- Stories
- Spring Bass Fishing Gear With UK Linebacker Kash Daniel (2021)
Spring Bass Fishing Gear With UK Linebacker Kash Daniel (2021)
The weather is turning and the bass are biting! Kash Daniel, UK Linebacker & bass angler, explains how to find bass in the spring, his favorite bass lure for each column of water, how to use attractants on lures, why he focuses on shallow water, his favorite rod and reel combo, and his favorite go-to bass lure of all time.
Gearbox Talk is brought to you by GoWild. Join a community of shooters, hunters, anglers and outdoor enthusiasts. 
Kash Daniel's Spring Bass Fishing Lures
Strike King Hack Attack Flipping Jig
SPRO John Crews Signature Series Little John 50 1/2 oz. Crankbait Craw
Zoom Fat Albert Grub 3-1/4" Trailers 10-Pack Rootbeer Pepper Green
Strike King Pro-Model KVD 1.5 Flat-Sided Crankbait Chartreuse Sexy Shad
Transcription:
Brad: As my lip ripping team here at GoWild has reminded me it has been 56 days since we had a show about fishing they and billy bass have spoken it's time to sit down and do a show about spring bass fishing Kash daniel is back on the show today the university of Kentucky linebacker is best known for his tackling but his favorite thing to actually tackle is a ditch pickle that's right Kash is fanatic about bass fishing on this episode Kash is going to share finding the bass in the spring his favorite basilar across each column of water using attractants on his lures why he loves to focus on shallow water his rod and reel combo and of course we're gonna talk about his favorite bass lure of all time you are hooked already i can tell so go ahead and hit the subscribe button hit the little bell icon so you don't miss any future shows about fishing i have a phenomenal trout guide who's coming on here soon to talk about fly fishing and you can bet your bottom dollar that this will not be the last fishing show about gearbox talk in the spring this is gearbox talk with kash daniel
all right Kash i know you got a few different passions one that everybody knows is football another is turkey hunting and today we're going to talk about some bass fishing you ready man
Kash: absolutely i can always talk some bass fishing baby
Brad: all right man let's dive into it how do you choose a good spot for spring bass fishing
Kash: so for me usually and it starts in the early spring i like to get out there you know right when the winter's ending and it's just the transition season typically because it'll set me up for the year of pattern out these fish and the first thing i like to look for especially if we've had like a lot of rain or like in this instance and we're having a lot of snow melt off back home in the mountains a lot of fresh water run-ins is where you're going to find a lot of good fish because a lot of a lot of places back home in eastern Kentucky and central Kentucky i think in Kentucky in general there's only two two power source lakes and that's Kentucky lake and barkley the other ones are you know rain and natural run-ins maybe a creek runs in there too but there's not a whole lot of natural flowing water and so when this water this new water comes comes in off these mountains that fresh rain that fresh snow that's melting off you know a lot of times those fish for some reason will stack up up against those rocks and find that new fresh water to breathe and you can take a crankbait or you know a spinner bait or a chatterbait and run through there and a lot of times that's where you're gonna get bit but for me and how i like to just pick a spot is first off you got to know what style of fisherman that you are you got to know are you a shallow water fisherman that likes to flip and crank that gets in the real nitty gritty stuff or are you a guy that likes to sit out there in the open water and look at your graph and find points and find ledges and throw a deep diving crankbait or are you a finesse fisherman out there with a you know a senko or a a drop shot so you've got to know what style of fisherman you are first before when you know you're going to pick out a spot and so for me and this is just how i do it i mean you could be a totally different fisherman but if you fish or think how like i do for me i like to fish shallow water and i like a little color to it dirty i don't like fishing clean clear water i'll have to i'll fish it if i have to but my preference is that little color little stain to chocolate milk and just because i feel like with the style that i fish of flipping jigs and throwing square bill crankbaits around rock and wood and bushes i think that just plays better into my into my arsenal of what i throw and how i fish so for me it's finding that dirty water with those with rocks with stumps with trees and wood anything that that sun can get high on and get and get a lot of heat down on because those fish are coming out of a you know really cold winter so they're going to push up eating for shad but look for flat sided rocks flat sided rocks heat up really really fast and those fish especially in dirty water don't move up on top of those rocks you can flip a jig right on top of its head and pull you out about a four pounder that's one thing i love about fishing shallow and dirty waters that you can get on top of them if you have a quiet trolling motor and if you're quiet and not beating banging around there in a boat you ain't got to make a 10-foot pitch you can get right up on top of his head and flip right in there and jerk him out so that's how i like to set up and look for a spot is that really got a lot of vegetation and a lot of you know presentation for me to know that hey i can throw a crankbait here i can flip that bush i could run a chatter bait along this tree you know just something that that clicks in my mind right no fish is gonna be
Brad: i was gonna ask you about you know kind of how you move through each column of water but let's start in the shallow and talk about specifically what you're using if you could show off some of your lures here and then we'll move through the other options
