One of the many blessings of being a fishing guide is exposure to folks of various angling backgrounds. This ranges from ones with little fishing experience – yet willing and able to learn – to highly skilled anglers adept at a host of techniques. Dan Brown fits into the latter category.

A resident of Virginia, Dan fishes with me a few times each season when visiting family in Armstrong County, a tradition that’s gone on for several years.

Early July featured two of these trips on the Allegheny River, ones straddling the July 4 holiday.

We hit good conditions as the river had received enough rain to bump up the flow a bit and add some color to what had been extreme clarity for early summer.

As is his habit, Dan brought with him a collection of rod/reels combinations rigged with various lures and baits. The early morning brought a good top-water bite. But as frequently happens, within an hour or so the fish were no longer interested in noisy surface baits like the River2Sea Whopper Plopper and Jackall Pompadour.

Dan and I changed tactics, me switching to soft and hard jerkbaits that consistently produce. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to Dan’s adjustment until I heard the swoosh of a near-surface strike.

After a spirited battle, an 18-inch smallmouth bass was in the net. As I unhooked the fish, I revealed to Dan my unfamiliarity with the lure. He replied it was a Duo Realis Wakebait.

The morning unfolded into one of those a fish here, fish there kind of outings. I couldn’t help but notice that out of the variety of presentations Dan was fishing, many of the fish came on the wakebait.

When the outing concluded, after four-plus hours he had tallied 17 landed bass, Duo Realislure accounting for over half of them.

Wakebaits hover on or near the surface creating a distinct vee upon the retrieve. They are not new. The classic Arbogast Jitterbug could well be considered a wakebait. The Duo Realis version features a three-part segmented body that swims with a snake-like action while creating a distinct vee-shaped surface disturbance.

Dan fished it with a variety of retrieve speeds, but a slow, steady one seemed to inspire the most strikes that day.

The experience conjured up memories from over 30 years ago, when my friend Dave Keith and I made frequent trips to Lake Arthur aimed at hybrid striped bass. During the late spring through early summer, strong fighting hybrids made frequent nighttime forays into the shallows to feed on spawning alewives. I suppose they still do, though it’s been many years since I’ve fished for them.

The fish could be maddening, consistently showing up in obvious feeding frenzies. Catching them was less consistent. However, we learned through trial and error that one of the most reliable tactics was to fish a joined Rebel minnow or Rapala minnow as a wakebait.

After splashdown, we’d begin a slow, steady retrieve – one lacking the speed to allow the lure to dive -- holding the rod tip high so the line was out of the water. The even pace, which also produced a vee-like pattern on the surface, was easy for the stripers to track and intercept.

Like all presentations, wakebaits are yet another tool for anglers to put to work and have the potential to outproduce more common tactics.

Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle