off when he turned them down.

Spai ts was determined not to intro­duce the spoon until he got it just right: Bes ides, he was having too much fun catching monster bass. When he finally unveiled his Big Joe Spoon, Lake Fork anglers quickly snatched them up. Soon, the lures were catching heavyweight bass across the country.

Several other companies have since come out with similar baits, and pros have taken them onto the competi tive cir­cuits- Mark Rose, of Marion, Arkansas, Florida's J .T. Kenny, and Tennessean Dianna Clark, a standour on the W omen's Bassmaster Tour, are three of them.

Rose discovered the lures' magic when he fished a raurnament on Pickwick Lake in Ocraber 2007. He fOWld a school on a I5-foot-deep mussel bar while casting foo tball jigs and crankbaits; when he started hopping a structure spoon over the bar, the strikes came hard and fast.

"I couldn't believe what was happening," he says. "It was like fishing virgin water."

When the four-day event was over, Rose and his spoon claimed first place and a $125,000 check.

It was also in 2007 that o ne o f Kenny's fr iends gave him one of dle new baits and encouraged him ra tty it.

"I took one look ar mar shoehorn and raid rum he was crazy," he says. "I finally casr the bait to shut rum up and a 3-pOLU1d

36 • FishingClub.com

bass nabbed it before ir rur bottom." T he spoon is now one of Kenny's

main structure lures. H is best experience with it was when he stopped to fi sh Kentucky Lake while traveling between tournaments. After marking a huge school of fish over a roadbed 18 feet fr om the surface, he backed off and srarred casting a spoon ra them.

"I hooked a bass on every cast for the next 2)1, hours,» he says. "They weighed from 1 ra over 8 pounds."

Clark carried some Lal{e Fork T rophy Tackle spoons in her boat fo r months before ~he finally cast one while comper-

Size Matters Although Lake 'Fork Trophy Tackle

makes its Flutter Spoon in three sizes, Clark has never used anything but the largest, which measures 5 inches long and weighs 1.3 ounces. She claims it's a reac­tion bait that triggers rhe biggest bass, much l~e a deep-diving crank.

"It doesn't turn your arms to jelly the way a big crankbait can , though ," she says. "And, you can fish a spoon deeper than any crankbait runs."

Kenny has settled on Strike King's 5)1,-inch , IX-ounce, Sexy Spoon. Even when bass are feeding on small baitfish, he believes it triggers bites from larger

-~ ~ - ~ # dJ - - ~~~.

asspros J.T. . ~~~ Kenny and Mark Rose . '. ~

primarily fish structure spoons in relatively open water around shell beds. After casting past the bed, both anglers let the spoon sink to bottom, then lift the lure by sweeping the rodtip from about 9 to 12 o'clock. They follow it back to bottom with the rodtip to let it fall on slack line.

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fish. He also likes the distinctive "whop­whop-whop" feel of the big spoon as it flutters on the fall .

Rose also relies mainly on the 5;;'-inch Sexy Spoon, but he also casts the 4-inch, %-ounce size, if it better matches the baitfish bass are feeding on.

Sexy Shad is his go-to color. If that doesn 't fly, he scrapes off the paint fo'r maximum flash. Along those lines, Clark favors solid silver with dash of chartreuse.

"I throw silver 90 percent of the time," Kenny says. "On bright, sunny days, 1 tone down the flash by coloring the concave side with a black marker."

Rock The Cradle Getting the most from any spoon

means working it in such a way that it's allowed to produce its inherent action.

"You have to let it sink on a slack line so it cradles (wobbles side-to-side) as it

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drops," Rose insists. He relies on one basic presentation:

He malces a long cast and lets the spoon sink to the bottom on slack line. Then, he takes up the slack and sweeps his rodtip from 9 to 12 o'clock. He follows the spoon back down with his rodtip to give the lure the necessaty slack. Virtually every strike happens on the fall.

"People think they won't detect the strike on slack line, Rose says. "But believe me, you will. Your line jumps a foot when a bass nails a spoon."

Kenny also pulls the lure off bottom with a long rod sweep and lets it drop on slack line. He believes this lifts the spoon three to four feet, while Rose thinks the spoon comes up eight feet or more. The exact distatlce doesn' t matter, as long as the method woiles.

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hopping a spoon over the bottom, she also imparts shorter lifts than Rose and Kenny, typically a foot or so:

Across the board, the pros prefer rela­tively heavy line; Kenny and Rose go with 20-pound fluoro, and Clark prefers 15- to 17 -pound Fluorohybrid line from Lake Fork. Those choices allow the spoon to sink quickly and reduce the chances of the bait wrapping in the line between rips.

