Add-Ons for El Salto Excellence

The worst thing you can do before a trip to El Salto – of anywhere, for that matter – is to get locked into a particular bite. If you insist on throwing a topwater or a crankbait or a Ned Rig to the exclusion of everything else, be prepared to leave some fish behind on many occasions.

On the flip side, the best thing you can do before any trip is to make sure that if and when a particular pattern develops, you’re positioned to maximize it. That could mean fresh trebles on all of your hard baits, or having a trailer hook ready for your buzzbait, or having your jig skirts trimmed perfectly. That way, when the bite happens, you’re ready.

In many cases that means modifying the lures out of the package. For example, every guide I know in Mexico is absolutely obsessive and insistent about using dipping dye on soft plastics. In other cases, it could mean creating your own lure – like a heavy-duty spinnerbait or a “garage-built” swimbait. I’m going to give you three examples that I’ve been working on that are somewhere between those two poles, based on bites that I think could develop on our upcoming trip.

Stickier Flutter Spoons

Sometimes a spoon is enough to get a meal into your mouth, but sometimes a spork is more efficient. As I’ve detailed before, including some video, we enjoyed a really fun flutter spoon on our lengthy trip to El Salto last November. Fun, but frustrating, that is, because a number of fish that seemed securely hooked just pulled off during the fight. If we’re lucky enough to get on a spoon bite again, I want to head that off to the extent possible. That could be by using a different rod, reel or line, or perhaps a different color spoon, but it could also come through modifications. In researching potential cures, I realized that many times fish could hit the spoon from the top, and by adding a stinger hook to spoons that don’t have one already. Some spoons, like the Nichols Magnum Flutter Spoon I purchased, come with double assist hooks tethered to the top (made by Decoy, in that particular case). For those spoons that don’t have them, companies like VMC, Gamakatsu and Owner offer standalone models. I also plan to try a solution offered by the technicians at Tactical Bassin’ – they use an Owner Stinger treble affixed to the line above the spoon with a SPRO Power Swivel and Owner Hyperwire Split Ring, kept on a short leash by a bobber stopper.

Bettering Chattering

During our May/June 2013 trip to El Salto, the first time we visited at that time of year, we got on the greatest Chatterbait bite I’ve ever experienced. The bites were furious, both in shallow water and over deep structure. Unfortunately, we only brought a few on that trip and by the end of the week they were in miserable shape. Now I have a hefty supply in my permanent tackle bag, including more recently-released versions like the Evergreen Jack Hammer. I doubt we’ll every see a bite quite as wide-open as that first trip, simply because the fish are more conditioned to them, but I’m hopeful that we’ll see something close.

At the recent Bassmaster Northern Open on the James River, I interviewed 3rd place finisher Jeff Queen about the Switch Blade product that he and his son – Elite Series rookie KJ Queen – manufacture to be affixed to the jig of your choice. Both members of the Queen family told me that the product simply vibrates differently than any of the competition and that they’re convinced that they can go behind other anglers with it and mop up. They offered examples, too. I grabbed a few and plan to haul them South of the Border. If there’s a vibrating jig bite, I want to see what I can make that’s different than anything else, targeting different portions of the water column or replicating different forage.

Punch Drunk

One of my favorite bites at El Salto – and one of the few that’s potentially more frustrating than the flutter spoon – is flipping deep hardwood trees on the river channel. When you drop a big jig-and-chunk or Texas rigged creature bait to the base of a tree in 10 to 20 feet of water and feel that “thump” on the way down (or sometimes on the way up) it’s often a giant. In fact, the percentage of bites on this technique that are 6-pound-plus may be higher than on anything else. Unfortunately, those trees have lots of branches for the fish to get hung up on, or to use as a fulcrum to escape. There’s no more helpless feeling in fishing than to have a big fish wrapped around several unbreakable branches 15 feet down, feel him pulling, but have no way to work him free. We’ve had guides at both El Salto and in the Amazon go into the water to free a snagged fish, but at that depth it’s simply not feasible. I like throwing a jig in those situations, as I have confidence it’ll get big bites, but I also feel like the Texas Rig gives me a better chance of getting through the branches (both on the way down and then on the way back up) a bit more cleanly. The solution may be to use a punch skirt with my creature bait. I’ve had some down there for years, but for all I know they may have disintegrated in the heat of the tackle room. I need to get a few more in black, black/blue, watermelon and green pumpkin in case that deep flip bite emerges.

Stay tuned for a report back. If any of these three patterns are players, I’ll try to figure out if these adjustments make a meaningful difference.