Midday Rally

The Chickamauga bass bite was tough. No way around that. An occasional chunky largemouths would blast a frog or take a flipped Biffle Bug, but the fishing was generally slow. So when I learned that Don Lamb, a tournament angler from nearby Ringold, Georgia, had found a mixed school of black and white bass, I was eager to get in on the action.

The white bass were small, Lamb warned, but he noted that schools of largemouth were in the same area and feeding on the same shad. Largemouths or white bass suited me, and I didn't really care if they were small. I just like catching fish, and when you're around eating fish, you never know when a good one might surprise you.

Lamb was working the schooling fish with a Little George, which he'd let sink to the bottom and work with lifts and drops. I caught a couple of white bass on one of his baits, but then I got thinking about the Gene Larew Rally Grubs I had in my bag. They have a great swimming action, and I figured they probably were about the right size to match the shad. The Bobby Garland Mo' Glo heads I had were a little light to cast with my baitcaster, a 7-2 medium heavy Lew's Custom Speed Stick, so I tied a tandem Rally Grub rig, spacing thing jigs about 15 inches apart. Beyond doubling the casting weight, a tandem rig suggests shad swimming together.

The white bass schools weren't as thick as when Lamb had been in the same area that morning, but the fish we found definitely liked the double Rally Grub rig, and I ended up catching several white bass and largemouths, plus one spotted bass in only a couple of hours of fishing.

The Rally Grub's name stemmed from the fact that it was designed to produce a rally when you need a burst of action, and it sure lived up to it's name last week.