Spinnerbait specialist fishes blades year-round for bass, but spring is his favorite time.

Spring is prime time for anglers to chase largemouth bass on reservoirs across North Carolina, 

and May is when spinnerbaits fished around wood, rocks or flats elicit strikes from prespawn and bedding female bass.

Although lunker hunters often use soft plastics, veteran angler Dennis Reedy of Siler City, N.C., prefers spinnerbaits and buzzbaits. In fact, he’s had so much success with blade baits that he uses them year-round.

“They’re big-fish baits,” he said. “I think bigger bass chase them because of their profiles in the water; they look like big shad.”

Reedy, 62, has been fishing spinnerbaits and buzzbaits for more than 42 years.

“My dad taught me to fish, but Wally Szuba (a tournament partner) taught me to use spinnerbaits,” Reedy said. “He was good at it. We had a few good days, caught some big fish, won some money and I got gung-ho for them.”

When Reedy and Szuba first began using spinnerbaits in the late 1970s, they began to appreciate their versatility.

“We won a November tournament at Kerr Lake, then a (Lake) Gaston tournament the next year in October,” Reedy said. “We only threw Hawg Callers — double willow-leafs with either No. 4½ and No. 5 blades or No. 3s with No. 4s or No. 5s.”  

Reedy has kept his grip on an iron-clad blade preference rule for four decades.

“I’ll throw ’em in January and February and during the summer and fall,” he said. “I’ve caught 10-pounders on a spinnerbait when the temperature was freezing. 

“It’s just what I do. I’ll throw at cover along the banks every month except June and July when I have to fish deep. I don’t want to fish deep, but I’ve got to in order to compete. But I still catch 13- to 15-pound (5-fish) limits in shallow water in June and July. That’s no big thing for me in the summer.”

Bill Morgan’s influence

A meeting with spinnerbait guru Bill Morgan, who invented the famed Hawg Caller spinnerbaits, led Reedy and Szuba to tinker with his lures.

“We won tournaments with them, and word got out,” Reedy said. “He gave us kits to build spinnerbaits. He sponsored us with blades, beads and skirts.”

Morgan had experimented with different types of single-, double- and triple-blades — he was the first manufacturer in the Southeast to produce a triple willow-leaf bait— but Reedy and Szuba pushed Morgan’s envelope, adding four Colorado blades to home-made models, trying to tweak the extra blade into more vibration. Reedy is still using a 4-bladed model.

“The spinnerbaits we used back then also had lighter wire than other brands,” he said, “and they caught bass better than anything we tried.”

Although light-wire spinnerbaits had a durability problem, Reedy viewed it as a small chink in his blade armor. 

A good trade-off

In 1992, Reedy and Phil Cable of Apex fished Hawg Caller spinnerbaits in an early March tournament on Jordan Lake. That day, a bass slammed Reedy’s lure, jumped out of the water and came loose.

“When I got (the spinnerbait) back to the boat, the fish had broke the wire,” he said.

Working the trolling motor while Reedy tied on another bait, Cable spun the boat and cast a ¾-ounce Hawg Caller with a No. 4 Colorado and a No. 6 willow-leaf blade at a rip-rap corner where Reedy’s fish had bitten, and a lunker slammed his lure. Moments later, Cable landed a 14-pound, 6-ounce bass that remains the lake record for Jordan.

“We never knew if Phil’s bass was the same one that broke my spinnerbait, but we figured it coulda been,” Reedy said.

The spinnerbait Cable was fishing, with a gold-plated head, became known as Hawg Caller’s “Cable Special.”

Staying the course

Hundreds of tournaments and thousands of casts later, Reedy still throws spinnerbaits.

“I throw Hawg Caller spinnerbaits and some buzzbaits,” said Reedy, whose favorite blades are still ¾-ounce models with Nos. 4½ or No. 5 willow-leafs paired with No. 3 or 5 Colorado blades. And his color choice has remained consistent: gold.

“Back then, we got hung up on gold-plated heads and gold skirts,” he said. “They seemed to work better and still do.”

In addition to gold-plated heads, Reedy still likes gold-glimmer or chartreuse-white skirts.

“You can use (Hawg Callers) straight out of the box,” he said. “But sometimes I change out the skirts to make them more appealing.”

Reedy prefers Zoom split-tail trailers “of some description, usually white.” 

Rods and reels

Reedy’s rods and reels naturally remain old school.

“I still use Lew’s BB-1 reels (spooled with 20-pound Big Game monofilament), and my favorite rods are Bill Poe custom-made with G-Loomis blanks,” he said. “I have (older) Poe rods that are still as good as the day I bought ’em.”

He does make one adjustment — his reel’s retrieve ratio — depending on water temperature.

“If I’m throwing a big-bladed spinnerbait and the water’s cold, I’ll usually use a 5-to-1 or 6-to-1 reel ratio,” he said.

That pace creates a relatively slow return that’s needed because bass often won’t chase fast-moving lures. But when water temperature rises to 65 degrees or higher, their metabolism quickens.

“Later, I’ll use a reel with a 7-to-1 or quicker if I’m burning one through the water,” he said. “If you throw a spinnerbait near a school and burn it, they’ll eat it.” 

Favorite lake

Although Reedy has had his share of tournament success at Jordan, Falls and Shearon Harris lakes — where he and a partner once landed a one-day 10-fish tournament limit that weighed 72½ pounds — Kerr Reservoir,  aka Buggs Island, remains his go-to destination.

“I’ve caught some big sacks with spinnerbaits at Jordan and Gaston,” he said, “but I’ve won more money by far at Buggs Island. I’ve averaged 5-pounds-plus (per fish) with spinnerbaits there.”

Because Kerr has lots of shoreline structure — laydowns, pea-gravel banks, live buck brush, flooded sweet gum trees, rocks — it’s easy to understand why Reedy likes fishing there. With well-defined creek channels and large stump fields on flats, it’s spinnerbait heaven.

“I don’t think there’s such a thing as bad cover,” he said. “Buggs has got logs, rocks, bushes, standing timber and shade. At some point each year, bass will orient at one of those types of structure.”

The spinnerbait’s versatility is clear; it can be fished in and through live or dead structure and bounced off rocks or stumps. But no matter where he fishes, Reedy puts his blades to good use.

Buzzbait suit angler’s tastes, too

Few anglers have fishing lures named for them, but lure manufacturer Travis Decker of Dublin, Va., tabbed one of his popular Rush Lures buzzbaits the “D.R. Series” after Dennis Reedy of Siler City, N.C., a spinnerbait expert who also loves to fish buzzbaits.

“I’ll throw a buzzbait year-round,” he said. “It’s a lure I use when I don’t know what else to throw.”

When reeled across a lake’s surface, a buzzbait’s gurgling noises and screeching blades elicit savage strikes by largemouths.

“A spinnerbait looks like a shad, but a buzzbait?” Reedy said. “I don’t know. I think it causes reaction strikes. I think the sound and commotion piss off bass. And bigger fish tend to smack it.”

Reedy uses buzzbaits when the water temperature is 55 degrees and higher.

“It’s best to throw in flooded, shallow places,” Reedy said. “I don’t worry so much about cover as I do depth. I like to throw buzzbaits in water less than 3 feet deep. Main lake and creek flats are good. A bass is more likely to hit in 2 feet than to come up from 6 to 8 feet.”

Although he grew up casting Lunker Lures, his favorite buzzbait now is a Rush Lures model. 

“You can throw them like a bullet, and they don’t tumble,” said Reedy, who likes their 1/2-ounce size and bright blue head and skirt — and that they’re named after him.