provided by John Phillips
Mossy Oak Fishing Pro Brandon Cobb of Greenwood, South Carolina, fished for five years on the FLW circuit and 2019 on the Bassmaster Elite Series. The 30-year-old began fishing solo when he was 12 years old, and his dad always has been his mentor. At Clemson University, Cobb was a member of the fishing team. In 2019, Cobb won two Bassmaster Elite Series tournaments at Lake Hartwell and Lake Fork and took home $100,000 for each win. You can keep up with Brandon Cobb on his Facebook page.
My first choice of bait for fishing this time of year is the wacky-rigged Zoom Fluke Stick. My number-two lure for fishing in early May is a buzzbait.
I designed the Greenfish Tackle Company’s Toad Toter Buzzbait that doesn’t have a skirt but does have a 3/8-ounce lead and is an inline attachment that carries soft plastic lures like Zoom’s Horny Toad. I’ll use a normal buzzbait frame and push the Horny Toad up close to the lead. I like the Horny Toad instead of a skirt. The Horny Toad allows me to reel in the buzzbait slower than I can if the lure has a skirt on it. Also, with a Horny Toad on this buzzbait, I can skip it under docks, bushes and trees hanging over the water. I’ve been making these lures since I was 12 years old in my shop at home and fishing with them. This lure is the kind of lure that anglers in North Carolina and South Carolina have fished with as long as I can remember.
I also like the buzzbait with the Horny Toad this month because lots of bass will be feeding on shad and bluegills. So, if I’m targeting bass that are feeding, I can put a green-pumpkin Horny Toad on the buzzbait to catch the bass feeding on bluegills and a white Horny Toad on the buzzbait for bass feeding on shad. I like to throw the buzzbait on an ARC 7’1” rod, which is a prototype that will be introduced very shortly, and an Abu Garcia Revo STX spinning reel and 50-pound-test Yo-Zuri line. I always fish my buzzbait on braided line to get a fast, hard hook set.
Where I grew up in South Carolina, most of the lakes had numbers of docks and bushes. We’ve learned that skipping the buzzbait under these two types of cover is highly effective. I think it’s due to not many buzzbait fishermen casting in these areas. But you will get numbers of bites and catch some bass. Lake Hartwell and Lake Greenwood are two lakes that I grew up fishing. I think the main reason the buzzbait is so effective there is due to the abundance of shallow-water shade for bass to hold under like boat docks, bushes and overhanging trees. Like most people, I fish this buzzbait early in the morning. However, I also fish it throughout most of the day. I’m casting to shade and structures that usually will have shade near them most of the day. Late in the evening, I continue fishing the buzzbait, covering as much water as fast as I can.
