Posted by Jason Sealock on Tue, May 15, 2012 @ 07:00 AM
Being a successful angler has very little to do with understanding bass behavior under ideal conditions. Anyone can catch them when it's "perfect." It's when the fishing gets tough and the bass are sometimes beat off of the beaten path that the truly skilled anglers show their worth. For it's when the bass seem to leave the "obvious places" and set up on sneaky places.
These sneaky places aren't sneaky to the bass. They are just the next thing down from where they were or where they are heading. The funny thing is we give bass a lot of credit for being mystical creatures who enter and vanish like the water in a river. When in actuality they are pretty much thinking about eating, spawning or nothing all the time. It's that nothing part that spins us out. But it's the feeding part that enables us to understand them better.
So we're constantly looking for those zones where they can feed. When angling pressure or changes in conditions dictate, we have to be flexible enough to move off the common obvious spots whether they are shallow or the most obvious structure related areas offshore. So we tapped a Bassmaster Elite Series angler who has had success at various levels of bass fishing competition and won a lot of tournaments by looking for those in between sneaky spots.
Russ Lane is most comfortable when the bass move from spawn to post spawn and on through the summer. That's when big crankbaits, jigs and soft plastics drug around on offshore places really tend produce against bass that are ganged up and feeding on structure.
"Most of the good schools of bass I've found around the country are in that 8-14 foot range," Lane said. "It doesn't matter if we're talking about Lake Fork or Lake Conroe in Texas or Lake Norman or High Rock Lake in the Carolinas or Guntersville or Kentucky Lake on the Tennessee River, bass gang up in that 8-14 foot zone after the spawn, somewhere on those fisheries and I've had a ball catching hundreds of bass off of spots like that."
What's key for Lane is finding all the factors that make a great feeding area but also a spot that doesn't stick out like a sore thumb on a map because he knows every angler is going to go to the most obvious stuff. So like most other anglers, he starts by dissecting a good lake map. Then from there he puts in his hours idling looking for those conditions that can make a perfect spot in an out of the way area.
Lane starts his search either working from the spawning areas out to the main lake structure or from the main lake structure back to the spawning areas depending on how far out the fish. But usually his search has to do with large flats and cover. Flats in that 8 to 14-foot range offer great places for bass to gang up. Usually if you can find bass ganged up they will be relating to a depth change and/or a harder bottom.
The reason generally has to do with current. It's a proven fact that bass like to feed in current. The current not only washes bait to the bass but it also speeds the bait up towards them and disorients the baitfish making them easier to eat a lot of them at a time. The bottom is generally harder around those current driven spots because the hard rock is what turns the current or forces it around and causes it to speed up a bit around the hard obstacle.
So once he finds a hard bottom in a depression, hump or rise or just something like a shell bed on the edge of a subtle drop that many anglers may have skipped over he looks for bait and pulls out his weapons of choice.
His latest addition to the arsenal is quickly becoming his favorite largely in part to the fact that he created it just for this scenario. The SPRO Fat Papa is his namesake crankbait. The crankbait is unique in many ways but for very specific reasons that's he found over many years of trial and error cranking for bass in that mid-range depth in the post spawn and summer periods.
"We put a lot of thought into the Fat Papa. We started with its wobble. It has a wide wobble almost intimidating it's so wide. We did that intentionally because we weren't looking for a numbers bait but rather a big bass bait. We want the biggest alpha female bass to bite. We made the baits silent. We want the crankbait to hunt along and just appear in the fish's strike zone before it has a chance to spook off the fish. We designed some very specific colors to help in all different situations. It's got sharp Gamakatsu hooks. And the final attribute is a shaved lip on the underside. We did this so the bill would slice the water effortlessly and cut down on the fatigue associated with reeling a big wide wobbling crankbait all day."
Cranking is an obvious choice on these out of the way areas because you often have to cover a lot of water and you're looking for one bass to show you it's in the area. The Fat Papa allows Lane to cover water but also target bigger bass at the same time.
Lane gave an example from the tour last year where this time of area played into his hands.