Kash: so the first thing i'm picking up and looking for is your standard is your standard flipping jig here now this is i don't even know if they make these anymore these are my dad's old jigs that's throw out of his box oh dad he calls this color the taylorsville craw color i don't know if you guys can there see it real good but it's got a root beer tail or trailer to it it's black brown with and the black skirt part has red flakes on it's got a little gold to it so this is a bait that you fish in dirty water so this is obviously why i got it out because nine times out of ten if i'm flipping it's gonna be dirty water and this rattle in it too got to have that rattle i think especially in dirty water when you're flipping and to help that fish locate your bait a lot better if you were to want if you were to be flipping in there without a rattle to it especially when the water's cold now if i'm flipping dirty water that surrounds it's 65 degrees or warmer i'm not going to flip a rattle in there you know i'm just going to let the jig do its work but especially in the cold and the cold water areas anytime you're fishing in high 40s to high 50s i'm so i'm flipping a jig with a rattle then another one here is your standard square bill crankbait now this is a spro little john now this color right here the reason why i picked this crankbait is because this time of year right now in early spring this red craw color is absolutely killer anywhere you go it could be in dirty water clear water stained water for some reason this red and orange has a really good as a really good catch ratio to it especially you know when you look at it in the fact that when these fish are coming up from you know being if if you're fishing away from fishing lake where they have a place to go deep if they can come up and start feeding the shallows shallow water looking for crawdads shad you're trying to match the hatches basically what you're trying to do and so anytime you're doing that you got to match the hash with your crawdads and then we're still in shallow water if i'll get to the dt6 man but and then once you get into out of the cold cold winter months and the early spring this is another standard square bill crankbait it's a flat side of crankbait especially in this cold water situation you want a crankbait that ties it's got a tight wobble too you don't want a big swooping wobble to it something tight something giving off that constant vibration for those fish to allow to come up and locate your bait so basically that's about that's about all i'm throwing a set for maybe a i'll throw a maybe a standard chatter bait here every once in a while but mainly my bread and butter is flipping a jig and throwing a square bill flat side of crankbait anytime
Brad: and i know i know you tend to stick shallow but let's talk about if you do kind of venture out into that mid to deep you know is there something that you do to change i'm sure you change up your game a little bit what do you shift to
Kash: absolutely so i've switched it up so if i'm fishing anywhere between eight to twelve foot i like to throw my raffle dt6 right here and i got it in the the red craw color i've got it in the sexy shad color i've got it in the pearl color i like throwing these dt6 especially when i go up in the north like at lake erie in the spring on their on their spring in their pre-spawn bite especially in that perks color i can remember two years ago going up there and thinking man i'm i'm gonna have to go out there and fish you know 20 foot water with a spinning rod in my hand i'm not gonna have any fun it's gonna be stupid go up there and we're fishing just like we would for largemouth going around these islands targeting islands with heavy rock on it and transition rock where we go from like big chunk chunk chunk and then we go down a little pea gravel chunk right there and they go back up to big chunk those transitions in that gravel we get that dt6 down there and bounces off that bottom it looks almost every other cast sling it out there crank bounce off one rock bounce off two rocks feels like somebody's like a baseball bat and hit it with it and then you gotta bite and so but the reason i can get this thing so deep for me because a lot of guys they like to throw they like to crank with 12 pound mono or 12 pound fluorocarbon for me if i'm fishing these flat side of crankbaits this typically dives about three to five feet if you throw it on about 12 pounds fluorocarbon for me sometimes i'll get i'll get sticky with and i'll go down to eight maybe eight pound seaguar red label just because and it's in an ad for seaguar it's got a really really strong line to where i can throw a half ounce crankbait on there on eight pound test and get maybe get a foot and a half two foot more out of it because if i can grind that crankbait against the bottom bounced off the rock bounced off the log you know especially in the early spring time i'm gonna get a reaction strike out of that so it's all about what you're fishing with your line as well you know your whole setup your rod and reel setup your gear ratio set up so everything it's almost like golf you know some people ask me all the time or why have some of your rods for them like well why does a golfer have so many clubs in his bag because each one's different for different situations it's like fishing so right let's explain it
Brad: yeah i think that's really good one thing i wanted to ask you about was if you're using attractants on your lures and if if so what's your approach to that
Kash: so i will use a some from time to time not a whole lot but if if the bites seem stagnant or if i'm missing a lot of bites especially especially if i'm missing a lot of bites i want to give it to something for that fish to hold on to more so i'll take my jig here and it comes in a little spray can and it's called bang you can get at walmart or any other you know retail outdoor show or outdoor shops and it's just got a garlic flavor to it and i think that when those fish inhale it and they taste it a little bit i think it's like oh it's different for saying hold on i don't want to spit this back out and that one-tenth of a second you know on my hook set can be the difference between you know landing that five pounder and missing that five pounder so i don't spray it on my crank baits i don't spray it on my anything that i'm that's if it's not flipping i'm only spraying on my flipping baits so my jigs and my texas rigs and soft plastics like that so if it's got a if it's a spinnerbait or a chatterbait or a crankbait or anything else no attractant on it whatsoever
Brad: the the nice thing about that is too if you've been fishing for a few days and you're tired of eating the same old sandwich you can just put a little bit of that garlic spray on there and liven things up
