| Dragonfly and Spinner BuzzbaitsPosted Dec-05-07 20:11:30 PST Dragonfly BuzzbaitsI do not know about your region of the country, but here in the Southwest where I am, it has been a banner year for dragonflies, and bass have been fixated on eating dragonflies so far this summer. Now, dragonflies are always a good thing that draws bass around these parts - but especially this year. It's not only the adults in the air, but the nymphs emerging from under water and undergoing metamorphosis into winged adults. Indeed, there are more fish hunkered down and camped on the underwater brush beds trying to get at the aquatic dragonfly nymphs rather than chasing the airborne winged adults. The nymphs as they mature have no choice but to leave the safety of the bottom brush where they are well-hidden and expose themselves as they climb out onto a limb or reed stalk where their new adult bodies swell up inside in order to crack out of their hard larval exoskeletons and unfurl their new wings and flying adult bodies. It's a complete metamorphosis where the nymph transitions from water to land (and air). It's almost a migration or exodus the nymphs must make, from fully-submerged brush beds shoreward to emergent brush and reeds and such hard type growth where they can anchor onto something long enough to pop their old bodies and harden and cure their new bodies for a few hours before being able to fly off. The transition from deeper sunken brush beds to emergent brush is especially compounded in lakes that have annual spring runoff that raises the water level and floods new growth in early summer. Nymphs that had previously been close to the shoreline can end up under many feet of water and, thanks to the rising waters, quite far away from any emergent growth they'll need to climb out onto. So as good as a buzzbait is when bass are chasing flying dragonflies, don't neglect a heavy dark-colored spinnerbait or dark-colored jig and pig, since more and bigger bass are also interested in grabbing nymphs that are ready to undergo metamorphosis. There's a misconception I often hear that only small bass chase dragonflies. But focus on the bigger picture of what's happening, especially the deep flooded brush beds the nymphs need to crawl out of toward emergent shoreline growth, and you'll haul many of the biggest bass of summer that have their heads down doting on these nymphs rather than chasing the hovering adults. Also, adult dragonflies typically hover around calm kind of mucky, almost standing type water, because the winged insects the adults feed on hatch in such areas. However, the egg-laying and nymph nursery areas are often pristine, highly-oxygenated, open, windblown shorelines with lots of windrowed brush banks - quite the opposite of the mucky, almost stagnant areas where the adults hunt food. Indeed the dragonfly nymphs need a lot better water quality to mature than do the gnats and mosquitoes and such that adult dragonflies eat. They'll be emerging - and the mating adults will be dropping eggs - in much less mucky areas than they hunt food.
Spinner BuzzbaitsSpinner Blade. The trailing spinner blade on a ball bearing swivel adds a second churning, bubbling wake behind the primary buzz blade. It jumps and bumps and gurgles and bounces. It adds flash, movement, noise... more of all the things we tend to feel make a buzzbait great. And if you face moments when you don't want all that, you can remove the swivel and spinner blade in a few seconds, and it reattaches just as easily. An important thing which this add-on addresses is that awkward moment when your buzzbait first splashes down and for whatever reason, you don't get it to instantly start churning on the surface. This is an important point with buzzbait fishing as many strikes happen within those first few seconds. There are many claims of buzzbait heads designed to plane and rise to the surface instantly. I experimented with those claims in my test pool the other day. I took one each of all the popular brands of buzzbaits that claim to instantly plane to the surface. I threw each one by one into the pool. They all sank. Not one has planed to the surface yet. This test proves that how quickly a buzzbait planes to the surface upon initial splashdown is mainly a function of the angler using his rod position, line angle and reel to make a buzzbait plane as soon as possible. It's often unavoidable that the buzzbait will initially submerge, if only for a few seconds before the angler's actions raise it to the surface. During those first moments when the buzzbait is submerged under water, I tend to get more hits with the spinner blade. I attribute those bonus strikes to the trailing spinner blade doing it's thing to attract bass. There are some days I get more strikes in the first few seconds when the buzzbait is under the water than I get for the entire rest of the retrieve, and I attribute that to the spinner blade doing its thing underwater somewhat similar to a spinnerbait blade.
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