|
> "Do you think bass care that much between a watermelon and a gp finesse worm? Or purple flake vs purple and green flake? They probably don't. But if you have confidence in it as angler, you'll spend more time fishing it and concentrate more – you can't help but be more successful.
> "The most important tool you can have as an angler is confidence."
[Occurred to me after we talked that it's a chicken/egg deal when it comes to KVD and "sexy shad." I mean, how did HE get the confidence in it in the first place since it was brand new even to him? Gonna guess – the fish told them they liked it. Because I know for a fact and you do too that KVD ain't gonna waste even 1 second with something that would not catch 'em.]
4. Are there any under the radar colors that you think will be as good as "sexy shad"?
> "Because of technology and how many color offerings we have now, it's gonna be hard for anything to repeat what 'sexy shad' did originally to the overall market. But yeah there's always going to be color trends.
> How many versions of a bluegill-color crankbait are there out there, and how is one gonna dominate or stand out over the rest because there's so many good ones now?
> "We [Strike King] just came out with a whole new Elite Series line of squarebills and XDs...[new/improved] colors with premium Mustad hooks. The detail put into some of these baits is amazing. We didn't have the ability to do that years ago."
Foller-up: Any colors you're fishing more now that you didn't before? Or has it stayed the same.
> "No doubt over the last handful of years, even in stained or dirty-water conditions, I've been using more realistic natural colors.
> "...as an example, a powder blue/chart 6XD is one of the gold standards for deep cranking. There's nothing natural about that color. Nothing that swims looks like that. So if the water's dirty, a shad is still the same color as a shad – so natural colors will work in every situation.
> "Strike King came out with that 'nude' series [unpainted clear baits] because so many people wanted to custom-paint the baits. It's a big seller for them, but a lot of people throw it just like that. [Fish] don't have to see it to bite it, they feel it. The vibration and lateral line is probably more important to them than their eyesight in a lot of cases.
> "As adamant as we all are and as fussy about colors and matching the hatch and things like that, there's probably a lot of cases where it's really unfounded, especially in stained or dirty water....
> "The confidence that an angler has in a bait that he's got tied on is paramount to his success, and colors are a big part of that. Anglers have always been and always will be fascinated about colors."
5. In many ways you are the king of reaction bites – making 'em bite that way vs getting a feeding response. With all the FFS stuff, do you think some younger anglers just flat won't learn that aspect of getting bass to bite?
> "No I think they're still learning it, just doing it in a different way.
> "I never could see the fish to know exactly how they're responding. I was basically always guessing. When your bait was hitting the bottom, or bouncing off a rock, or deflecting off a brushpile or dock piling, you're imagining there's a fish there and you're making him react.
> "Now they're doing it with a twitch of the rod tip or a different-size weight Neko rig. ...shaking it or working it, and being able to get real-time responses from the fish.
> "But there's no question that bass are already getting conditioned to these presentations, and [anglers] have to adapt.
> "[Younger guys mostly fishing deep] are missing the super-shallow-water reactionary understanding, but it will come full circle. That [deep/suspended] segment of the bass population never got pressured in the past, but now it's getting the focal point of all the pressure – and the fish that live under boat docks, by the bank or under a grass mat aren't getting that kind of pressure.
> "Things will definitely shift. They always have."
[I caught KVD between running here and there so...he's not actually retired. Makes sense because like you'd expect, the best bass fisherman of all time must/does have mega ADD – so he just can't sit around and watch TV! 🤣 Will also say that very few people and maybe nobody in bassin' works as hard as he does. Just in his nature.]
|