When And Where A structure spoon excels from early

spring into the fall, when bass hold on main-lake ledges, humps and other structure. The most productive depth range is eigh t to more than 25 feet, depending on the water clarity and other factors. Since a spoon is a sight-oriented bait, it doesn't work well in muddy water. Three to four feet of visibility is ideal, claims Rose.

FishingClub.com _ 37

"The posts pawn is when a spoon real­ly shines," he says. "Right after the bass finish spawning, they school on ledges and gorge on shad."

Rose favors gently sloping bottoms, humps and bars to fast drops. While competing in a tournament at Ft. Loudon Lake, Tennessee, he spooned up several 4- and 5-pound largemouths from a flat spot in a river bend that was 19 feet deep, where bass were holding on a mussel bed.

Incidentally, shell beds and spoons were made for each other. If you try to work one through stumps, brush piles or grass, its treble readily snags. The structure must have little or no cover, and a hard bottom of gravel, sand, clay or shells.

"You can throw them over mussel beds - and catch bass'--all day long and never get hung up," Kenny says.

Believe it-he has caught shell-bed bass everywhere in the country, including the Kissimmee Chain in Florida, the entire

When fishing

a spoon t ' .... , /~ / /

/ / along a ledge, tour­nament angler

Dianna Clark holds .. --------- ~/ / --- /

.-"'--:--------_/ her boat on the edge of the drop and casts parallel to it, hopping the

bait back to the boat. This approach keeps her spoon

in the strike zone throughout the retrieve.

...­/'

,/ -~-~---- ----- / :/~( - '. ",,/ // ~ ----~// . ~.:::: ------------ ,...."./

..-- --"../ --- ------ ~

cent of the time when she fishes offshore, and a %- or ~-Olmce B&M jig the rest of the time. She rarely casts crankbaits.

ed several bass by hopping his spoon over a 10-foot ledge that dropped into 35 feet of watet. The next day he'd spooned up only two fish when the bite stopped. "Jigs and spoons are my big-fish

Quick Tip: Built-In Plug Knocker

"My boat was sitting on the deep side of rile ledge, and I was marking fish sus­pended 10 feet deep," he says.

So, Kenny backed his boat another long cast away from the ledge and began tossing the spoon over the suspended bass. He counted it down to 10 feet and hopped it at that level, using the satTIe cadence as he did when fishing the bot­tom . The result was several 4-pound bass and one over 6, plus a bunch of 2 and 3 pounders.

When you snag a structure spoon, don't try to rip it free. Instead, keep the line snug and move the boat directly over the lure. When you're positIOned

properly, jig the rodtip up and down on slack line; the spoon is heavy enough to serve as its own plug-knocker. Do this and you'll rarely lose one.

Tennessee River system of reservoirs, Lake Champlain and even Lake Erie, where smallmouth bass inhaled his spoon.

Find Them First For all its strengths, the spoon's slow,

wobbling action makes it a poor search bait. Kenny and Rose find bass faster by combing water with ):I-ounce football jigs and deep cranks. The jig, especially, helps them feel bottom to fmd shells and other hard spots that attract bass. Of course, jigs and crankbaits also draw strikes.

Only after the anglers find bass do they throw spoons into the mix. A typical pro­gression would be to work the structure with a crankbait until it stops getting bites, then switch to a jig, and, finally, to

the spoon. One of these lures usually catches more bass than the others, but the spoon usually catches the biggest fish.

Clark casts a structure spoon 40 per-

38 • FishingClub.com

baits," she says. "I can catch fish any­where with those two lures. "

Her favorite approach is to position her boat on the edge of the drop and cast parallel to it. This keeps her spoon in the strike zone throughout the retrieve.

On the contraty, Rose and Kenny pre­fer to hold their boats on rile deep side of a drop and work a spoon downhill. However, they occasionally circle far up on the shallow side to avoid spooking bass atld then work the bait uphill. One drawback with this approach is that the lure is more lilcely to get hung up.

Suspended Bass When bass suspend above structure,

they won't respond to a spoon hopping below them. This is when Kenny works rile lure higher in rile water collUlln.

He ran into rllis situation a few years ago on Kentucky Lalce. One day he boat-

Metal Matters Wherever in the water col= you find

bass, it's clear structure spoons can put them in the boat. Simply put ~ these lures in the zone. V

WEB EXTRA

Spoon Tackle This new breed of structure spoons

is remarkably effective, but you

need to fish the lures with just the

right combination of line, rod and

ree l to get the most from them.

Mark Hicks reveals how to gear up

right-just go to FishingClub.com

and click on Web Extra.

North American Fisherman