The Western Region Finals (One of the Federations) – And An Origin Story

Some years back one of the bass federations (I don’t recall which one) had their western states regional final here on the Colorado River.  It was quite the thing for several months.  One fellow drove hundreds of miles for several months to come fish our pro am.  Others hired airplanes to fly the river, and freaked out about our abundance of sandbars.  They tried to get the directors to move their tournament because of it.  A buddy of mine who was a licensed guide at the time was booked constantly for months.  Some guys logged onto one of the mapping sites, printed out pages of the aerial photography of the river, and had the pages laminated.  That’s actually something I did myself some years before.

One bigger fishing tackle manufacturer contacted me and offered to give me some tackle for the Pro/Am club I ran at the time if I would show one of their pro staff around.  I said sure.  I was always looking for ways to make the Pro/Am “more” than just a payout for the winners.  I wanted to make sure everybody got something if I could.  We got out one day, and almost every place I took him he said he had already been there in prior practice.   Good for him if that’s true.  He was doing the work.  Not just counting on tips and spots from a local.  He was on a bite.  He was just whacking numbers of fish on a watermelon red flake Zoom Fluke.  He asked me not to tell anybody, and I didn’t.  His sponsor had sent me two huge boxes of tackle to use and/or give away.  The least I could do was keep my mouth shut.  I did however head over to my local tackle shop the next day to buy a couple bags for myself.  I needn’t have bothered.  Try to buy some baits, or keep my mouth shut.  By mid day it was all over town, and just about every angler around knew he had gone to every store in town and bought every single bag of watermelon red flake soft plastic jerk baits.

I had a pro/am tournament the next day, and I had one bag of those jerk baits on the wall in my work shop.   I probably could have sold it for a hundred dollars or more at my draw meeting that evening.  There were at least a dozen federation guys (probably more) at the meeting hoping to sign up and fish our club as an amateur.  A couple got in, but most didn’t.  One of the federation guys who got in wound up drawing me.

I fished that one bag of Zoom jerk baits all day long, and I caught a lot of fish on them.  I told my draw partner if there were any left at the end of the day he could have them.  For the number of fish I caught that day I am surprised I didn’t run out, but I didn’t.  I had one unused bait still in the bag.  It was a good day of fishing for me, but it was a brutal day on the water.  There were more bass boats running around than I have ever seen here before.  I’m not even counting the usual hundreds of party boats that tend to beach up on a sandbar every weekend all summer long.  It was crazy.  Everywhere I went I had boats following me.  They didn’t make any bones about it.  They were following me around to see where I was fishing.  One came into a back water, ran over my fish, and forced me to back out of their way in order to see where I was fishing.  Others were just dogging me.  One boat followed me for 40-50 miles up and down the river that day.  I even tried to lose the followers a couple times, but at 75 MPH with a load I just couldn’t out run them by enough to lose them, and a few where just plane faster than me.

At one point I was looking at the GPS hitting just a hair over 75 MPH.  I could feel the boat was still accelerating, and one guy who had been following me all day was just dogging me.  I couldn’t lose him.  In traffic he was so close a couple times if I had bailed off the throttle he would have run right over us.  A boat decided to cut diagonally across the river, and I had to adjust course slightly.  We caught he wake and that big old Bass Cat decided it want to go in the other direction right now.  We spun out at 75 plus, and she lifted up on one side.  I looked to my right and all I saw was water.  My passenger wound up in my lap.  I wrapped my arm around him to make sure he didn’t fall out, and that big old boat set back down on her bottom.  In a second we were stationary looking back the way we had come.  I did a look around to make sure nobody was going to hit us while my passenger clambered back into his own seat.

I headed back towards the home marina.  I spent the rest of the day fishing well known community water, and I kept catching fish on those watermelon red flake jerk baits.  True to my word I gave my own remaining bait to my draw partner at the end of the day.

I didn’t pay much attention to the actual federation tournament, but the guy who bought all those jerk baits and cleaned out all the local stores wound up finishing fifth overall.

I wasn’t all that great of a mold maker back then, but I when I headed home I decided I was going to make my own jerk bait mold.  It’s not the same.   I gave it a wider hook slot on the bottom that goes all the way out the back of the bait to glide further on a twitch.  It worked.  It came in maybe a tiny bit light, but in heavy salt formulas I had no problem casting it as far as I needed to.  I caught a lot of fish on that five inch bait.  It turned out to have a little natural tail swaying action when rigged weightless on a hook and slack lined.  I called it The Square Back Minnow.  It had a square back, and the movie Broke Back Mountain was recent enough people still recalled it.  I picked a name that was descriptive, and I hope a little provocative.  It never really took off, but man that bait catches fish.

As some of you may know one of my favorite baits is my own 4 inch Club-O.  I had thought about making a five inch, but my own home grown five inch jerk bait fished so well in a lot of the same places I didn’t bother to make a 5 inch Club-O.  Well eventually I did, but only because other people kept asking me to.  Then they caught big fish on them.  I started fishing them too, and I caught fish on them.  In fact the first time I ever fished them I got onto a whole mess of four pound plus bass.  I kinda forgot about The Square Back Minnow.  Until a few years ago I hadn’t fished them in years opting for the 4 inch and 5 inch Club-O instead.  I happened to mention a jerk bait bite to a fishing buddy, and he started going through my boat looking for a bait.  I didn’t have any in the boat, but I had a box back in the shop.  We headed back out in the afternoon and he just started slaying on those years old jerk baits.  Now every spring and some in the summer I throw that bait and I remember how many fish it catches.