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On the water with...Dwayne E. Cooper |
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Table of Contents Learning to find water on my own Information on the 99' fishkill on the White River Have fun...but don't get your feet wet!
Showing off a nice bass at the baitshop!
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Home - On the water with Dwayne Cooper
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Early tackle...My first serious tackle box was a 1 lightly tan-colored 3-drawer Plano. Back then, I didn't have the huge selection of lures to choose from as I do today... However, I always had 5 or 6 round spring bobbers, an ample supply of hooks, sinkers and a good supply of small panfish baits like crappie jigs, beetle spins, and flies. My favorite bass lures in my tacklebox included: (in no particular order) 1) Floating Rapala in black/silver (usually sizes #11 and #13), 2) Hula Popper (white and black) 3) Weedless green topwater frog 4) Big-O crankbait in black/silver and green/white 5) Floyd's buzzer (chartreuse/white) 6) Campbell's spinnerbait 7) Fliptail, Kunkel's, Creme worms I remember when the only worm to fish with was the Creme worm, maybe a Fliptail, and then some years down the road...Tom Mann's Jelly worms. My favorite plastic worm was a 6" blackberry Mann's worm as it always seemed to be reliable and always outproduced the other flavors... I also fished with the grape, blueberry, and strawberry flavors. Without a doubt, the bass I fished for could not resist a great smelling worm...and neither could I! I would usually rig the worm with a weedless hook and let it slowly sink down toward the bottom. It really wasn't until my teen years that I started to seriously use a slip-sinker with my plastic worms. My favorite Kunkel's worm was an odd-looking 4" straight worm that featured 3 small hooks embedded in the worm with a small spinner in the front which was surrounded by a few red beads. It was a great bait back then and, although it has been discontinued by the original maker, the copy-cat reproductions continue to catch large numbers of bass especially in clear waters... Quality crankbaits were rare... however, I remember my dad buying balsa wood crankbaits in egg shell cartons for an incredible $4 to $5 a piece from early crafters in Tennessee. I don't remember getting any of these "jewels" to fish with...but I do remember catching several nice bass on my plastic reproductions of the original Big-O. I have always loved to fish with topwater baits. Nothing is more exciting that plop-plopping a black Hula Popper at night waiting for that inevitable explosion to occur. I never seemed to catch very many bass at night on that hula popper... but I did catch several nice 5 pound bass on it and it seemed like I routinely lost a hula popper each night to a large fish. Eight pound line was the order of the day back then and the quality of the line varied quite a bit. Line was always very expensive and it seemed like I went through those spools pretty quickly. Of course, I had to learn the hard lessons about buying cheap line too... One of the more exciting baits in my tacklebox was the ol' Floyd's buzzer. This lure was a straight line buzzer that usually had bucktail for a skirt. My dad and I would usually cut off the bucktail and trim down the lead and add a plastic skirt to the back. It was a great summertime bait that produced some explosive strikes! However, some of my bigger fish were caught on a Campbell's spinnerbait. I preferred the smaller 1/4 oz. white single spinnerbait for numbers...but the better bass usually came on a black tandem spinnerbait. These baits were made by a gentleman from Montgomery, Indiana by the name of Bob Campbell. Bob was an excellent craftsman and fisherman and his lures provided me with many fond memories that I will never forget. |
Here's some baits I wish they still made... 1. Small Mister Twister crankbait (hot chart. or baby bass) 2. Bagley's shallow-diving crappie crankbait (natural crappie color) 3. Shallow-diving Fat Rap crankbait (black/silver) 4. 1/4 oz. Strike King spinnerbait (white/chart.) 5. Poe's "Made in the USA" 400 deep-diving crankbait (gray/white) 6. Mann's Razorback Pig shallow-diving crankbait (crawdad)
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