Jake's field report "Nories Lady Fish" Nov 7, 2017

Overview

 The Nories Lady Fish is a great bait for drop shot fishing. The lady fish was designed with a uniquely tapered body line that makes the tail vibrate on the drop. With small rod twitches the tail twitches and comes to life. Coming in at only 3 ½ inches the lady fish matches the hatch perfectly when bass are on small bait fish. When Nories designed this bait they made it from a salt impregnated high density material so not only does the bait have great taste and scent, but also this will make the bass hold on to the Lady Fish longer and durable enough to take a few fish before you have to change it.

Rigging

 As I said before the Nories lady Fish is great for a drop shot technique which in japan they call it a down shot rig. When tying a drop shot rig the biggest question is, how big should your leader be from the weight to your hook?  A general rule of thumb I learned was early spring start with a short leader and as the year continues into the summer and fall months you should increase your leader length. The best way to hook the lady fish is nose hooked, right in the head of the bait. This will give the bait the most action. The Lady Fish comes in 27 great colors so whatever forage you are trying to imitate or you want something different the bass have not seen, Nories has you covered.

Testing

 With the cold months here, I wanted to get back out on the boat before the season was over. I have fished the Cal Sag River once before in a high school tournament and have been wanting to fish it since. It was a last-minute decision to go out, so I only had a few hours to fish.  I rolled up to a stretch of shore line that was covered in boulders and chunk rock. From the shoreline, it was a sheer drop to about 12 feet. The bass were relating to this area because the rocks retain more heat than anything else in the water. This heat from the rocks attracts the small bait fish and crawfish which would attract the bass as well, since there is warmer water and forage for the bass to feed on. I was using my electronics to stay right at the bottom of the drop and parallel cast the shore line to stay tight to the bottom of the drop. I was working the drop shot very slowly with small rod twitches. You didn’t want to twitch the rod too much because then you would be moving the bait too much and it wouldn’t look natural. On top of that the bass were very lethargic with the cold water and I wanted to keep the bait down in the strike zone as long as possible. This technique landed me a few nice large and small mouth in the short amount of time I had.

Equipment

 When drop shoting you need a very sensitive rod to detect even the lightest of bites, but also you want the rod to be strong enough to handle the fish. My rod of choice was a Legit Design WSS-ST65L. The “ST” stands for solid tip. What this means is that on these selected spinning rods they use 30T Carbon graphite solid stick for the tip section which makes the high sensitively and operability. They also paint hi-vis green color on the tip so no signal from a bite of an inactive bass would be missed. The softer solid tip also helps your sinker not to get stuck in rocky spots as much. The reel I was using was a Daiwa JDM Luvias model. The JDM Luvias reel is very light weight and has a very smooth drag, which is crucial with light line situations. The line I has on this set up was 8 pound Daiwa J-Braid to a 6 pound Toray Exthread fluorocarbon leader. Daiwa J-Braid is a very durable and sensitive braid that I never had problems with. The Toray Exthread is the best fluorocarbon I have ever thrown. With how well they balanced the sensitivity and durability in this line Toray made an amazing fluorocarbon line, which in my opinion is the best on the market. – Jake Gaston