AZ Lakes, AZ Pros Ben Matsubu

Fall Fishing

I first saw Ben in action in 1993, when I was his observer at an All Star Championship. The first day of the tournament was on San Carlos, and I had the opportunity to watch Ben fish a variety of lures, including worms, spoons, jigs, jerkbaits, and even a Pork-o!

Nice Weather

The championship was in September, and for a change the weather was pretty nice. It was cloudy and cool, and the water temperature was a little over 77 degrees. Ben started off in the very back of a cove, throwing a spinnerbait in the brush. When that didn't pan out, he headed for deep water and started throwing a jig on a rocky hump.

"I'll usually try to get a fast bite going first," Ben says, "but you can't waste all day on it. If they aren't up shallow you have to find that out right away and go out on points and stuff to get them." He used a smoke/sparkle skirt and twin-tail grub on the jighead, and he hopped it. He says he just barely hops it around, feeling the lure on the bottom.

'Next Thing You Know'

"Next thing you know," he says, "there's nothing. That's a fish." He keeps the line taut, hops the jig, takes up the slack, then hops it again, all the way back to the boat. Occasionally he fishes the jig like a spoon, using a fairly soft rod and snapping the lure up and down.

Ben usually has a milk run of areas where he can target active bass, and he goes from spot to spot. He doesn't waste too much time on any particular place unless the fish are just coming one right after another. He fishes a spot with more than one kind of lure before leaving. At this championship, he was using mostly spoons and jigs. Some of the fish, he said, were hanging out 25 feet deep in 35 feet of water. Others were near the bottom. It depended on the spot. He fished a jig until he saw suspended fish, and then he switched to the ½-ounce Hopkins.

Suspended Fish

Suspended fish can be tough to catch, but I've seen Ben catch them on both spoons and Westy Worms. He'll cast the Westy out and let it fall to the bottom, then bring it back and do it again. The fish take the Westy on the fall, so if it hits bottom he just tries again. With a spoon, he will sometimes cast it out and jerk it back, letting it fall a bit between jerks. Other times he drops it right under the boat and snaps it up and down. Watching the depthfinder is second nature to him, and he lets the location of the fish tell him what to do.

Once the sun came out, Ben moved to shallower water with lots of brush and started fishing a rip bait. He had three fish in the boat by now (about 9:00 a.m.), and things were looking good. We ran into a couple other guys who were fishing the same championship – Tish Yoshimura and Chi Chi Chavez.

'I Like To Psych 'Em Out'

"How are you doing?" Tish asked. "I've got a limit," Ben told him. Tish and Chi Chi looked impressed (and worried), and Ben moved on. "I like to psych 'em out," he grinned. "You know," I told him, "if they think you have a limit, they're going to expect to see you cull if you catch one here." Ben thought about that for a second, then yelled out to Tish and Chi Chi, "I've only got three!"

Ben once took sixth place in a WON Bass Tri-State Championship on Mead with a split-shot rig. He said he watched another guy fish a bank and catch nothing, then Ben went behind him with a split-shot rig and caught eleven fish off that same bank. A split-shot rig is hard to beat when fish are cold and sluggish, and won't move far or take a big bait.

They Practically Set Themselves

Ben says he likes to use the Gamakatsu kahle hook and a small swivel on his rig. Pinching a split shot on your line can damage and weaken it, and the last thing you want, especially in a tournament, is for your line to break when you finally hook the big one. He casts the rig out and fishes it slowly, dragging the bait a little, then reeling up the slack. If it feels heavier the next time he drags it, he sweeps back and reels to set the hook. Those little kahle hooks practically set themselves, so you don't have to be brutal with them.

Matsubu uses a variety of baits when he split-shots: small reapers, 4-inch worms, grubs, etc. His favorite colors, he says, are the more natural ones: white, bluegill, clear with glitter, smoke, and sometimes a little chartreuse for shad colors. For crawdad colors he uses dark greens and pumpkins.

Winter

In winter, Ben searches channels and steeper drop-offs for bass. Often, he says, they will hang around the edge of a flat, especially one with a good steep drop-off. That way they can move onto the flat once the sun has warmed the water up a bit. He uses light weights so the lures fall slowly, keeping them in the strike zone as long as possible.

When I was at Lake Pleasant with him one January, the fish were holding 35 feet deep in a channel, and Ben had to stay there for quite a while, slowly pulling a split-shot rig through them before he started catching them.

A Killer Method

Matsubu also uses Carolina rigs in winter, and he has tried a lot of different baits on them. He's been known to use soft jerkbaits, lizards, worms, grubs, and reapers on his Carolina rigs. Sometimes if the fish are there (he can see them on his graph) and won't bite one lure, he can get them going by switching lures. He tries different colors, too.

The important thing, Ben says, is not to give up. The fish will eventually eat. You just have to be patient and figure it out. Once they decide to wake up and go shallow, you can get them with spinnerbaits, crankbaits, or jerkbaits up on the flats. An especially killer method for these feeding fish is to swim a jig.

Set Hook With A Vengeance

A shad-colored skirt and twin-tail is a good bet for a swimming jig. You can use any size jighead you want – just cast it out and fish it like a crankbait. Keep the jig going just fast enough to knock against the bottom every few feet. For some reason, swimming a jig will usually get you much bigger fish than a crankbait will. The fish really slam it hard when they hit, and you have to set the hook with a vengeance. Keep the rod positioned for a hookset all the time you are reeling.

Spawn

At Lake Pleasant one year in May, Ben pulled out one of the biggest soft plastic lures I've ever seen. It was a Basstrix – a big trout-looking bait that Ben uses to locate bass. He rips this lure in shallow water and watches for bass to come out after it. "For some reason the bedding bass just hate this thing," he explains, "and they always come out and chase it away. Then you just watch to see where they go, and come back there later and throw in a Senko."

He says that the Senko bite at Clear Lake was the best bite he's ever been on in his life, and Ben's been fishing tournaments for over twelve years. He grins just talking about it.

'For Insurance'

We found some fish schooling on a point that were just tearing up our Spooks that morning, but Ben had a tournament coming up and he wanted to find some structure fish "for insurance". After catching five or six bass all averaging around three pounds, Ben told us that if he could get fifteen or sixteen pounds like that early during the tournament, he'd just keep throwing the spook all day, hoping for a big fish.

On lakes where there are a lot of weeds and pads, Ben loves to throw topwater frog baits. He uses Sugoi line on most of his lures, but he says that braided line is a must when you are fishing frogs.

If Fishing Turns Tough

If the fishing turns tough and the wind stays fairly calm, Matsubu likes to use a drop-shot rig to get those reluctant bass to bite. He uses a live-bait hook and a 4-inch straight tail worm. "I usually use about a 12-inch leader," he says, "although it depends how far off the bottom the fish are."

For drop-shotting, Ben uses 16-pound-test Sugoi line because it's very sensitive and has very little stretch. A 1/4-ounce Bakudan weight completes the rig. The Bakudan weight is round, with a little wire loop that fastens it to the line.

If You Snag

If you snag, you almost always just lose the weight instead of breaking off your whole rig. He drops the weight to the bottom and gently shakes the rig to make the worm wiggle without lifting the weight off the bottom. If it's too windy for a drop-shot or a Westy, he goes to a jig.

Final Tip

"If I can find good structure fish I'd just as soon stick to that," Ben says. "If you can find a school of three-pounders boiling, by all means go for that – there's nothing wrong with getting 15 pounds in the boat in two hours." But Ben classifies himself as more of a structure fisherman. As he says, "the fish are more dependable and you don't have all the competition."