Phat Fishing with Terry Corum

[TRUMAN BASSER]

I had the chance to catch up with Pradco, Yum pro Terry Corum for an evening of fishing on Smithville Lake. We loaded Terry's 21 foot Gambler bass boat into the water and made our way down the lake. Terry's Gambler just zoomed across the water. I've never been in a Gamber before and I will say that they are one fast boat. On the deck were a dozen rods. Terry had rigged up a couple of Bomber Model B crankbaits, an Excalibur XW6 Wake Bait, a couple of Bomber Model A's, a texas rigged Yum Wooly Hawgtail, and a Yum Wooly Bug. Also on deck was a Smithwick Rogue with a red lip and a shakeyhead rigged Yum Money Crawl. We started out fishing a series of wooded points and flats that had some nice grass beds that extended out a ways from the bank. Terry was working the floating rogue with a couple of twitches while I had picked up one of the Model B cranks. Terry said not too many people throw a rogue around here after it warms up. He talked about how hes caught some hefty limits out on Smithville with this technique. He also talked about how he had just gotten back from fishing down at Truman Lake where he was slaying the bass on the bait. I was casting and reeling the crank like I would with any other crankbait. Terry said that there's another way to fish these fat bodied cranks. Terry took the time to explain to me that probably the best way to fish these fat bodied cranks is to twitch them on top the water. Terry picked up another rod with a Model B on it and began to work the bait around the shoreline wood. Terry made a long cast to a laydown and let the bait rest for a minute on the surface. He gave the bait a nice twitch to get it to go just under the surface and when the bait came back up he made another two twitches when all of a sudden a bass just knocked the heck out of it . Terry leaned into the fish and got it into the boat. The fish was over 3lbs and just as fat as a football. It was Definately post spawn. It had just absolutley swallowed the crank. Terry said yeah if your going to fish these cranks like this you better have some needle nose pliers on hand because the bass really have the tendency to almost swallow this crank all the time. He said even the little ones will inhale it. I had never really used a crankbait before in this manner. Most of the time when I'm fishing something near the surface I'm throwing a pop r or a spook. Terry said yeah not too many people throw these baits like this. He said that is probably why it works so good. That is the thing about getting in the boat to fish with different people. You almost always come away with a technique or a tip or two that you haven't thought of before. I'm definately going to be using this technique from now on. I picked up the Excalibur Wake Bait and made a couple of casts and was amazed at the action the bait produced. I've been fishing some clear water grass lakes as of late and images of bass just comming out of the grass and exploding on this bait started going through my head. It's a bait I'm definately gonna have to try when I get back out on the water. We worked our way around the points and pockets without a bite so Terry decided that we should make a run to fish some rock around a bridge. We zipped down the lake navigating through all the flooded timber. I picked up the shakeyhead and noticed something different about the crawl that Terry had rigged up. Terry said that yeah what's different about that Money Crawl is that it's hand painted. I thought this was pretty cool. The action the two claw tails gave off was amazing. We worked our way down the rocky bank without much luck and fished our way back into a pocket. We were flipping and pitching Yum Wooly Hawgtails and a Yum Wooly bug to the shallow bushes that had just tons of baitfish flipping around them. Terry had turned me onto the Wooly Hawgtails and the Wooly bugs last year and I have since caught a lot of nice fish on these two soft plastics. Of the two my favorite is the Wooly Bug. We worked our way back out to a shallow point where bait was just flipping around the surface. Without a bite Terry decided to make run to another rocky point he knew of to see if we could get one more fish in the boat before dark. The sun was setting so I dug through his rod box for a buzzbait. I found one that was black and blue and I had made a couple of casts when Terry told me that I should check out the hook on the bait. I put the buzzbait in my hand and noticed that the hook was attached to the head with a titanium cable. I thought this was pretty cool and he explained that the deal with that hook there is that the cable flexes which helps with having fish come off when they come up and shake their head. The buzzbait was a Booyah one and it also had a couple of holes drilled through the blade which left a nice bubble trail across the water. Terry picked up that pearl Model B again and started popping it around the rocks up on the bank and then his rod loaded up. He fought the fish out and swung another solid 3lber in the boat just as the sun sank down over the horizon. We fished about an hour after it got dark. I failed to catch anything but at least I was going to walk away from the day with a couple new baits to try and a technique to utilize in the future. Terry said that often on Smithville Lake you won't catch a ton of fish but the ones you do catch will be nice.