“But as soon as the water reaches 55 degrees, I break out a buzzbait. I have so much confidence in a buzzbait that once I tie it on in the spring, I never take it off until the water drops into the low 50s again in the fall. I throw it daylight to dark — under overcast as well as bluebird skies.”
Turner has precise buzzbait specifications. First, it must be a 3/8-ounce model. That’s a size and weight that he is comfortable with. “I know exactly what to expect cast, after cast, after cast. No adjustment needed.”
He goes with aluminum or painted blades, and a white or chartreuse/white skirt. A fellow angler in the boat with a different colored buzzbait skirt must outfish Turner before he’ll consider changing skirt color.
“I don’t have any particular reason for choosing plain or painted blades on any given day. It’s not based on cloud cover or water clarity. It’s just that one or the other will work for me.”
Recently, Turner switched to Booyah Buzzbaits and Booyah Blades because their painted blades are more durable than others he has used. “Also, they use a quality Mustad Ultra Point Hook. A strong, sharp hook is extremely important to me.”
Turner is most adamant about not using trailer hooks or soft plastic trailers on his buzzers, explaining it’s just one more potential entanglement. Furthermore, he points out that any extraneous “stuff” on the buzzbait may cause a cast to go off target.
He does make two possible alterations to a buzzbait to improve castability. “If there is a light breeze, I’ll trim the skirt way back to reduce air resistance. If it’s a stiff breeze, I remove the skirt completely. It’s more important to have a straight, long cast than to have a skirt on the bait. In current, smallmouth bass come to the commotion, not the color.”
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RIVER PRO JET BOATS
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Kevin Turner’s goal in life was not to build jet boats. All he wanted to do was fish rock-infested rivers for smallmouth while maintaining a successful auto repair business. But he kept encountering problems with every river boat he owned.
Turner explains: “Prop-driven and outboard jets simply could not get the job done. Standard welded hulls didn’t hold up. Out of frustration, I set out to build the kind of river boat that would work for me. It eventually turned into a full-time business.”
Today, Turner produces boats with incredibly tough hulls powered by inboard Mercury Sport Jets. The HiPro is a high-side model that is preferred by guides for its spacious interior. The LoPro is the low-side bass boat model with sports car performance.
Turner devotes the fall, winter and early spring months to design and testing at his boat factory in Missouri. But come summer, he is on the road delivering and demonstrating his boats around the U.S. And he finds plenty of time to spend fishing his favorite stretches of the Mississippi in Minnesota.
With a hull design that traps water under the boat in shallow water, River Pro Boats are among the shallowest running of any jet boat. Using a zigzag technique he calls dog-legging, Turner can negotiate ripples that are only 3 to 4 inches deep. That’s why he claims River Pro Boats take anglers where they have never been before.
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Firm conviction is the way to describe Turner’s belief in how a buzzbait should be presented in current. “In almost all instances, I feel you should be retrieving across the current, at 90 degrees to the flow. With the bow pointed upstream, I square my shoulders to the shore, throw directly to the bank and bring the buzzer straight back.”
This retrieve angle is more likely to surprise a smallmouth that is sitting head-into-current and watching for something coming downstream. “If you make 45-degree casts upstream and bring the bait with the flow, it gives bass a chance to look it over, deciding perhaps it isn’t real food. By coming at 90 degrees to the current, that smallmouth does not have time to view the lure, only to react — which in most instances means it will fight rather than take flight.”
At times during the summer, some river smallmouth may be shallow enough that their backs stick out of the water as they forage on crawfish. Therefore, Turner insists that casts should land within inches of the shore rather than a couple feet away from shore. If there is emergent grass at the water’s edge or if the bank has a low taper with rock cobble, Turner will intentionally land his casts on the shore and drag his buzzbait into the water.
“There may be something about the blades clinking on rocks that trigger strikes as soon as the buzzer enters the water. I’ve also had strikes occur after climbing over mid-stream boulders with a buzzbait.”
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