Chris Zaldain’s Swimbait Strategies
IT’S A WARM, late-spring morning on Lake Ray Roberts, site of the 2021 Bassmaster Classic. Or it could be Lake Fork, the Harris Chain, Kentucky Lake, maybe the Tennessee River. It doesn’t matter. It’s always the same wherever Bassmaster Elite Series pro Chris Zaldain arranges his rods on the boat deck. If you see him, it will be impossible to ignore one heavy action 8-footer mixed with the normal collection of other rods rigged with spinnerbaits, jigs and squarebills.
The big rod has a 7-inch silverish-green swimbait tied on. It looks so real, you’d think Zaldain was fishing with real bait instead of plastics, but therein lies a large part of his success with these types of lures. He’s a California native who learned his craft in the Huddleston/Rago swimbait and giant bass culture where attention to detail came first, and Zaldain has carried that doctrine with him ever since. His own biggest bass with one of the fake look-alikes weighed 14-1.
He had a small inflatable boat, and he’d take it to Coyote Lake about 45 minutes from his home,
