Since its construction over 70 years ago, Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, has been an epicenter of bass fishing. For more than 50 years, it has been home to one of the premier fishing families of North America, the Hibdon clan. And since 1981, the Brauers also have called it home.

The elder statesmen of this generation, Guido Hibdon and Denny Brauer, are ensconced among the most successful professional bass anglers of all time. And their sons, Dion Hibdon and Chad Brauer, have followed closely in their fathers’ footsteps. Indeed, Dion won the world Championship, the BASS Masters Classic, nine years after his father was crowned.

A boat ride on Lake of the Ozarks will reveal why both father-and-son teams have become legendary for their skills at extricating bass from under boat docks. The number of these structures has escalated drastically since the 1970s. Heavily populated arms of the reservoir, such as the Gravois, contain literally thousands of docks.

Though many consider these docks an eyesore, they make wonderful year-round habitat for resident largemouth and Kentucky bass. By using his home-grown dock wisdom, Dion was able to capture the bass title at Lake Logan Martin in Alabama, where docks also abound. And indeed, he and Chad Brauer have parlayed these skills to top finishes in northern natural lakes past the Canadian border.

Last fall, I fished with Chad Brauer and Dion Hibdon as they searched for bass among these manmade structures. Actually, I watched as they deftly performed their magic in the timeless test of modern technology versus the ancient instincts of aquatic creatures, taking notes to help anglers pick up new dock tricks.

Chad On The Water

A touch of frost did not deter young Brauer from prospecting beneath docks, soon after he launched at first light. Of his eight rods, five carried jig combinations, while the others were at the ready with a buzzbait, a Zara Spook, and a spinnerbait.

Though bundled as if for a snowstorm, Brauer noted that the water temperature was still in the range (low 50s) that bass would strike a lure on the surface. And he proceeded to fish the buzzer and Spook where there was substantial space between docks. For probing the docks themselves, his tool was Team Daiwa’s 71⁄2-foot flipping and pitching rod, and his bait options 3/8- and 1/2-ounce Strike King Denny Brauer Pro Model jigs, backed by BoHawg Junior Frogs. He continually tested color combinations of black-blue, brown-green-chartreuse, and black. He’d spooled 20-pound-test Stren High Impact line.

Chad deftly pitched the jigs at ladders, poles, pilings, dock sides, boats, corners, front and back ends, walkway piers, and gaps in the Styrofoam logs used to float the docks. According to Chad, the most productive docks usually are supported by white Styrofoam logs, and for unknown reasons, they become heavily laden with algae that attracts baitfish. But as Chad prospected for bass with an eye to an upcoming tournament, he did not discriminate between types of docks or the substrate and depth below them. With a furtive air, he tested any unique part of a dock’s architecture.

Due to the cold November morning, he allowed the jig to fall to the bottom after each pitch, then holding the rod at 2 o’clock, he’d gradually raise it to a 1 o’clock position. During the lift, Chad shook the rod, activating the jig’s rattle chamber. Along the sides of a dock, he’d pitch back past the shallow corner, then hop the lure along the entire length, several yards past the front corner.

In doing this, he constantly prospected for brushpiles. When he found one, he moved the jig slowly through the innards of the pile, shaking it repeatedly. He’d typically make several pitches to the pile, working different angles and corners. But this particular day, brush didn’t hold appeal.

Chad noted that at Lake of the Ozarks, few docks hold more than one catchable bass. To take two or more, the dock must be unusually large. He feels that the commotion of catching a bass spooks other fish. But in brushpiles adjacent to a dock, several bass can be taken.

Between docks, Brauer fished horizontal baits, hoping to lure a fish from a hidden brushpile, rock, or other cover. His spinnerbait, by the way, was a standard 1/2-ounce Strike King model with a #21⁄2 gold Colorado blade in front of a #5 silver willowleaf, and a white skirt. He paid particular attention to the many small boat ramps in these well populated coves. To keep the spinnerbait down, he held his rod at the 4 o’clock position and reeled just a tad faster than a slow roll.

Since pitching a jig is Chad’s specialty, he wished for ultramarine skies that would position bass in more predictable spots in shady recesses of the docks. His inherited skill at pitching a jig, honed by countless hours on the water, gives him an advantage over nearly all anglers when it comes to this art.

As he went along, he tried to formulate a pattern from the feedback the bass gave him. Each subtle bump and each caught fish made him consider depth, bottom type, dock structure, and shade where the action was best. Eventually a pattern would emerge that would enable him to skip low-percentage spots on a dock, whole docks, and even entire coves.

Dion On The Water

On the day I fished with Dion, he removed nine Team Daiwa baitcasting rigs from his rod box before he made a cast. Six were the same 71⁄2-foot flipping and pitching rod young Brauer had chosen. Dion was spooled with a range of 15- to 20-pound Berkley Trilene XL.

Chosen lures included a variety of jigs from 1/4 to 3/8 ounce, with plastic trailers and brown Uncle Josh #11 pork rind. One noteworthy trailer was a four-inch piece of the tail section of a black-silver Gatortail Worm, a big twistertail model. Before affixing it, Dion told me he had dipped the plastic into boiling water and then dropped it into cold water. This is a family trick to make plastics more flexible.