"There was a tournament last year where I found a community hole. But back behind that community hole on the main river, there was a bay. Coming out of that bay there was a pinch point, where the land closed the gap in the bay and actually sped the current up through there as it emptied out on to a hard bottom where fishing pressure from the community hole and current from both the dam and from just wind through that pinch point funneled fish through there. It just kept producing fish and reloading every day because the fish just kept coming to that hard bottom off the beaten path."
Ideally he likes wind and a little chop on the water with a mild stain to the water. That way the bass don't get a good look at the crankbait as it comes wizzing by. He's seen days where if the wind blew with the current and made it stronger the bite was actually better. However in reverse if the wind blew against the current or no current the fish scatter and get harder to catch. Wind is still your friend even on these offshore sneaky spots.
He sticks mostly with three colors with the Nasty Shad, Nasty Herring or Tennessee Gizzard Shad. These three baits will take him from heavily stained water to ultra clear water and cover the bases. The clearer the water the more wind he needs for the crankbait bite. He will use the other colors too like the honey shad at various times of the year.
Otherwise he'll drag a Buckeye Mop Jig or a Big Bite Baits Coontail worm on a Carolina rig around. In fact he usually crank an area first and then throw the jig and the worm around after he's done to make sure he presented the bass a lot of different looks in an area especially if he feels the bass have been pressured off the obvious stuff and come to these places to escape the pressure.
For his cranking, he sticks with a 7-foot Wild Black Carrot Stix rod with a Revo Winch crankbait reel and his favorite new line for cranking this mid-range is 12-pound Sunline Reaction FC.
"The line is the best crankbait line I've ever used," Lane said. "It has the sinking and sensitivity like fluorocarbon but it has some built in stretch. That stretch is nice when a fish strikes and when fighting and landing bass. I also like that it seems to snap a bait back off of cover when I hit something hard on a fast retrieve. That really seems to trigger bites."
One caveat he likes is fishing these areas around grass. He likes to crank on the edges of hydrilla or over the top of it in deeper water. When he does this he will go up to a 14-pound Sunline Natural monofilament to give him better ability to rip the bait of grass if it buries. A lot of tournaments he fishes have been won cranking over and around hydrilla grass. That is one more variable that can make an out-of-the-way spot better.
Whether you're fishing in the bays or out on the main lake, make a point to check those places down away from or leading away or towards areas where the bass have left or want to go soon and you'll likely stumble upon an untapped sneaky spot to pull up and have the bass all to yourself.
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Posted by Jason Sealock on Fri, May 11, 2012 @ 09:36 AM
This angler caught some big bulls fishing where small bass had been found
Small waters can be fish factories
By Guest Blogger Mike Pehanich
Odds are that every day you pass lakes and ponds with bass populations that rarely see a lure.
The numbers of fish in many of these waters can be good, even astounding! But it’s not at all unusual to find bass abundant but the average size only about 12 inches – and sometimes considerably smaller.
These lakes are great for working on techniques, testing new lures and tackle, honing skills, and introducing newcomers to fishing -- underlying themes of Mike Pehanich’s Small Waters Fishing.
Often they are great for something else, too…
Big bluegill!
“Show me a lake with a ton of stunted bass, and I’ll be there fishing for bluegill,” said Nate Herman of Herman Brothers Pond Management of Peoria, Ill., recently.
Herman understands the dynamics of fish populations in small waters in ways the rest of us can’t imagine. Creating and managing ponds and lakes is his business.
Bluegill and other members of the sunfish family often comprise the bulk of the diet of bass. When the predator-forage ratio tips too heavily toward predator numbers, most sunfish become “bass hors d’oeuvres” before they’ve had a chance to grow beyond the fingerling stage.
But I said “most,” not all!
Those ‘gills that outgrow the maw of those cookie-cutter mini-bass often reach hand-size dimensions and beyond!
On-the-water proof
Decades ago, I observed this on an 8-acre impoundment an old school friend owned in southwestern Michigan. His bass population had exploded, and, though we got a number of 1-3/4 to 2-1/2 pound bass per day, we easily caught 20 or more bass 10 inches or under between them.
