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Texas-Size Jigging Spoons For Open Water Bass

The lake lay torpid, a battleship-gray reflection of the hazy sky. Only the occasional fleeing shad or rolling carp broke the glass surface. Another August morning was percolating into a triple-digit afternoon on Texas’ Lake Fork. Few motors infringed on the silence. Most anglers would wait for an autumnal cooling to take to the water again.

But the heat would not deter Rick Loomis.

Few lakes seem to experience as many “fads” as Lake Fork. With news of another monster being landed on a new or different bait, shelves around the lake are soon stocked with the lure and everybody seems to be throwing it. Loomis has been guiding on Fork for more than 15 years and has been at the forefront of ushering in some of these new fads.

In recent years, large plastic swimbaits have been the ticket.

“We’ve been throwing that big swimbait for about five years now. Everybody got off on that bait. The swimbaits are big-bodied baits and we found out that we could catch good fish on them.”

Along with the use of the swimbaits, many anglers have tuned in to catching fish far from the banks.

“There are just so many places out there to catch deep fish, and more people are learning them everyday.”

Loomis feels that with the enormous fishing pressure Lake Fork receives, it becomes necessary to periodically give fish a new look. That is exactly what he is doing with the large four-inch spoons he is jigging with these days. He first learned of the baits from a fellow angler who builds crappie jigs. A crappie-jig type bucktail added to the back of the simple silver spoon is quickly becoming one of his favorites.
 
“I called him and asked him how that spoon bite was going. He said great. Come over here and get some. I started to catch fish where I used to catch them on swimbaits.”

Loomis slowed the boat at a spot that looked no different than the hundreds of acres of open water around it. After running a few figure eights with his eyes glued to the graph, he powered up and ran toward another area.

“The graph tells me where the fish are and what I need to be throwing. I can see for example that if they are four feet off the bottom that I can’t catch them on a Carolina rig. I need to bring the bait up to them. If the graph tells me the fish are eight feet up, I can make eight cranks and then raise my rod tip.

Starting in May, Loomis starts to look for fish in around 24 feet of water, and the fish tend to move a bit deeper in July and August. In May, Lake Fork’s bass tend to be schooled up in larger groups, but as summer wears on the fish disperse.  During the dog days of summer, Loomis is usually looking for pairs or trios of fish on his graph. He says success depends on “a hundred percent seeing before catching.”

“If my electronics go out, I may as well get off the lake and go get them fixed. I loose my eyes. A graph is a lot like a compass; believe what you see. When you start catching fish, you’ll realize that it is a lot easier than you may have thought.”
Though he has a large number of humps, hydrilla beds and other structure cataloged in his GPS, Loomis knows he is going to find fish relating to the schools of shad. As a guide who fishes everyday, Loomis is able to keep track of the bait concentrations and fish. He recommends anglers start their search near these structure points.

As Loomis stared at his graph, he suddenly flung an orange buoy far from the boat. After Idling well past the spot, he put his trolling motor down.
“The reason I like buoying these fish is that if we catch a 10-pounder, we can get all excited and drift off. And then you have to get pictures. With the buoy, I can get the boat right back in the position where you caught that fish. If I don’t have that buoy out there, I am just guessing or I have to go back and graph again. When you have a school of fish, they may be in an area no bigger than this room.”

Casting the spoon to a spot some 30 yards from the buoy, he waited patiently for the bait to fall.

 “The best way I have found to work these spoons if the fish are suspended is to start on the bottom. If I am counting down, I may miss by two or three feet, but if I go to the bottom and bring it up I am pretty sure where I am fishing. You really want to bring that rod tip high, and then follow that spoon down without getting a slack line. Almost every bite you get will be when that spoon is falling.”

The boat rocked as Loomis set the hook. He swung the deeply bowed rod down into the water as the line climbed toward the surface. A fish in the eight- to nine-pound class leaped high above the water and spit the spoon. Such a fish is no rarity on Fork, and Loomis cast back as if nothing had happened. It was just moments later when he lipped a five-pounder into the air for a quick photograph and release.

Though thus far this year the jigging spoon has been a summer pattern, Loomis expects it to be effective through October on Texas lakes.
For new and intermediate anglers, searching the open water may seem a daunting, needle-in-a-haystack task, but in the late spring and early fall when fish tend to be in larger schools the payoff can be well worth the effort.

“On a lake that is not as pressured as Lake Fork, you might have those fish all to yourself and that’s a little gold mine. My whole day might come off of one spot. Where I might catch 20 fish off of one spot, and the guy going down the bank might not catch 20 fish all day.”