Guido and Dion have found that the combination of a 3/8-ounce black jig and this worm trailer often is unequaled around the docks, logs, and brushpiles in the upper half of Lake of the Ozarks. His other trailers were the twintail Dion Classic made by Gambler, dyed special shades of green, brown, and black in the Hibdon’s lure laboratory, which abuts Guido’s home. In contrast to Brauer, none of Dion’s jigs sported rattlers. With the water rather clear, he considered sound to be no advantage.

On Dion’s other rods, he’d tied: a Texas-rigged multiappendaged creature bait of greenish hue, rigged on a 1/4-ounce black bullet sinker with two yellow eyes painted on; a 1/2-ounce spinnerbait with two large copper Colorado blades and a white-chartreuse skirt; a 1/2-ounce single-spin with a #7 nickel Colorado blade and a dark skirt; a 3/8-ounce single-spin with a #4 silver Colorado blade with a white skirt; a brown-yellow Bagley DBII; a silver 5/8-ounce Bagley Balsa B; and a bone-and-blue suspending Smithwick Rogue. Dion used no plastic trailers on his spinnerbaits.

Like Brauer, Hibdon relied on his jig flipping prowess for 90 percent of his presentations, as he probed boat docks of all sorts. After pitching the jig and letting it fall to the bottom, he hopped the lure by raising his rod from 2 o’clock to 1 o’clock, virtually identical to Chad Brauer’s presentation. And like Brauer, he focused on boat ramps, casting a chosen spinnerbait at several angles before moving on.

He regularly targeted the back end of the docks, despite the chilly conditions, and connected with bass there. He also aimed at every gap between the white Styrofoam logs that floated the docks. After pitching several times, he skipped the jig many feet below the dock through the gap in the Styrofoam, powering the large jigs with his flipping rod. He said that to skip with a flipping and pitching rod, it’s essential to use at least a 3/8-ounce jig to avoid backlashes.

When Dion came across visible brushpiles, he retrieved the tandem spinnerbait across them from several angles, so the blades made a subtle wake on the surface. Shallow logs received the same treatment. He commented on one particular log that had produced scores of bass in past seasons.

Dion also recalled how shallow largemouth bass may hold in the dead of winter, reciting tales of how his grandfather often came across gargantuan bass in a foot or two of water while he jigged suckers at night in January near the mouth of the Gravois arm. Thus it is that Dion does not rely on a temperature gauge or any fancy electronics to tell him where the fish may be. He knows where they are and must only figure out how to make them attack a lure.

As Dion worked through the many small pockets, he retrieved his baits from shore out to about 10 feet. According to Dion, bass hold in the same places in November as they do in April. Over the years, Guido and Dion have found that small coves receive less fishing pressure, especially at tournament time. And since the Hibdons are basically “contrarians,” favoring whatever most anglers don’t like, they have plied these small spots religiously.

Shortly after 8:00 a.m., Dion revealed one of his top lure choices for shallow cover, including docks. The bait was a 3/8-ounce white jig with a white pork chunk. Before pitching it the first time, he told me how it can be both extremely exciting and frustrating. He swims the jig just a foot or two below the surface and can watch bass, often Kentuckies, charge out and roll on the bait, but they often fail to get hooked. During good conditions, Dion says it easy to catch a good limit by swimming the white zjig. And he hoped that would work during the tournament.

During his swimming retrieve, Dion twitches the rod tip three times as if he were jerking or twitching a Rogue. Following the three twitches, he lets the jig glide for a few seconds, then imparts three more twitches and a glide. He executes the triple-twitch-and-glide routine until the jig is several yards past the outer edge of the dock. It’s a quick retrieve, meant to emulate the frantic motions of an injured gizzard shad and is designed to entice suspended bass.

Dion also reported that a couple years ago, he’d discovered that docks that float over deep water are always good spots to catch Kentuckies by swimming the white jig. The best possible dock sits alone along a bluff, with no other dock within 100 yards. He showed me an isolated dock along a mile-long bluff near Turkey Bend where he’d taken seven good-size Kentuckies on the white jig.

With his jig, Dion ascertained that many bass were suspended under docks, while others held to the bottom in up to 12 feet of water. Like Brauer, he had no success in brushpiles that day. Dion says that every dock has a prime lair, which he calls a sweet spot, at which bass normally abide. To find the sweet spot, an angler often must pitch to a labyrinth of tangled cover—sticks, cables, poles, angle irons, and cross beams. And that sweet spot may be affected by the position of the sun, or the direction of the wind, or baitfish position, algae growth, and innumerable other factors.

Once a bass is caught and removed from a dock, his neighbors usually are too spooked to bite, but another bass will soon take over the sweet spot. Dion returns day after day to productive corners. If a bass swirls at his jig and misses, he continues to the next dock, but makes a point to return about half an hour later.

It was inspiring as well as educational to watch these two sensational young anglers fish. They show the persistence of a machine, combined with the dexterity and grace of a dancer. And they continuously absorb information about their surroundings, and particularly the reactions of bass to their presentations.

*Ned Kehde, Lawrence, Kansas, is an archivist for the University of Kansas, an avid angler, and a frequent contributor to In-Fisherman publications.