A few months ago I would have said that anyone who claims he can always catch a bass is either crazy or just bragging, but now I’ll listen politely. This may be true.
My newfound confidence in infallible bass fishermen is the result of an invitation to fish with George Harry at a lake in Central Florida. His letter reached me when I was planning a fishing trip to Arkansas, Alabama, and the South, but the mere convenience of the trip didn’t sway me. Nor did George give a Technicolor description of the place. I had become accustomed to the glowing terms of resort advertising. What sold me was the clear statement that George had given me an absolute guarantee of fishing every day. If I couldn’t catch them, my stay there was free.
Eventually I reached the lake with a northerly guy who had harassed us for 100 miles or more. The air was even worse over the next two days. This kept us completely away from the lake. There was still a little calm on the third day, but George was impatient to have his boat on board, so we went fishing.
He claimed that my bass tackle, the way he was going to show me, was all wrong. He insisted that I use a rod that made me feel like Tom Thumb. It was a glass work cut to approximately three feet in length, fitted with a baitcasting reel containing monofilament line of approximately 20-pound test. The lure was an oddly shaped nickel spoon about 2 by 2 inches long, fastened to the line with a small snap.
With our poles ready in the boat, George fired up the motor as if to make a dash to some distant hot spot, but I was surprised to find that he was letting go of his line as he rowed. He signaled me to take out my penis as well.
“Do you feel your spoon moving?” he shouted. I nodded. “Okay,” he came back. “If you find any grass, flick your stick hard.” Before we had gone another 50 feet, George gave a powerful blow with his stick. That’s when I hit the weed. “Jelk it loose,” he ordered. Not knowing what else to do, I pulled back on the rod with all my might. The spoon came loose with a jerk and wobbled completely again. Then George suddenly cut off the motor. I glanced at his throbbing rod and turned to see him hitting a nice bass. The next day the weather became worse. There was no place where you could fish where the waves were not rising up and throwing water with both hands. So we spoon-plugged, tossing the little flat-bottomed boat through the nor’easter that came whipping our spoons! Through the weeds. This is how we caught our bass. Everyone using Buck’s method on the lake took their limit. People who didn’t come to talk about bad fishing.
We caught fish in this way in about two miles of water; Moving briskly, flicking through the weeds, feeling the spoon regain its lively wobble, and then hang on again. But we caught nine fair bass. And after leaving the lake we continued to take them and flow down the middle of the river which forms its outlet.
I tried my fly rod on a few sheltered creeks in the river, but I didn’t get any interest from panfish either.
Then the wind got stronger until we decided to head back to camp. It was a wild ride traveling at high speed through high, white-capped waves, but we still trolled spoons, and were disappointed if they didn’t find many bass.
Drenched from the flying spray as I ran back to camp, I got out of the boat and thought about everything. I wasn’t sure I would like this type of fishing. I was never crazy about trolling, and it wasn’t like any trolling system I knew.
At first my maximum speed for trolling was equal to the speed of a man rowing a boat. Imagine running a five horse motor at top speed on a small boat and catching bass on the back of it. Still, I couldn’t deny that this method worked. We actually managed to hold our own while other fishermen on the lake were failing with conservative systems. I think I was just annoyed by this new strategy because it seemed such a rough, rude way to catch fish – almost like snatching them.
That was before I met a fisherman named Buck Perry who originated this method. Buck burst into camp right after I returned from fishing. I had only a few conversations with him this time, but it was enough to alert me that I had met a scholar as well as a fisherman. I then wanted to hear more about his system, but a friend of his from Wisconsin was waiting to go fishing. Now the wind was blowing strong, yet they hurried to get ready and soon came out of the lake. A few hours later they came up with two limits – and they released a lot of keepers.
I was just finishing dinner that night when Buck stopped by. “Can you go out with me tomorrow?” he asked.
“I wanted you to invite me,” I replied. “It seems you certainly have something. George gave me a taste of it this morning, and I think he’s safe in offering his ‘No Base, No Charge’ challenge. But there must be more to it than what he showed me.”
“Well, you’re responsible for the system,” Buck replied surprisingly. “Your books and articles, in which you explain the need for controlled depth, speed and action in fishing with different lures, gave me this idea. I had to make my own lures to get what I wanted – in different weights and sizes. The result is the spoon and system you saw. I call it spoon-plugging. I’ll show you tomorrow.”
Next morning also the weather was in bad mood. That same northeast wind was making Florida positively frigid. We waited until about 10 o’clock, hoping the wind would die down. Instead it got worse, but the air got a little warmer, so we went out anyway. To avoid getting wet in the open water, Buck moved to the eastern side of the lake where the wind was partially blocked by marshy forest. When we got no response we started wading near the weed in comparatively shallow water, moving about 20 feet. There we picked up four bass in two trips in the same small area, so we anchored at that spot to try casting. Buck tied on a larger version of the spoon he was trolling with, while I took out my spinning outfit and a spoon.
Buck’s spoon took one to two bass of mine early on. Then, since the fish that was hit appeared to be coming from deeper water, we moved another 100 feet away. Buck’s lure, which had been stuck to the bottom during his retrieve, also performed better there than mine – until I started bringing my lure in by taking turns turning over and letting it sink. Then both of us trapped him rapidly. We spent the rest of the day like this; Trolling to locate fish, then working productive areas by casting. But the casting was just to bring the game to life. This was even more fun. But the spoon-plugging-killing system of trolling bucks was. It seemed perfect.
I was already convinced, but Buck continued to sell his system during the next two days. Bad weather kept me stranded on the shore. I caught a few small fish, but only one was worth mentioning. Buck always arrived drenched and past his limits. It was spoon-plugging that made the difference. As Buck explains, this works because it gives you the chance to control more factors that affect the fish. They are the depth of the fish caught, the speed of the lure, the action of the lure, and the size and color of the lure. Buck claims that the right combination of those things will take bass every time, regardless of the weather, barometer or anything else. “The bass never stops attacking,” he keeps repeating. “They just change their location and mood.”
Buck’s system is not intended to replace casting as a means of taking bass. This is a way to fill your stringer when casting won’t work. You can systematically experiment with spoon-plugging which will sooner or later hit the right combination. Just follow these general rules: Start casting in shallow water – the area from the shoreline to a depth of about eight feet. As a rule, smaller lures work best here, and this is also the place to try out your surface lures. try them. If they are unsuccessful, wade out of the 8-foot-deep area and begin trolling the shore. Generally you will want to use a bright lure for a bright day, and a darker one for a dark day.
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Experiment with fast and slow trolling, with your lure at medium depth. Still no fish? Cast your lure deeper, bounce off the bottom if necessary, and vary your trolling speed again. You’ll soon find a combination of speed, depth, action and attraction that works. When you do, stick with it—but only as long as it’s working. Don’t become so dependent on one combination that you trash it when it fails for you. Find another I combination even when conditions change. This is easy to do with spoon plugging. This is the beauty of the system.
Spoon-plugging is a way to dig up fish, whether you need to scrape them off the bottom in deeper water or pull them out of the weeds in shallow water. This trip off Florida provided a good example of what it will do to fish hiding in the weeds in shallow water. We eliminate such tension without touching the surface with plugs and bugs. So we spoonplugged them at high speed. Our bait destroyed so many weeds that we got screwed 70 percent of the time, but we took four bass on our first pass.
Sure, spoon-plugging sounds arrogant. I hardly think I would believe it myself if someone told me about it. But, goddamn, it really happened. I had caught hold of a rod.
This story was originally published in the August 1953 issue of Outdoor Life.
