Pro Lessons
Tips And Tricks From The Back Deck

Photo: FLW Outdoors/Rob Newell Here's a shot of Jess Caraballo's personal-best 10-02 largemouth. He caught it at last year's FLW Series East/West Fishoff at Lake Amistad from the back of the boat with a 5-inch Berkley Hollow Belly swimbait.

If sacking five tournament-grade green fish isn't enough of a challenge for you, try scraping up a limit of scraps after a tour-level pro has yanked just about every keeper off every stump, grassline and laydown ahead of you. That's the job of a co-angler.

Here, FLW Tour co-angler Jess Caraballo shares his tips for bagging the big ones from the back of the boat.

Keep it Simple

As a tournament angler, you always want to be prepared for whatever the day may throw your way. But Caraballo cautions co-anglers about bringing too much tackle.

"I've had co-anglers get in my boat with 12 rods and these giant tackle bags that weigh a ton," he said. "All that stuff weighs the boat down and makes everything cluttered. It's generally not good for the pro or the co-angler.

"As a co-angler you have to consider that you only have that one little area in the back of the boat to work with," he added. "I think most cos would be better off if they kept it simple and downsized the amount of tackle they bring on board."

His co-angler arsenal consists of one small Berkley tackle bag with a few Plano boxes inside. One box is full of his dropshot weights, shakey and regular jigheads, and tube weights. "That box goes with me everywhere," he noted.

"If the lake we're fishing is a place where I think I'll use a lot of soft plastics, I have another box that has different size hooks in it for stuff like Texas-rigs," he said. "But a lot of times I won't even bring that box depending on how or where I'm fishing."

A carefully picked selection of topwaters, crankbaits, frogs and any other hard baits he thinks he might need comprise his third box.

"Those boxes take up about half the bag, and I have all my soft plastics in the other half," he said. "The only other thing I carry is one really small box full of tungsten weights that range from 1/32-ounce up to 1 1/2-ounce."

Regardless of where he's fishing, Caraballo said he's always got two specific baits tied on. The first is a Berkley PowerBait Hand Pour Finesse worm in watermelon magic red glitter or purple greenie Christmas color. The second is a Berkley PowerBait Hollow Belly swimbait.

"That swimbait goes everywhere with me, now," he noted. "I caught the biggest fish of my life on a 5-inch Hollow Belly at the East/West Fishoff at Amistad last year.

"If you made me pick one bait that I had to use all year long, it'd be the Hollow Belly swimbait," he added. "It's just so versatile. I use it in places where I used to throw swimbaits and shallow cranks. I really can't imagine how I used to fish before I started throwing that, because I use it everywhere, now."

Go Big or Go Home

There's a widely accepted set of 'conventional' co-angler tactics that most rear-enders adhere to. Perhaps the most common is downsizing to finesse tackle in an attempt to coax less-active fish that wouldn't take the pro's offering.

That approach makes perfect sense, and there are times when it pays big dividends for the light-lining co-angler, but Caraballo prefers to stick with the big guns.

"I tend to fish a lot more like the pro than a lot of other co-anglers do," he said. "There are times when I might come behind (the pro) with a finesse rig, but usually I'm throwing bigger baits like jigs and swimbaits.

"When I won Co-Angler of the Year (CAOY) in 2007, I'd say I caught 75 percent of my fish that year on swimbaits. Last year a lot of pros were throwing shakey heads and senkos, and I threw a lot of swimbaits, crankbaits and jigs. I think that's the main reason why I won the title.

"That was a really important lesson for me," he added. "I proved to myself last year that you don't have to throw finesse tackle just because you're in the back of the boat. The No. 1 thing for me is that I always fish from the back of the boat just like I would fish from the front of the boat. If I want to throw a swimbait, I'm going to throw a swimbait. I don't care if the pro in front of me is throwing the exact same thing or something completely different. I use what I have confidence in for that situation. Don't change things up just because your sitting at the opposite end of the boat."

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