Dave Mull with Smallmouth bassBy Dave Mull

This January I resolved to accomplish a couple of things in the New Year. Both of them involve a smallmouth bass that weighed more than 7 1/2 pounds, caught by my longtime pal Louie Stout while he fished with another old friend on an unnamed lake in the northern mitten of Michigan.

Louie with personal best smallmouth

In mid-October of 2020, Louie, who runs this website and does a tremendous amount of freelance writing, caught his personal best smallmouth, a 7.71-pound giant, while fishing with Jon Howard, who retired to northern Michigan a couple decades ago. Louie can be blamed for getting me into bass fishing back in the 1980s, and we used to fish together a lot. I’ve known Jon almost as long, and fished with him several times as well. Way back when, Jon was a partner in Little Rivers Guide Service and took clients smallmouth bass fishing where only boats such as his flat-bottom john boat with a jet outboard could go. He took me on a couple of memorable trips on the Kalamazoo River and other streams and we caught the fire out of smallies.

Howard, now 82, still gets out in that same little aluminum flat-bottom just about every day that the weather allows. Last October, Louie was lucky enough to go along on a trip to a lake with an access site so undeveloped that it wasn’t easy to launch Howard’s john boat.

“Howard started throwing his wacky-rigged pink T.R.D.,” Louie told me when I called him about his fish after I saw it on Facebook. “I figured these fish had never seen a chatterbait or an A rig so I started throwing those. Howard caught two big smallmouth while I didn’t get bit, so I put on the pink T.R.D., too.”

Long story short, Louie soon was holding his giant smallmouth for a picture.

OK, here are my resolutions: First, find out what lake those guys were fishing. Second, start fishing the weenie wacky rig.

So in late November, I called Jon Howard. He still uses a flip-phone, didn’t have caller ID and had no idea who I was.

“Mr. Howard?”

“Yes?”

“I would like to know the waypoint coordinates of where Louie Stout caught that 7-plus-pound smalllmouth.”

He didn’t recognize my voice, but answered without skipping a beat.

“It’s a hair’s width from a frog’s ass out by the island,” he replied.

Something tells me that learning the name of this lunker lake won’t be easy.

I identified myself and we had a good laugh. So I asked no more questions about where, but moved on to the how. Jon told me all about rigging that the wacky T.R.D. and how he fishes it.

T.R.D. stands for “The Real Deal” and it’s a 2 3/4-inch worm made by Z-Man, incorporating that company’s proprietary, nearly indestructible Elaztech plastic. It’s a standard component threaded on small jigs to create the popular Ned Rig. Elaztech doesn’t rip easily and you can catch lots of fish on the same T.R.D. without replacing it. It’s also remarkably supple with a high “wiggle factor.”

Howard rigs the little worm on a Gamakatsu brand G Finesse Wacky Head, which come in three-packs guaranteed to give frugal anglers severe sticker shock. I found them online for prices ranging between $7.59 to $11 per pack—at least $2.53 per jig. Part of the high price is the jig’s dual-wire weed guard made of titanium. The weed guard keeps its shape “after more than 40 fish” according to Howard. I don’t know about anybody else, but I’ll spend $2.50 on a jig that can catch 40 smallmouths. I bought eight packs of them in 1/16- and 3/32-ounce sizes. Then I chatted with Howard, who told me he uses the 1/8-ounce size in deeper water, so it looks like I have to warm up the credit card again. (Don’t tell my wife.)

Howard emphasized how carefully this worm must be rigged.

“You want to hold it up and have it perfectly balanced, hooked close to the middle to where if you hold the hook vertically, the T.R.D. is absolutely horizontal,” he said. It’s important to hook the jig about a third of the way through its thickness, so the thicker part is behind the hook bend, too,” he said.

A Z-Man T.R.D. on a Gamakatsu Wacky Head is a proven smallmouth bass catcher

A Z-Man T.R.D. on a Gamakatsu Wacky Head is a proven smallmouth bass catcher.

Rigged correctly, the T.R.D. actually vibrates a little when you pull it through the water.

Howard explained how he takes a long cast and lets the rig settle to the bottom. Then he works it back to the boat with short pulls, just 6 inches or so, regaining line by reeling.

“You don’t pull it real far or very fast,” he said. “Just fast enough so you can feel it ‘tremble.’”

He uses a 1/16-ounce wacky head most often, finding it effective in water as deep as 8 feet. For fishing depths of up 15 feet, he employs a 1/8-ounce head.

“I’m patient, but not patient enough to wait for a 1/16-ounce head to get to the bottom in deeper water,” he said.

Howard throws the rig on a 7- to 7 1/2-foot medium-action spinning rod (a Berkley Lightning Rid is a favorite), the reel spooled with 10-pound Seaguar Smackdown braided line. He likes the highly visible Flash Green color, tying on a 6- to 7-foot leader of Seaguar Red Label Fluorocarbon, also in 10-pound test. The braid helps transmit what the jig is doing, while the fluorocarbon is nearly invisible to line-sensitive fish. He attaches his leader to the braided line with a surgeon’s knot.

His four colors for fishing northern smallmouth lakes are pink (actually called Bubble Gum), White Lightning (silvery plastic with silver flakes), Green Pumpkin Goby and standard Green Pumpkin.

The T.R.D. wacky rig has become Howard’s presentation of choice through most of the season, although he said it’s not an easy one to fish when the wind blows hard and puts a big bow in his braided line. That’s when he switches to a drop-shot set-up with a heavier weight—and usually a pink T.R.D. rigged wacky-style for the lure. But that’s another story.

As for my resolutions, I can’t wait to throw this wacky rig. Finding the lake with the 7-pounder? Since neither Jon Howard nor Louie Stout is going to tell me, I’ll just have to spend some time exploring those northern lakes on my own.

And that’s not such a bad deal.