You’re MISSING FISH if you don’t use this approach (Lost Lessons of the Bass Professor - Part 2)
Channel: RetroBassin
Date: 2023-01-14

To me fishing it old school means returning to a simpler style of bass fishing and that basic equation of man + nature + fish, and no angler has every quite embodied a more natural approach to bass fishing that the late Bass Professor Doug Hannon.

In his lifelong pursuit of largemouth bass, Hannon strived to make every aspect of his craft as natural as possible, from the lures he used to the hat he wore to everything in between.

Starting with lures, as an avid diver, Hannon often observed how prey swam underwater. He noted that snakes, eels, and even most baitfish swim with an undulating tail while they keep their head tracking relatively straight. 

Picture a water moccasin cruising through the water; its tail is snaking side to side but its head is always dead center. 

Now that you have that visual, consider how most artificial bass lures move, be they topwater walkers or crankbaits…that’s right, they all swing wildly side-to-side at the head…opposite of most every living thing in the lake. 

We’ll get into more detail later, but Hannon designed a number of great lures like the Swimmin’ Worm and the Snakebait that specifically to have a more natural and less mechanical action.

This focus on going natural didn’t stop with his lures, or even the camouflage line he pioneered. Hannon explained that your boat is your biggest presence on the water, and for that reason he went through great efforts to make his vessel as stealthy as possible. 

There a great little interview in which Hannon discusses his first bass boat, which he painted yellow because that was the only paint he had on hand. 

He also had a smaller boat in an army green finish and he’d notice that he could only get bass to hit close to the green boat while they stayed clear of the yellow boat.

It’s an interesting phenomenon that duck hunters would never dream of floating a glitter-sided bass boat as a duck blind while no sane Ranger Boat owner would ever consider camouflaging his new factory finish, and I have no doubt the Bass Professor would have chucked at that paradox.

On the topic of color, Hannon was particularly wary of yellow, which he identified as a warning color in nature. Everything from yellow jackets to coral snakes use yellow to repel predators, so Hannon reasoned that yellow would also repel largemouth bass under most circumstances.

Though he sat low in his camouflaged boat, Hannon also made sure to wear muted and non-solid  colors, and of course his signature camouflage hat.

Next week in our Lost Lessons of the Bass Professor mini-series we’ll discuss one of the Bass Professor’s most important lessons: Hannon’s Lunar factor and we’ll learn how to us this Doug Hannon Moon Clock.
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