Words and Photos By Brad Wiegmann
In a place you can only dream of, where you are always free to move in your kayak, the challenge is not how long you stay, but how far can you go. It’s a place of green grass and low water forever.
Professional bass angler, Scott Canterbury, knows where there’s grass, there will be big bass. “I grew up fishing shoreline grass on the Coosa River. It grows up and covers the ponds and lakes so you have to know what lures to fish if you are going to catch bass,” said Canterbury.
Canterbury has many lures in his tackle boxes, but when fishing shoreline grass he likes swimming a jig in it, flipping a Scott Canterbury Flipping Jig, throwing a buzzbait or fishing soft plastic stickbaits. What lure Canterbury fishes with depends on the time of day and how aggressive the bass are feeding.
Recently, Canterbury has taken up fishing from a kayak, but not just any kayak. He has a Jackson Kayak (www.jacksonkayak.com) Coosa HD. It’s not your traditional recreational kayak. The Coosa HD is packed with features; however, it’s the stability to let anglers like Canterbury stand up and fish from a kayak.
Here’s a quick look at the specifications on the Coosa HD. It measures over 12-feet long with a width of 34-inches. The unique hull allows it to be used in everything from flat lake water to inshore saltwater.
Even fishing out of a kayak, Canterbury approaches catching bass the same way he would out of a bass boat. “My Coosa lets me not only fish areas where I do out of my Ranger fiberglass bass boat, but also go into areas that are unreachable because they are super shallow. I fish everywhere from ponds, little lakes to areas there’s no way to get to with my big boat,” said Canterbury.
There are many species of aquatic vegetation: submergent, emergent, floating-leaf and free-floating. These species of aquatic vegetation commonly grow in lakes, ponds, rivers or reservoirs.
Emergent plants have a large amount of leaves, shoots or even flowering structure above the surface. Some examples are cattails, bur-reed, sedges or bulrushes. Submergent plants have most of the plant below the surface. Examples of that would be milfoils, pondweed and coontail.
Floating-leaf plants have leaves floating on the surface. Examples include some pondweeds and water-lilies. Free-floating plants may or may not be rooted to the bottom, but normally will be in a floating mass or even tangled in other plants. Examples include bladderwort and duckweed. Sometimes, coontail is also included in with other free-floating plants because it’s easily dislodged by boat or wind action.
If the bass are non-aggressive, Canterbury will switch to a Netbait Salt Lick. The Netbait Salt Lick is a 5-inch soft plastic stickbait that has no appendages. “They can be rigged weightless or wacky rigged style, I like to rig them Texas rig style so it comes through the grass really good. The fish love it rigged that way,” said Canterbury.
When the bass are aggressive, Canterbury fishes a Dirty Jigs Tackle (www.dirtyjigstackle.com) White 1/4-ounce Scott Canterbury Pro Buzz rigged with a Bruiser Baits Thrasher. “The ¼-ounce is my favorite because it’s more versatile than the 1/2-ounce as far as casting goes,” said Canterbury.
Canterbury will work the buzzbait around the edges or sparse batches of grass anticipating a big bite from aggressive bass. Canterbury will switch to fishing his Dirty Jigs Tackle signature series 1/2-ounce Scott Canterbury Flippin’ Jig once the sun gets up.
To fish aquatic vegetation, Canterbury will get his kayak on the edge of the grass paralleling the edges. If that is not productive, Canterbury will cast into the thick grass where the bass are hiding.
Green grass and big bass forever could be Canterbury’s rally cry to other anglers. Canterbury loves fishing out of a kayak to places where fish have had no pressure on from other anglers. For Canterbury, it’s brings a different way of approaching bass fishing that produces big bass.