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Okuma Goes Savage at Lake El Salto, Mexico
(continued)
  Using some of the proven El Salto favorites,
Senkos and lizards, it didn’t take long for us to start hooking up just a few
feet from where the guide boats were tied up. The water in the cove looked like
chocolate milk but that didn’t stop the fish from biting, and we caught a bunch
of bass ranging from 1 to 3lbs. in size before we had to regroup for dinner. The
fish we caught were just enough to whet our appetite for the main course.
Cal cranks up a healthy El Salto
fish
The next day Cal and I were given a guide and a
boat of our own to break in the tackle. Okuma provided everyone with some of the
latest Savage Gear baits including soft plastics from their existing lineup as
well as both hard and soft swimbaits from their 4Play series, and prototypes of
their new finesse hardbaits that will be introduced at this coming ICAST.
Jeff catches a fish with the new
Savage Gear Vibra Prey lipless crank
Savage Gear is being represented by Okuma here in
the U.S. and is a very well known brand in Europe. Originally out of central
Europe and Scandinavia Savage Lures offerings are known for producing strikes
when targeting everything from Perch to Pike and the series has now been
expanded to further address the U.S. market. Armed with these new baits we
fished them side by side with other lures that we brought specifically for El
Salto. My typical El Salto kit consists of plenty of Senkos, an assortment of
lizards, both hard and soft bodied swimbaits, a couple of blade baits, and an
entire box of deep diving crankbaits (yes, you lose a lot out here to snags).
Dave and Jeff pitch for fish
The first half of the day Cal and I proceeded to
land fish using our confidence baits. Being at El Salto twice before was
definitely an advantage for me as I instantly keyed into the structure and type
of patterns that the fish seem to really like. This included the citrus shad
crankbaits and green plastics. Over the course of the first few hours we had
boated around 20 fish up to the 4lb class. On any other lake this already would
have been a great day but on El Salto this was discouraging. It was time to mix
it up.
The 4Play swimbait variations
Using the Roman Made Negotiator side by side with
the Savage Gear 4Play swimbaits we set our sights on catching bigger fish. It
worked, and it wasn’t long before we were getting fish in the 5-7lb. class. The
4Play hard swimbait is named so because of the four segments and three joints.
Unlike most swimbaits the head of the bait, right behind the gill plates, is a
separate section. This implementation shows gives the illusion of the gills
opening and closing as the bait swims.
Kelly lands a nice fish
This swimbait comes in four versions, the
standard, a swim and jerk and two lipped models. The standard swimbait has two
places to line tie eyes and when tied to the lower eye the lure exhibits a large
s-curve action. When tied on to the lure swims a little more erratically. The
lipped versions exhibit more vibration and dive down quickly. One of the things
I really liked about this swimbait was the lure’s ability to move and swim with
just slight movements of the rod tip, the 4Play even quivers on the drop and we
seemed to draw most of our strikes with the 4Play right after pauses.
An unexpected quality blade fish
We continued to land quality fish on swimbaits but
as we proceeded into an area that was once a complete orchard and was now a huge
tree graveyard I saw a lot of tilapia activity near the surface. I tied on a
custom RMD spinnerbait and proceeded to cast into the activity and immediately
got a few short strikes. I couldn’t understand why the bass were not sticking
but it soon became apparent what was hitting the spinnerbait was not largemouth
but their prey, Tilapia. I kept on casting and pulling the bait through the
surface commotion and my heart almost stopped when I witnessed a largemouth
charge the bait no more than ten feet from the boat, a minute later I landed the
7.8oz. fish.
Dave continued to catch lunkers
each day
Next Section: 100 fish and a 10lbr. |
