Beaver Won, on to Bull Shoals, for Jason Christie

Jason Christie, Beaver Lake FLW Tour event winner, with his family immediately after the weigh-in. FLW photo.

Jason Christie is keeping on the run this year, but the full schedule seems to suit him well. One of a few of this season's two-tour pros, Christie was already was already doing well on the FLW Tour and in the Elite Series, but he punctuated that success this afternoon with an FLW Tour win on Beaver Lake.

Christie's second FLW Tour win earned him a check for $125,000, but he won't spend much time pondering how how he'll spend any of the money. Practice for the next Elite Series even begins tomorrow. Fortunately for Christie, that event is being held on Bull Shoals Lake, which is also in the northern part of Arkansas and only a couple of hours' drive from Beaver Lake.

It will be interesting to see if things learned at Beaver will help Christie at Bull Shoals. He won't be able to use the same strategy because he won Beaver with a YUMbrella Flash Mob, Jr., a five-hook rig that isn't allowed in Elite Series competition. However, both lakes are deep, clear impoundments of the White River that have been subject to the same weather patterns this spring. Therefore, it would seem like things that he (and other two-tour anglers) learned at Beaver should help at Bull Shoals.

Mob Ruled the Day

Reports told of stripers smashing Spooks a couple of mornings ago, so given a forecast of a dark drizzly day, we anticipated a day of surface action and began the morning with a Super Spook, Super Spook Jr. or Bomber Badonk-A-Donk on every line. As hard as we tried, though, we could not coax the Illinois River's stripers to come up. However, when Lawrence Taylor decided to go down after the fish with a YUMBrella Flash Mob Jr., his school of flashy blades and swimming grubs proved more than the stripers could resist. I didn't take long for all of us to rig similarly and tap into the striper action. Spooks produced one largemouth and one small striper, but the Flash Mob Junior rigs yielded the best action by far.

Interestingly, a full-size Flash Mob didn't draw a single strike, and apparently a Super Spook Jr. was far more productive than a Super Spook over the weekend. The shad, which were very abundant in the area where we caught the fish, were quite small and the stripers seemingly didn't trust offerings with larger profiles.

New Spin on Multi-Lure Rigs

Typically at the ICAST show, several new-product trends emerge: hollow-bodied swimbaits, micro eyes on rods, a new material for waders, better-equipped fishing kayaks, square-lipped crankbaits... Something that has been hot or has shown signs of getting hot typically draws multiple manufacturers to develop some version of a certain style of product or something that goes with that type of product.

Anyone who follows the fishing business at all knows that one major trend at this year's show will be multi-lure rigs and all sorts of stuff to go with them. Following the trend started by Alabama Rigs on the bass tournament trails last fall, there will be many types of multi-lure rigs for fresh and salt water alike, rods designed for casting and presenting such rigs, baits made specifically to go on the ends of the wires, specialized boxes and wraps for storing them...

YUM, which quickly emerged as a leader in this category with the YUMbrella rig, is introducing an entire line of multi-lure offerings under the collective dubbing of Bait School Technology.

One of the coolest offerings in this line, from my perspective, is the Flash Mob Jr. As the Jr. part of the name suggests, it is downsized from the original YUMbrella rig and can be cast on most fishing gear. The flash part is what sets is apart, though. Four spinnerbait blades positioned halfway down the arms create a bunch of attention-getting flash just ahead of the grubs or swimbait bodies or whatever you choose to put on the jigheads.

The folks in Fort Smith, Arkansas, where YUM Bait Company is headquartered, have been had huge fun testing the Flash Mob Jr. and the results have been seriously good!