Lakes & Wildlife Committee
Committee Members
Wade Gatlin, Chairman - Jon Adkins - Archie Davis - Barney Dorn - Johnny Driggers - Dick Popham -
Todd Rahm - Scott Salem - Robert Cook, Board Representative
Successful Fishing Techniques for
Long Branch Lakes Bass
​One of the most common sayings when you are fishing one of the Lakes at Long Branch is “What did you catch them on?” Several of the locals who like to fish, have a few favorites they think are better than the others.
The Popham Rig
​The local Mayor of the Lakes (aka Dick Popham) has his favorite. He uses a 6-inch black plastic worm. He fishes it usually trolled slow behind his boat on Long Lake. Rarely does he have a problem catching bass. This picture shows that he only hooks the worm at the head. He uses a straight hook instead of a curved hook. He uses a small split shot above the hook about 6” to 10” to give the rig enough weight to sink while trolling. Dick has probably caught more fish at LBL than all the fishermen combined.
The Wacky Rig
Steve Cochell and I recently used the wacky worm rig at Long Lake. It was very successful in catching bass. You fish it slow, letting the worm sink for a couple of seconds before giving short jerks to reel it in. Many of the strikes happened while the worm was sinking on the initial cast. You do not use a weight. The weight of the worm is enough to cast properly. The weight of the hook and the worm allow the rig to sink at a good rate. As you can see, the wacky rig is a bit different. Steve and I used a 5” green wacky worm made by power bait. You can buy all parts of the wacky worm set up at Amazon. Just ask Steve.
The wacky rig is unusual. Instead of hooking the worm at the head of the worm and having it swim like a snake, the rig uses O-rings to hold the worm on the hook. The worm flaps like a bird or a bat under the water verses gliding through the water like a snake or leach. Piercing the center of your worm with a hook can make it more susceptible to tearing apart, especially after you have hooked a few fish with it. As an alternative, you can slip an O-ring onto the worm and then guide the hook between the O-ring and the worm.
 
To put an O-ring on, buy an O-ring applicator—a device that looks a bit like a pen cut in half—from the same retailer. Feed half of the worm into the device, then slide a pre-loaded O-ring off the end of the device and onto the center of the worm. After that, slide the hook tip under the O-ring to set up your wacky rig.
 
Add a weed guard, if desired, to protect the hook tip from snagging. Because the tip of the hook is exposed, the standard wacky rig may snag on weeds and other debris. To make it "weedless" use a hook with an attached "weed guard"—a small wire that loops through the hook eye and latches over the hook tip. The weed guard is strong enough to prevent most snags on the hook but will give way when a fish bites the hook.
Texas or Carolina Plastic Worm Rigs
Jon Adkins, one of LBL’s top big bass fishermen, uses large 10.5” black and purple plastic worms fished Texas Rig Style. He calls them Black Magic. He fishes the standing timber in deeper water and fishes the rig slow. He uses strong braided line in case the bass tries to wrap up in the timber. The key to getting a large bass is to get him out of the timber as quickly as possible. He also uses a heavy action rod providing more backbone to get the fish out of the water.
For a Texas rig, thread a "bullet sinker"—a metal, bullet-shaped sinker—onto the end of the line before tying on the offset hook with the hooked worm. Once the rig is complete, the bullet sinker should touch or almost touch the top of the plastic worm’s head.
 
The Carolina rig, on the other hand, separates the sinker and the hook. Slide your bullet sinker and a spacer bead onto the main line. Next, tie a barrel swivel onto the end of the line. Tie a 10” – 30” (25–76 cm) leader line onto the other side of the barrel swivel, then tie your hooked worm to the end of the leader line.
Super Flukes
The last time I went fishing with Mark Culbreath at LBL, he used a Zoom super fluke. He caught countless bass that day. I tried one (the super fluke) but could not get it to work for me, so I went back to what I was using before. It just goes to show you that sometimes you can be fishing the same lake, the same boat and the same lure, but only one of you catches fish. That’s why they call it fishing instead of catching.
Chatterbait Lures
Recently, Todd Rahm had a fruitful day on the lake. He likes to use plastic worms and chatterbait lures. Chatterbaits do what their name says - they make noise and vibrations as the go through the water.

The Chatterbait, aka Bladed Swim Jig, aka Vibrating Jig, is a deadly and extremely popular bass fishing lure. The original Chatterbait was so hot that when it first came out in the late 2000’s, they would literally 
disappear off the shelves as soon as they went up. Fast forward to today and the hype around bladed jigs has cooled off, yet they remain fish catching machines. (Looks like Todd may be running for Mayor next term.)
The Beetle Spin Lure
One of my favorite go to lures that catches just about any type of fish (bass, bluegill and even catfish) is the beetle spin. You usually use smaller line (4-8 lb. test) since this lure is fairly light. You just cast and reel it in at a medium slow rate. It’s fairly weedless, and easy to use. No lead weight is necessary unless you want to fish it deeper. Usually you fish this lure in less than 8’ of water. They come in multiple sizes from small to large and in a multitude of colors. My favorite colors are black with yellow stripes and orange with black stripes. Green with black strips also works well. Large bluegill also really like this lure.
Don’t forget to take a kid fishing….after all, we are all kids!