Pro Tips Weekly: Mark Rose

Working the flats with a flutter spoon

When fish are really spread out, maybe because it’s a cloudy day or it’s in the fall and they’re really feeding and roaming around a lot following the bait, I like to fish a Strike King Sexy Spoon. With its vibration and flash, and the fact that you can cast it a mile, it’s a good lure for covering a lot of water.

Usually, I’ll fish the 5-inch size, but sometimes I’ll downsize to the 4-inch model if the bass are holding a bit shallower and are chasing smaller forage. Mainly this is something I try on a fairly flat bottom between a drop-off and the bank, where it’s probably much less than 20 feet deep. I look for mussel shell beds, slow tapering bars between the river ledge and the bank, a hump on the flat – places like that.

The Sexy Spoon has a nice cradling action, so I don’t use any kind of swivel with it; I just tie it directly to 20-pound-test fluorocarbon. You’ll get some line twist, but not bad. I fish it with a 7-foot, 11-inch rod that’s fairly stiff because can make long casts with it and set the hook better. After I cast out, I’ll let the spoon sink to the bottom, then sweep it up with that long rod. Then I kill it and let it go back down on a slack line; that’s very important. You’ll get more strikes if you let the Sexy Spoon fall horizontally on a slack line so it has that good rocking action. Believe me, you’ll know if a bass sucks it in.

—- National Guard pro Mark Rose, West Memphis, Ark.