"GLASS & BRASS"

In the early 1990s, tournament water skiing was my passion. Yours truly, was more interested in passin' around six buoys at break neck speeds on a short line. Rather than flippen a one-ounce jig into the thick stuff on that same body of water.

One houseboat vacation on northern California's Clear Engle Lake (Trinity) a fisherman and his family cruised by and asked if they could run our slalom course. Which we had set up for the weeks stay. He had a nice bass boat with a 150 Merc for power, but was way over propped for towing skiers. So we all hopped into my Mastercraft and became best of friends for several years to follow.

As good friends are, they invited me to fish in the early am hours. The unique thing about this story is that fishing isn't new to vacationers on Trinity. It's quite evident that fishing must be great because the bait boxes are full of live crickets available at Cedar Stock, Estralita and most other marinas there. The odor of those critters is at best, somewhat overwhelming.

To my surprise there wasn't a cricket on board my buddy's bass boat. He broke out three light spinning outfits with 6 lb. line, # 1 worm hooks and four-inch hand poured worms rigged "TEXAS STYLE." Rather than a lead weight, he opted for a brass one, 1/8th ounce to be exact. Between the weight and the hook he threaded a small faceted glass bead.

He Says," Were in about 30 feet of water. Cast it out and let er sink to the bottom, then twitch your rod tip a few times and hang on!" "Ok!" I answered. Five seconds later.. "Fish on!" In came a 3 lb. smallie.

" The whole trick is to get their attention. The big ones seem to always be deeper than those cricket-eating minnows at the surface. And when you twitch your rod the hard brass weight clicking against the glass perhaps sounds like crickets down there." He says. But I really think it's more like crawdads. What ever we think, it's the dinner bell to those fish. This set up was good enough to land a 7.3 lb. smallie that week.

"Glass & Brass" works well at night and may have other call-names across the country. This rig also isn't limited to Small Mouth Bass. You may wish to experiment with different size set-ups as well.

One of my favorites is the YAMAMOTO KREATURE or an OUTLAW FIRE TAIL TUBE on 12 lb. BERKLEY BIG GAME monofilament line, mimicking a crawdad.