Kash: but the thing about it is though is it's like that it's like that one bottle of cologne you have that if you spray it right directly on it it's too strong so you gotta like spray it and then like there's one if you're gonna do that for the sandwich yeah you're about to spray it out and then bring the bread
Brad: everyone has a nice mental image if you on a boat doing that now you're gonna be tempted to try that now now that i've mentioned it next time you're fishing with that stuff
Kash: i've accidentally tasted it one time spraying it and the wind coming back at me it burns
Brad: that's funny man let's talk a little bit about your rod and reel combo you kind of led into that on that last question what are you using typically in the springtime
Kash: so if i'm fishing around here like back home or any lake that that fish is like a typical lake in the southeast region so anywhere from east Kentucky to guntersville to chickamauga to Kentucky lake if i'm shallow water cranking i like a seven foot to seven one medium heavy with an extra fast tip that extra fast tip on there when i set the hook i have a really good backbone at the base of the at the base of the rod with the medium heavy setting it's got a good backbone to be able to pull that fish out of any kind of you know maybe if it's if i hook it on a rock if i hook it on a you know a tree i have the backbone to get it out of there and allow my allow my reel to kind of take over with it but with that extra fast tip you know it'll also allows me to swing my hook set and not have to worry about because a lot of people like when you're cranking use people still set the hook like you like you would like a chatterbait fish or a jig fish you just got to swing into it be easy with it you know you're cranking you're cranking your crank and also just sway back into it what that does is that extra fast tip comes into play is that it allows that tip to bend a lot more than let's say a regular a fast action would or a medium action would and it allows that fish to hold on to that crankbait more than it's not jerking out of its mouth it's allowing that fish to fully absorb the bait as you're setting the hook without prying it out of its junk so that extra fast tip for me especially when i start swinging a lot of times too in the spring in this cold water situation is when you're flat side for crankbait fishing a lot of fish you're just gonna swap at the bait and not really fully like try to inhale it and so when you get that initial swipe and you get one hook in there maybe and you get that nice lean and sweep to it and that extra fast tip allows that rod to bend and give more to that crankbait with that fluorocarbon line because fluorocarbon doesn't stretch it's kind of replacing the line in an aspect because a lot of people say they fish mono because it gives that stretch so it doesn't pull the crankbait out of the fish's mouth well i don't like fishing mono i don't like how it floats i like how just fluorocarbon feels and how i feel with it when i when i crank them when i flip so i'm allowing my rod tip and my gear to take over so more than the line would usually fishing that on a five to six five six to one gear ratio or six eight to one nothing over seven i think anywhere between the five six to one is where you could steadily crank and i think it's about as natural as it's about as natural speed on the spool as it is when you're cranking so i think that you're in you can you can control the speed rather than you having to learn the gear ratio and having the gear control you you can control the gear ratio at five six to one so that's where i find my most success because i can speed it up if i want to and know exactly how fast the bait's going i can steady retrieve it and know how fast it's going and i could also slow crank it and also know how fast it's going so five six to one to six four to one six eight to one you know that's my tip with my ball range where i'm standing there for everybody
Brad: yeah it's a really good explanation on all of that and i appreciate that what brands do you lean towards on your rod reel combo
Kash: so right now i'm partnered up with with 13 fishing they're really great company made here in the usa and man there's one thing that i will say about them is that they put out really quality products i mean it's it's products that i know that i can go out and beat bang around and test their durability and know that when i come back and pick to pick that rod rod and reel up again it's not going to have any chips to it i'm not going to have a broken eyelet or my reel is not going to mess up but i mean i'm not going to sat there and say like i'm just not throwing it around or anything but it's it's a pretty durable pretty durable gear and it gets the job done for sure and you're seeing a lot of guys on the pro tour start to venture their way over to that side as well
Brad: cool and then last question here man what what is your favorite all-time bass lure for this time of year
Kash: the jig i don't know where i put it this right here is my favorite bait of all time spring summer winter if if you can give me a jig i mean i may not catch them all but the ones i catch are gonna be pretty good ones
Brad: yeah awesome dude well thanks for coming on this was a really fun show i thought you did a great job of talking through all of your strategy and i really do appreciate your rod and reel combo explanation i think for somebody that's trying to figure out what they should buy you gave a lot to think about there so
Kash thanks man this is great man
Kash: thank you
Brad: thank you Kash i like to mix in a good amount of people who are just absolutely the best in the world at what they do like jack carr and i like to get guys like Kash who people know but they may not know about their outdoor obsession now if you enjoyed this show obviously you need to subscribe but make sure you check out my other episodes too i've talked to professional anglers jon hunter and dean rojas i've got Kentucky bass fishing champion stephen taylor was a great episode and i've got a host of other shows about fishing they're all super interesting you can find that by going to the gearbox talk playlist on our youtube page drop a comment let us know if you disagree or agree with any of cash's lure tactics or his gear and let us know what you'd like to see in our next interview about fishing that's it for me today i'm out