But, man, we did catch some handsome redear sunfish, too. Giant, thick-shouldered specimens that made you stop and admire!
I witnessed the phenomenon again yesterday on a residential development lake in northern Illinois.
Casual conversation found that it was loaded with small bass. And indeed it was! In half a day of fishing, we caught 104 largemouth.
But, having anticipated this “small bass/big gill” dynamic, we had brought along a pair of ultralight rods rigged with a tiny feathered jig and a Berkley Powerbait Honey Worm beneath small floats.
Those light wands netted us nearly 40 bluegill, and there wasn’t a runt in the bunch!
Float ‘n’ jig rig
The lures we employed were tiny hair jigs, 1/32 to 1/16 ounce, with sparsely trimmed red squirrel hair. They measured less than an inch long – probably 3/4-inch -- from the jig nose to end of the hair.
We tipped them with Berkley Powerbait Honey Worms.
“When targeting panfish, you want to keep that bait small,” said my angling buddy, Mike Albano, who introduced me to the rig. “Often I will use only half a Honey Worm when the bite is light, to make sure they take the whole bait.”
I used a 3/4-inch pear shape bobber; Albano a pear-bodied stick bobber.
My ultralight combination was a Pflueger Patriarch reel on a five-foot ultralight Quantum PT Energy rod.
I added “range” to the rig by using 3-pound test Berkley Nanofil line. It enables tremendous casting distance, and has proven problem-free to date – an amazing claim if you’ve thrown a lot of tiny baits and rigs on extremely light line.
Float tip: Go with small bobbers or elongated bobbers that offer very little resistance when the fish hit your rig. Leave those big red and white beach ball bobbers at the beach!
Where to angle
Many residential development lakes are bowl shaped with minimal structure. They do, however, offer readable shoreline features.
Look for bass and bluegill alike to congregate in spring on moderately hard bottom areas, particularly those near docks, trees, sunken cover, and, when available, not far from healthy and relatively sparse vegetation.
Troughs at the bottom of sea walls often hold fish, and occasionally big bass, especially when brush or other cover enhance the habitat.
Target, too, areas that transition from rock to sand and other favorable combinations.
Gotta love ‘em
So take advantage of those mini-bass factories. Use them as practice fields and places to introduce new anglers to the game.
But bring along a “gill-ready” ultralight rig along as well to add some variety and extra fun.
And, note one thing more…these lakes almost always hold a few monster cannibal bass, too!
Mike Pehanich is senior writer for Bassmaster magazine and publisher of Mike Pehanich’s Small Waters Fishing website ( www.smallwatersfishing.com ). Sign up for weekly updates of new material, including videos and features with top pros!
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Posted by Jason Sealock on Mon, May 07, 2012 @ 10:54 AM
Greg Hackney and Denny Brauer might just be the who's who of fishing jigs. Of course most of the guys that fish at the top level know a lot about jigs and are accomplished anglers having won a lot of money with jigs. But when you talk about fishing jigs in heavy cover and now after Denny's win on the Arkansas River last year on the Elite Series, you're also talking about fishing jigs offshore.
"I rarely fish a jig right out of the package," Brauer said. "That doesn't mean they aren't good right out of the package, but guys have a lot of personal preferences. When you go changing a jig to fit one guy's personal preference, your product doesn't fit the general public. So you leave it as is when you package it, and then guys can make them better suited to their own liking."
That's a great way to look at it. The tool is provided to you. How you employ the tool is just as important. And we all like to tinker with the original to see if we can make it a touch better and maybe hook one more bass that we missed or land a few more bass that got off. Truth of the matter is we put a lot of advantages in our favor when it comes to rods, reels and line, and we should be the same way about the lures.
A jig seems like nothing more than lead and dressing, but when it comes to customizing, it's one of the most complex lures.
How man strands do you want in the skirt? What colors do you want in the skirt? How many colors do you want in the skirt? How much of certain colors do you want in the skirt? How heavy a head do you need to maintain bottom contact? How light a head for a slow fall? Do you want your trailer hanging loose or threaded up the shank? Do you want twin tails or a chunk? Do you want a lot of trailer action or subtle action? Do you want the chunk to match or be different? Do you want the skirt long or short? Do you want a full collar or a finesse collar? Do you want to fish it around heavy cover? Do you want to thin the weed guard?
