“Buenos Dias, Senor Bass!”

El Salto Largemouth Meet Smile Blades

The bass in Mexico’s El Salto Lake were being finicky.

You can be on the best bass lake in the world, and in my opinion that’s what El Salto is, and even then sometimes the boogers just don’t want to cooperate. We’d had great action earlier in the day, but now in mid-afternoon things had slowed down---way down.

Part of the problem was the wind. Fish El Salto in early May as we were doing and you can just about set your watch by the wind. It usually picks up around noon and an hour or two later it’s howling like a wounded coyote.

“Plastico,” our Mexican guide muttered as he moved the boat into an area full of partially submerged trees. El Salto is loaded with that kind of cover. It’s made to order for an angler to use plastic baits that can be fished deep and slow. I’ve been to this famed Mexican Lake often enough to know what to expect. This time I had a surprise for those big bruisers finning around down there south of the border.

Because it has been so productive for so long, El Salto is now getting a good bit of pressure. Visiting bass anglers from all over the place come for a shot at a trophy fish and to sample the world-famed hospitality at beautiful Anglers Inn. It figures that those Mexican fish are a little more cautious than they were seven or eight years ago. That’s especially true where they’re looking at lures they’ve seen time and again.

This time I had something different to show ‘em. If you read my last column, you’ll recall me telling how Oregon guide Steve Fleming and his clients have clobbered smallmouth using a Mack’s Lure Smile Blade out ahead of Outlaw Baits plastic worms. I’d been wondering ever since if that same lash up might be the ticket to take El Salto largemouth. Before I left for Mexico last month I rigged up a couple of such set-ups.

The rigs I put together consisted of a Smile Blade ahead of an Outlaw Baits Limp Stick.

I used the smallest of the three sizes in which the Smile Blade is available. Its color is a dark blue that changes to a sort of greenish purple depending on how the light hits it. The Outlaw Baits Limp Stick I often use is a 5-inch plastic bait. It’s a tubular style bait but doesn’t have the multi-strand tail associated with most tubes. I’ve taken a wad of bass on this bait.

The lure’s color was what I’ve been calling the “Anglers Inn tilapia blue.” I call it that because the bait is similar in color to the tilapia baitfish that are a mainstay in the diet of El Salto’s bass. I’ve caught mucho El Salto bass on Outlaw Baits plastic baits in that shade on my last to two visits to the Mexican bass fishing paradise.

Like I said, at this particular time those Mexican bass were hesitant to take anything. I switched from a plastic worm to a spinnerbait and from a spinnerbait to a Rat-L-Trap. The results were the same with all of them---nada. I scrounged around in the bag of plastic baits I’d brought with me. Then I spotted the Smile Blade/Limp Stick set up I described earlier.

I get a tad excited any time I have opportunity to throw baits into Lake El Salto. Sometimes my memory is about as long as a 10-inch plastic worm and I’d temporarily forgotten the new Smile Blade/Limp Stick bait with which I wanted to experiment.

It’s never easy to fish plastics of any kind when the wind is blowing. All that wave action makes it difficult to see what your line is doing. As experienced bass fishermen know, line watching is one of the primary keys to success with plastic baits. Often the only warning you have that a bass has picked your bait is the slightest little “tic” of line movement.

Once I had the Smile Blade/Limp Stick rigged I dropped it into the water alongside the boat and pulled it along to check its action. I expected the Mylar plastic Smile Blade to spin easily and it did. But what I also noticed was that the vibration of the blade was reflected in the tail end of the Limp Stick. It made that tubular hunk of water take on a more lifelike appearance as it wiggled its way along behind the Smile Blade.

Satisfied it was operating as I intended, I cast the combination into an opening in the submerged trees and let it drop. Nothing happened as it dropped. I hopped it up off the bottom a couple of times, then began reeling back in and---wham! As I’ve already mentioned a couple of times, fishing had been slow. I hadn’t really been prepared for that quick and savage jerk. I was way late in setting the hook.

When I got the rig back, the Limp Stick was all but pulled off the 4/0 Gamakatsu hook I’d rigged it on. I removed the bait and replaced it with a new one. As soon as I got it rigged, I cast it back to exactly the same spot. Despite the wind I felt a thump as the lure dropped. This time I was ready.

“There he is!” I hollered as my line tightened and I slammed the hook home. It took only a heartbeat or two to realize it was a good fish. When we finally got it into the boat our Boga Grip scales showed it was exactly 6-pounds, 8-ounces. Now that’s not really big by El Salto standards. You have to top 10-pounds down there to even think about tooting your bass fishing flute.

Be that as it may, I’ve been around too long and fished too hard to turn up my snoot at

6 ½-pounder bass. That’s a dandy fish in my book. The day I quit feeling that way I’ll quit fishin’ and take up knittin’.

But even more important than the size of the fish was the lure combination I caught it on. What I wound up doing, you see, was proving that it’s not only smallmouth like my pal Steve Fleming gets in the John Day River that will smack a Smile Blade when it’s used in concert with plastic baits of one kind or another. So will their largemouth cousins. And sometimes they’ll whack it when they’ve not shown the slightest interest in anything else.

Be assured I’ll be doing some more experimenting with this interesting combination on future bass fishing adventures. You’d be wise to do the same.

 

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