HOW & WHEN TO USE

Lilly Pads - Heart Shaped
Bass love lily pads. Not only do they provide shade, but the thick roots, sometimes 4” thick, are great structure. Combine shade and structure and you have a perfect place for bass to hide and wait for food. All lily pads are the same basic shape. Some are larger than others, but most are heart shaped with a very defined “V” at the top. It is this “V” that makes The Sled the best choice for lily pads.

Using 50 lb. braid or 20+ lb. Copolymer and a medium heavy to heavy action rod, throw a ¼ ounce Sled.
Importantly, the 1/4 or 3/8 ounce Sled is made of bismuth and tin. It isn’t a hollow rubber frog. When a bass explodes on a frog, the frog is blown up in the air and away from the feeding bass. Not so with The Sled. When a bass smashes on The Sled coming across pads, matted coontail, milfoil or scum it isn’t blown out of the water. The Sled stays right there in the bombed out area the bass made with her explosion. You drop your rod tip, which allows The Sled to slide into the hole, jiggle just a bit – BAM you have a vicious strike and you own that bass.

Keep your rod high at the 11 o’clock position. Reel just slow enough to keep The Sled on top making a wake when in open water. Almost every cast The Sled will come to that “V” in a pad that stops every other hard bait. You will see the Patent Pending design of The Sled spread the “V” and continue on.

The “hit” will be explosive as the bass plows through the pads trying to eat the lure.  Whatever you do, don’t set the hook. More times than not the bass will miss, but now there is a hole in the pads.  Drop the rod tip, which will allow The Sled to slide back into the hole. If the bass doesn’t slam it during the fall, shake your rod tip which will stimulate the bass to strike. “Feel” the fish before setting the hook.

Dollar Pads
In certain areas of the country there are pads the size of Silver Dollars. They are called dollar pads and when the bass are in them you are in for some heart stopping fun. Dollars pads are light, thin and nothing can be on top of them without predators below knowing. Throw The Sled with the same equipment as  above. You can reel it back across the top with a little more speed, but still slow. Unlike lily pads, the bass will not miss when it smashes The Sled. Still, it is important to make sure you feel the bass before setting the hook.

Note for fishing lily and dollar pads. The biggest mistake fishermen make when fishing pads is setting the hook when the fish first explodes. It takes nerves of steel to just let The Sled sit there when a bass blows a 2 foot hole. It is a natural reflex to set the hook immediately. You must practice to do nothing. Many times the bait may stay the hole for a minute or more, but don’t forget that that bass is not far and looking at The Sled. Be patient.

Coontail, Milfoil and Other Thick Weeds
There is a grass that, when in the water, looks just like a raccoon’s tail. There are two other grasses, milfoil and hydrilla that are very thick and grow shallow and deep. All of these weeds are lush and full of oxygen. When it exists there are fields of it in both shallow and deep water. They are some of the best bass hideouts there is. In the morning and during overcast days a buzzbait would be an awesome choice, but when topwater isn’t working – it is time to pick up your Sled rod.

Make a long cast, still using the same rod and line you used in the pads. Let The Sled sink till the line goes limp. (Very important.) Lift the rod taking up the slack and move The Sled slowly. Try to imagine The Sled falling in and out of holes. If you keep the line too tight, then The Sled isn’t going to slide in, over, under and through the coontail. (Ray named it The Sled for a very good reason. Sleds slide. Allow The Sled to slide.) The hits could be subtle, to where you just feel something heavy.  But fishing any weed means you should watch the “loop” in your line for a telltale twitch.

Swimming The Sled
Over the past ten or so years,  good fishermen have been using  jigs in ways other than  bottom bouncing. One of the more popular is to “swim a jig.” Just looking at The Sled and you can see how it would be the perfect jig to swim. The name alone suggests that swimming is it’s genes – The Sled.

Most will throw The Sled out and then slowly reel the jig back, while lifting and dropping the rod tip. Ray has a better way: Throw it to the side of docks and swim it just off the bottom – throw it beyond a blow-down and swim it just over the branches – make a long cast over a weedbed and swim it back just touching the tops of the weeds.