As you can see, a lot of variables go into the make-up of your jig. Many folks have come up with systems for modifying their jigs, but we found it interesting that two of the biggest names in jig fishing seem to prepare each jig relatively the same.
Hackney pulled out a Strike King Hack Attack Flipping jig from a package and walked us through how he likes to get it ready to fish.
The first thing he did was pull the jig skirt and snap it loose. You want all the strands to be seperated. Sometimes the skirt tabs don't seperate completely, and you want the strands to be independent and not three or four stuck together as they won't move as freely when you crawl or shake it.
Then, with a pair of scissors, he trimmed the length of the skirt. He flipped the jig upside down and let the skirt fan out as he held the hook. He cut the strands straight across. He flipped the jig back up right and looked at how the strands hung in relation to the hook. He then pinched the strands between two fingers just below his hook, and he cut straight across under the bend of the hook.
This trimming made the skirt strands flare and expand more away from the hook where they had been laying more flat against the hook when they were longer.
"I want my skirt to be just past the hook so when they go to bite the jig, they will get the hook most of the time too," Hackney said.
Next, he went to work on the weedguard. He cautioned about shortening the guards.
"I see a lot of guys shortening the weedguard on their jigs thinking they are making it easier to set a hook on a fish," Hackney said. "What they are really doing by cutting that weedguard short is making it a lot stiffer. If you want to make it a little more limp for better hook penetration, you just need to take a few strands out."
With three or four fibers of his weedguard seperated, he trimmed them at an angle from the jighead toward the end of the weedguard. He was careful not to pull the fibers out as that can sometimes loosen the whole weedguard, and they can pull out. At least he's seen that before on cheaper jigs, and so he's careful not to ruin the weedguard now on all his jigs.
Once he gets the strands and weed guard like he likes them, he puts a Strike King Rage Craw or KVD Perfect Chunk on the jig. Instead of hanging the chunk on the hook by running the point perpendicular across the chunk. He takes and threads it onto the hook an inch or so and slides it up all the way underneath the skirt.
Brauer does the exact same thing with his jigs and talked about why he did that.
"I've had times where a fish bit, I set the hook and brought my jig back, and the trailer that was hanging on the end of the hook spun around and stuck over the hook point and made it harder to get a good hookset. So now I thread my trailers on the shank of the jig to keep them compact and out of the way of the hook."
Other modifications we've seen pros make include pulling bright accent strands off in clear water to make the jig more natural. Anglers will also trim the strands above the collar until they are just 1/4 inch or 1/2 inch to give the jigs a more small finesse profile in clear water. Then couple it with a small profile natural looking craw trailer to give the jig a real natural clearwater appearance.
Jigs are one of the few lures that work January to December and in 6 inches of water or 60 feet of water. You can modify them easily to fit most situations. In most tournaments these pros have various jigs tied on in various styles and colors.
Brauer likes to prep his jigs before he starts fishing, trimmed and ready for action. Some anglers like to prepare the jigs individually for the fishery they are on and the conditions they are facing. Experimenting on your own is always the best advice. Try different trailers, different sizes and different colors at different times of the year and learn what changes make your jigs more effective.
Realize the jig is a great option that can be made into a perfect bass fishing tool with a small amount of forethought and effort.
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Posted by Jason Sealock on Mon, Apr 30, 2012 @ 09:06 AM
We recently had the chance to sit down with noted smallmouth and big water expert Joe Balog about the differences between largemouth and smallmouth crankbait techniques. Joe has won in excess of $250,000 dollars fishing the Great Lakes and is a past Everstart and BASS Open winner. He is a designer and has created several lures and products specifically for the Great Lakes, including the first ever goby lure. He provides some excellent insights into subtle differences between the two species, and how small changes in approach for smallmouth cranking can pay dividends and help put more bronzebacks in the boat.
