Photo by Ronell Smith

After a surprisingly long, arcing cast, the plastic overshoots the water's edge and lands on a gray mud bank. Splat. I work it down the bank, into the water and move it toward a slight current -- just like I meant to do it that way. Letting it drift, the weightless worm sinks a little. I only have to twitch it a time or two. It lifts and falls and swims, mostly on its own, and after a while it ends up somewhere near the bottom. I pop it up and down a couple of times, reel it halfway to the surface, and then let it drift again. Real natural, real delicate, unhurried. I bring it back to the boat this way and cast again.

"Weightless Senkos," says my bass partner, who's teaching me this method for the first time. "Killer."

I didn't have much experience fishing weightless plastics back in those days, so I was skeptical. At first I wasn't sure how far or how accurately I could throw a plastic bait without weight, but quickly learned how to make it sail with light spinning gear. Bigger and heavier plastics offered even more distance and increased accuracy.

"Nice, slow drop," my partner points out. "Killer." I sure like the action on the bait. Without the bullying presence of an artificial weight, plastics in the water move seductively smooth and look natural, whether "natural" imitates a lizard, worm or crayfish.

It's my third or fourth cast. This is easy fishing. We're working a patch of shallow water at the far north end of a reservoir in early July. Current from incoming creeks create a slight river affect. The water is doing most of the work, helped along by my occasional jerking and twitching of the bait. A few times I bring the worm right up to the surface until I can just barely see it, then I let it fall again. It goes where it wants to go, does what it wants to do. I keep my rod tip low, as my buddy instructs, and give it plenty of slack line. Very natural. It's the Grateful Dead approach to bass fishing.

"Do this kind of fishing much?" I ask him.

"All the time," he says.

I cast again. "Man, with 8-pound-test and my whippy Lamiglas rod, I can throw this thing really far." My black Senko hits a willow.

"That's really good," my sensei points out. I think, of course, that he's giving me grief, but he's sincere for the distance I'd just cast. Rather than pull it loose, I give it line and let the plastic ease into the water. Bang! A beautiful take as a 2-pound black bass erupts from the water.

DELICATE FISHING
"Delicate" isn't a word I'd use to describe bass fishing. Bassing is a macho sport. Its lures carry macho names, its boats have macho names -- it's all about big, loud, bright, obnoxious, in-your-face fishing, which is akin to its Southern roots. Guys down Dixie way like it that way.

Here in the West, however, bass fishing is just a wee bit more of a gentile sport than it is in other parts of the country. Why that is so is not necessarily because of our liberal upbringing ("Can't we all just get along?") or some politically correct blather ("SUVs kill.") dumped on us from the first grade on. Rather, our gentle approach to bass fishing comes in reaction to fishing in clear-water reservoirs in which bass can see you from a half-mile away. It resulted in a proven technique we affectionately call "finesse" fishing -- the California cool of bass angling.

There's a lot to bass fishing -- pulling crankbaits all day, fishing deep water with heavy jigs, tossing double-tandem spinnerbaits for 16 hours -- that's not as pleasant as we'd like it to be. All of those methods are good ways to catch fish, but they certainly aren't fun.

If you want real fun, real finesse, check out weightless plastics. You'll be quickly converted, just as I was.

WHAT, WHEN AND WHERE
My day on the water that first time using weightless plastics produced 23 bass between 3 and 10 p.m. The water was clear and shallow -- perfect conditions for finessing weightless plastics. High summer is an excellent time for this approach, but you can use it all the way back to early spring, too, particularly when bass are moving up shallow in preparation for spawning, and on their beds during the spawn.