T h e   D o c t o r

    If you are like most of the bass fishermen that I know, you probably spend a lot of time at your local fishing store walking the aisles is search of the perfect bait.  You are looking for the right color, the right size, the right design, and of course the right action.  In the meantime you will have accumulated enough tackle to open you own fish shop.  SO its not surprising to me that one of my favorite baits often goes overlooked and ignored.  I am talking about the “Fish Doctor”, otherwise known as a centipede, or French fry.  This lure is a short fat chunk of plastic with no real action at all, but don’t be fooled by their discouraging appearance.

Recently I was fishing a night team tournament with my partner Bill Jones at Bartlett Lake.  All we could seem to catch on our lines were ten to thirteen inch fish.  Time was ticking awfully fast and we felt the tournament could most likely be won with one good fish in the mix.  We went to a spot we knew held some larger fish.  We had fished this spot earlier and also during our pre-fish without any success.  So we started throwing everything in the box at them.  We caught a few more in the one-pound range when suddenly Bill tied on a Texas rigged watermelon seed fish doctor.  Instantly he was reeling in a two-ponder, which at that moment in time seemed to be a ten-pound monster.  With less than half an hour left in our two-day excursion I tied on the “doctor”.  Soon I was reeling in a two and one half pound fish.  These were not by any means large bass, but we felt that they would give us a chance at the scales.   In fact they proved to be the difference as we one the tournament. 

            The “fish doctor” works extremely well in the deep clear lakes of Arizona, but I use them in a variety of situations.  The “fish doctor” has proven to me that it is very versatile bait, which can be flipped, Texas rigged, Carolina rigged, fished on a split shot or a drop shot and even weightless.  The angler who passes this bait up on the rack does not know what he, or she, is missing.  Next time you are faced with extremely finicky bass and the bite is so bad that it hurts, don’t be afraid to call on the “doctor”.