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Posted by Jason Sealock on Fri, Apr 27, 2012 @ 12:01 AM
Tournament fishing revolves around decisions and changing with the conditions
By Shaye Baker (photos by Ricky Baker)
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Posted by Jason Sealock on Mon, Apr 23, 2012 @ 09:11 AM
We recently spent a week with several top bass fishing pros from the Bassmaster Elite Series and the FLW Tour on Table Rock Lake in between the FLW Tour event there and the Bull Shoals event for the Elite Series. Table Rock is a highland reservoir with generally very clear water. However, because of the crazy weather we’ve had this spring, the lake actually turned over.
So it made for an interesting week of fishing. The water was still somewhat clear but it also had a weird tannic color to it. So you not only saw great crankbait and jerkbait fishing but you also had great finesse fishing with shaky heads, wacky rigs and drop shots. The lake was also still up some so there was quite a bit of cover in the lake. So we found it interesting that you could finesse fish in shallow cover.
But more interesting than the conditions was the trend among the pros that were finesse fishing. Every rod that was rigged for finesse fishing, save for one rod Aaron Martens pulled out just to shoot a video, had braid with a fluorocarbon leader. At least four pros we worked with who were finesse fishing were using some sort of light braid and a fluoro leader.
Obviously we’ve known and used the braid to fluoro combination a lot but over recent years, we have seen such an adoption of the tackle among the pros. The fact is nearly every pro we see now fishing finesse baits has the braid and fluoro combination working for them. Which prompted us to quiz some of these top sticks on why the braid.
“I don’t get as nervous as I used to,” Kriet said. “I mean I’ll still sometimes fish just straight 6-pound fluorocarbon. But it makes me really nervous when I get a big one on. If I can get away with 10-pound braid, then I’d rather use that and not be so worried about a big one busting me off.”
The strength of braid is obviously a critical factor among the pros. The fact that you can keep a small diameter and have increased breaking strength opens up a lot of great options for finesse fishing. Strength, however, may not be the most critical aspect of using braid though.
Another aspect we hadn’t considered until we fished with Shinichi Fukae was visibility. Fukae had about 6 rods on his deck while we were at Table Rock. The Japanese pro knows a lot about highly pressured bass in ultra clear water from his days spent fishing and competing on tough fisheries like Biwa in Japan.
He uses a 16-pound braid from Yoz-Ami YGK (not readily available in the US) with an 8-pound fluorocarbon leader. The braid is a sinking braid made of the highest quality materials very tightly woven. The tight weave gives him incredible distance on his casts but more importantly, the yellow line acts as a strike indicator for him on subtle bites especially on the fall.
“A lot of the bites occur on the fall with wacky jigheads, drop shot, split shot and shaky heads,” Fukae said. “With the yellow braid, I can see my line if a bite happens before I feel it.”
So there is strength and visibility aspects to the line, but other factors still may make it a better reason to change. We talked with Arizona pro Brett Hite about how he and his travelling partner, Brent Ehrler have adopted the braid in their finesse fishing.
“It’s all we use now,” Hite said. “We’ve experimented with a lot of braids and a lot of leaders and even things like knots, leader length and more. Now we have it down to a science and it’s made us so much more efficient – especially when you’re talking hooking and catching bass from a distance.”
Hite gave us an example of what he was talking about from a recent FLW Tour event on Lake Hartwell earlier this year. It’s not always just about casting distance but also the distance straight below the boat.
“Rob Newell had pulled up to me on the first day of the Lake Hartwell event as I’m pulling up to my starting spot,” Hite said. “I had a channel swing that came in close to a little island and I was way out off the swing easing up to my spot with my trolling motor. As I move up there I see an arch in 65 feet of water on my graph. So I open my bail and drop my Roboworm down on the fish. Next thing I know, the fish bites, I set and land a 5 ½-pounder. My first fish was a 5-plus-pound bass out of 65 feet of water. Braid gives you that ability to get a good fast drop with a drop shot because of the small diameter, but the no stretch to give you a good hookset at the end of a long drop or long cast.”
