Slowing Down, Lightening Up with Shakyheads to Catch
More Bass
By Steve Vantreese - September 3, 2011

After consulting countless fish, Randy Kuhens has pretty much settled on the way to catch bass.

It’s not like he’s swearing off other methods, but based on consistent successes, Kuhens seldom varies from the tactic of fishing slim, straight-bodied plastic worms on shakyhead-style jigs with spinning tackle.

“I’ve kind of hung my hat on this technique,” said the Kentucky Lake guide who operates Kick’n Bass Guide Service. “When I’m fishing for bass, about 85 percent of the time I’m fishing a shakyhead.”

Kuhens brought the method with him when he went to full-time guiding a couple of seasons ago. As he refined the technique, it kept proving itself until it became by far his first option for he and his clients to catch bass.

“It’s a relatively easy technique to learn, and I can give my fishermen a short cut by putting the right tackle in their hands,” he said.

This column visited Kuhens’ style of shakyhead fishing early into his guide service. Since then, his shakyhead successes have won the attentions of a whole raft of anglers. These days, he’s often booked by people who specifically want to learn to fish shakyheads.

He expands the topic, teaching how to apply the finesse rig to offshore structure that he reads like a book with his advanced Lowrance High Definition sonar system.

“The shakyhead will catch fish if you just go down a bank, but it’s very site-specific, too,” Kuhens said. “It’s unbelievable how good these electronics are now, and it’s wild how many bass you can catch from places you can find this way.

“I’ve got people booking trips who’ve got their own boats with $5,000 worth of electronics — and all they know how to do is turn them on,” he said. “They come to learn how to fish shakyheads while they see how to find fish with the electronics.”

So what’s a shakyhead? It’s a leadhead jig made onto a bass-size hook and designed to carry a soft plastic lure. Kuhens usually chooses a 3/16-ounce PJ’s Bass Extractor, a football-shaped leadhead with a straight wire worm keeper sprouting upward and back from the head.

Kuhens rigs almost always with an extra soft but durable 7-inch Z-Man ElaZtech finesse worm. He feeds a worm onto the wire keeper, then with the worm pushed to the leadhead, the keeper is pushed out the side of the worm and bent backward with pliers to lock the plastic in place The worm is hooked self-weedless with the super sharp hook buried in the plastic.

The shakyhead name comes from the style of some early users who fished the lure vertically in deep, clear water and provoked bass by literally shaking the worm.

Kuhens is picky about shakyhead tackle. He opts for a medium-heavy, extra-fast-tipped Shimano spinning rod of 6 feet, 10 inches or 7 feet. The matching spinning reel is a 1000 Series Shimano, both reel and rod designed for shakyhead fishing.

Kuhens’ reel is filled with skinny, non-stretchy 10-pound Power Pro Braid line in bright yellow. He offsets the visibility of the braid by tying on a 9-foot leader (with double uni-knot) of clear 100 percent fluorocarbon, also 10-pound test.

Fishing the shakyhead can be deceptively simple. Most of the rocket science is in the tackle and rigging up properly.

When the bass bite is relatively slow as in recent dog days conditions, Kuhens uses extra finesse. Identifying an offshore ledge or mussel shell bed, he casts there and does nothing for a bit.

“I let the shakyhead go to the bottom and sit for an honest 10 seconds,” Kuhens said. “Then I move it about one foot and wait again. The jighead will be on the bottom and the worm floats above it like something feeding on the bottom.”

Even during a slow bite, it’s common for a fish to suck in the shakyhead after the first pause or two.

“There’s virtually no line stretch and the rod and reel are extremely sensitive, so you can usually feel the hit as a light tap.” Kuhens said. “All you have to do then is take up any slack and set the hook with a flick of the wrist, moving the rod tip from about 10 o’clock to 12. The worm is so soft and the hook so sharp that, if the fish puts it in its mouth, you’ve pretty much got him.”

When fish are biting better, use less pause. Let the jig/worm go to bottom and twitch it forward an inch or two, then “quiver” it on a tight line, Kuhens said.

“When the fishing is good, a lot of times the shakyhead never makes it to bottom,” he said.
Much of what Kuhens teaches clients and shakyhead scholars is about slowing down and fishing thoroughly. He said the finesse jig-worm can produce several fish out of prime locations if time is taken to appeal to them.

“I don’t worry about fishing behind people now,” he said. “I can follow someone fishing a crankbait or Carolina rig down a ledge and, by taking my time, might catch several good bass that wouldn’t hit a bigger, faster-moving bait.”

Steve Vantreese, a freelance outdoors writer, can be contacted at outdoors@paducahsun.com.