Hite has been experimenting with pound tests and really likes a 10 to 12 pound new prototype Sunline SX-1 that will be unveiled at ICAST this year. The new braid is a dense, tightly woven braid that sinks. It’s made specifically for those deeper contact presentations like shaky heads, drop shots, wacky rigs and more.
An added bonus to using the smaller diameter braid is casting distance. When you’re finesse fishing, it often means that water clarity is an issue. That also means the further you can keep your body and boat from the fish, the less defensive and spooky the fish will be. With 10-pound braid, we’ve found we can cast way ahead of the boat to unsuspecting bass. We caught a 15-pound limit this weekend on shaky heads by making very long casts to areas where bass were guarding fry. Keeping that distance in clear water was a big deal.
“A lot of anglers use too heavy a braid,” Hite said. “You want a 10 or 12 pound test braid with a good fluoro leader. If you go much over 20 pound test, it’s not as manageable on your reel. The 10-pound braid casts so good. You won’t believe how far it casts and how good your hooksets are. I use a 7-pound Sunline Sniper fluorocarbon leader that I measure to about the first guide in my rod.”
What Hite means is he ties the leader material to his braid with an Alberto Knot (which we’ll be showing a how-to tie video of this week) while the fluoro is still on the spool. Then he winds it through his rod guides until it reaches the feeder or butt guide, the last guide before his reel. The key is to keep the fluoro from going into your reel where it will slam against that first guide as you cast.
“If I can keep my knot from banging that first guide, I won’t have any issues with casting, knot strength or wind knots,” Hite said. “And that Alberto knot is the deal. It’s so small; you can’t even hear it going through your guides. And my line twist problems are gone on my drop shots with braid. So it’s really the best of all worlds.”
Take a lesson from the guys who have to be sure they capitalize on every way possible to hook and land all the fish that bite through the course of a day of bass fishing. Braid can give you added security in strength, castability, visibility, no stretch, good hooksets and more. Keep your pound tests to a reasonable strength and small diameter and you’ll enjoy a lot more bites and a lot less problems.
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Posted by Jason Sealock on Thu, Apr 19, 2012 @ 05:22 PM
Well we ran a piece today that mentioned the Stupid Rig for Tubes made famous by Terry McWilliams in a few BASS tournaments and the Classic several years ago. After that we had several people asking what a Stupid Rig was and what it looked like. We apologize as we thought more folks were familiar with the rig. As luck would have it we got a good illustration of the rig today.
The beauty of the Stupid Rig for a tube is that you can still get that spiral fall of a tube in a jighead but also get a weedless rigged tube. So it's the best of both worlds. But there is definitely an art to rigging it right.
Our buddy Nathan Gray at Secret Lures was kind enough to share the back of his Secret Lures Stupid Tube Jigheads. Here is a PDF of the Secret Lures Stupid Tube Illustration.
Nathan actually worked with Terry McWilliams to design the heads perfectly. That rig was used with another tube and jighead to win the Jet-a-Marina Classic two weeks ago on Kentucky Lake. Fact be known, the Stupid Rig on Tubes has won a lot of tournaments on Kentucky Lake and other lakes across the country. Read More
Posted by Jason Sealock on Thu, Apr 19, 2012 @ 12:01 AM
Todd Hollowell (left) and Troy Hollowell (right) hold up the winning bass
We talked about a week ago about the disappointment of chasing ghosts in fishing. Fishing where they were and not where they are so to speak. As promised we’re following up with the guys who figured the fish out in that same derby. And the lesson is not how they caught bass in this one day tournament but how they go about the approach to targeting bass in April and May when they are moving, changing and transitioning from one phase to another in the spring spawning cycle.
This time of year the fish can be very unpredictable. Big fish can seem to vanish for a period only to show up a few days later in inches of water. But several factors on Kentucky Lake the week of the Jet-A-Marina Classic led Troy and Todd Hollowell to the winning stringer of bass and an understanding of what the bass are doing this time of year given the conditions they were faced with.
Todd Hollowell is a touring pro on the FLW Tour and runs the Red Gold wrap on his boat. Troy has been fishing Kentucky Lake for a long time. The brothers get together every year to fish the Jet-A-Marina Classic which is one of the largest tournaments on the lake each year, with this event seeing more than 315 teams.
The lake warmed up a bunch in the weeks prior to April 7. In fact in some places the water was 75 degrees. Then a cold front came through and dropped the surface temperatures back into the mid 60s. The lake was slowly starting to rise from winter pool but not enough to put a lot of cover in the water. Then there was the clarity issue. The water on Kentucky Lake can typically be classified as stained, but this year anglers found it very clear.
Take those conditions and couple them with the days getting longer and you have fish heading for the shallows to spawn. Problem was spawning fish are looking for good clean hard bottoms. At that time the good clean hard bottoms were in 1 to 2 feet of water and that put a lot of small fish up. The fish on lakes like Kentucky that fluctuate know when the right stuff is in the right depth and will often wait a little longer for more harder bottoms to be in deeper water.
The Hollowells went with what they’ve been learning for the last 10 years on Kentucky Lake in this time frame. The bass are here one day and gone the next often.
“You catch a lot of fish this time of year that are on their way to somewhere else,” Todd Hollowell said. “They are there one day and then you go back the next day and they’re gone. It’s because they’re leaving one area to go towards where they intend to spawn. You literally find fish in all three phases. We found some fish out on the River. We found some fish in the mouths of the bays and half way back in the creeks and we found some fish all the way in the back of the pockets cruising and roaming.”
The Hollowells didn’t even get a check in the previous year’s Classic, but then turned around and won a boat in another tournament in the same month. They have learned a key ingredient is that you have to be willing to move around a lot and fish everything. You can’t just say I’m going dock fishing or I’m going ledge fishing. You have to be willing to fish out, to fish shallow to fish points to fish brush piles to fish everything and anything.
“I only got to put in a day and a half with Troy,” Todd said. “But we have learned a lot from another great stick on this lake who always seems to do well here in April and May – Craig Powers. He showed Troy a lot – things like using a wake bait and covering a lot of water.”
The Hollowells started out in the river and found a couple of good schools throwing the Castaic castable umbrella rig with Castaic Jerky J swimbaits on them. Then they went looking shallow after that.
“One of the biggest keys in the tournament for us was my sunglasses,” Todd Hollowell said. “I’ve been using the Gone Fishing Sunglasses and it’s my first year wearing them. But I saw a few fish in practice cruising the pockets that Troy didn’t see and that ended up being a key because we came back to those areas and caught some of the right fish to win the tournament.”
With limit schools found and a few places shallow where they thought some big bass were lurking, Troy and Todd had some confidence going into the tournament. But they still weren’t sure if they could get those couple of big bites you needed to win the tournament.
“We started out in the river where we found those schools and caught a bunch of bass and had a limit of 10-11 pounds early,” Todd said. “That enabled us to move around and hunt big fish. On the first stop we made shallow, Troy caught a 4 ½ pound bass on the wake bait. Then we jumped over to one of the pockets I’d seen some nice fish cruising and I catch back to back 6-pounders on a River Rat Tackle tube rigged in the Stupid Rig with a jighead that is Texas rigged like Terry McWilliams made famous here many moons ago.”
Hollowell normally fishes a jig in those pockets, but because the water was so clear, he opted for a natural green pumpkin tube to catch those big bass.
They went back out deep for a while seeing if they could find another good fish in those big schools out on the river. Finally with just a little time left they ran back in and Troy catches another 4-pounder on a dock with a shaky head on his very last cast. That got them up to about 23 pounds and what ultimately would be the winning limit of bass.
The keys to their success came from a lot of springs on the lake. What they’ve learned is that first wave of bass that move up shallow when the water is clear on an otherwise stained fishery is the bass are spooky and skittish. Your same big baits might not be the ticket. The tube becomes more effective than the jig. A quiet waking bait becomes more effective than a loud splashing topwater.
And knowing the fish are moving and changing and you have to be open to change and fish a lot of different ways in the course of a day.
“Don’t be afraid to change and fish a lot of different ways,” Hollowell said. “This was a team tournament and in a team tournament there really is never a need for you both to be doing the same thing. So Todd would fish up high in the water column and I’d fish closer to the bottom. We can cover so much more water like that. We weighed fish on a tube, shaky head, wake bait and more. The clear water affects them. The water levels affect them. So you have a lot to consider when fishing for bass that are prespawn, spawn and post spawn. Hartwell and Table Rock were both fishing this same way on the FLW Tour, so I think those two events really mentally prepared me for this tournament on Kentucky Lake.”
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Posted by Jason Sealock on Mon, Apr 16, 2012 @ 02:21 PM
We get a lot of product to test and evaluate here at Wired2Fish. We’ve gotten several pairs of sunglasses over the last few months and three of those shades we thought we ought to show anglers because each is very different and each has its perks for consideration. Obviously price is a factor with any purchase, but sunglasses are an investment purchase more than a consumable purchase when it comes to your fishing tackle.
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Posted by Jason Sealock on Wed, Apr 11, 2012 @ 12:01 AM
“Caught 'em here yesterday.”
“They were biting Sunday.”
“You should have been here last week.”
We’ve all heard this statement. I can tell you from a media standpoint, I hear this nearly every time I go to fish with someone on a different lake or to shoot photos and videos with anglers on their home waters. The chase drives us but it’s those small windows of opportunity where we really bust the bass that lures us in as avid anglers.
The appeal in fishing might simply be summed up as the allure of fooling a fish of size and proportion as to merit esteem for outwitting such an experienced quarry. Catching unconditioned and unpressured, i.e. younger, smaller bass doesn’t require near the skill that it does to catch a bass of some size and age that has seen, fell for and been conditioned to various lures and techniques.
That said when you thrust yourself into fishing competition, it’s generally the guy that can catch the older, wiser bass that does well. So how does one acquire the knowledge to catch the older, wiser bass and not just the younger, impulsive bass? Well reading as much as you can from other successful anglers is a good start. Spending time on the water learning from the big catches obviously helps more than most practices. And more importantly learning from “not catching” them, or as I sometimes call them, fishing ghosts.
I spent a few afternoons last week preparing for the one tournament a year I really “prepare for” around home on Kentucky Lake – the Jet-A-Marina Classic. This tournament sees some 300 boats every year, 600 anglers and a good portion of some of the best anglers on the lake, my southern friends generally excluded as most won’t venture up this way to fish.
I always look forward to this tournament and practicing because my good friend Brian Wilson, owner of Cumberland Pro Lures comes over and fishes a couple days with me to practice and then fishes the tournament with me. It's usually the only days Brian and I get on the water together each year. So I always enjoy hanging out and talking fishing and life with a friend.
But there are Elite Series and FLW Tour pros, Everstart, Bassmaster Open, and BFL champions, guides and more fishing in this tournament. So if you can get on the same page as the fish on this one day, you can puff out your chest a little. Not a lot because after all, winning a bass fishing tournament doesn’t mean you’re the best angler on the lake. It simply means for that day, you figured the better five bass out that day. That being said, I would have liked to been a Hollowell brother this weekend.
Troy and Todd Hollowell wowed the crowd with a 23-pound limit and their biggest bass wasn’t even 6 pounds. That means every bass in their limit was a nice one. Now take much of the rest of the more than 300 boat field. There were 137 limits of bass between 10 and 15 pounds with several more above and below those marks. I talked with Terry Bolton after the tournament, and I think he summed up the fishing best.
“If you caught a 4-pounder, you got a check,” he said. “If you caught two 4-pounders you were in the top 20. If you caught three 4-pounders or better fish you were in the hunt and if you caught four 4-pounders and a kicker fish, you were the Hollowells.”
The fishing by most standards was good but not great. Lots of 2-3 pound males cooperated with anglers, but the 4-pound or better bass were pretty hard to come by.
I had been catching some of those magical 4-pound-plus fish the last few weeks and therein lies the point where I started chasing ghosts. Instead of locking down in what was our best area and upgrading to say 16-17 pounds, I took my early limit of 13 pounds and started chasing ghosts all over the lake.
The result was a whopping 4-ounce upgrade. I kept cycling through areas where I had taken big bass weeks ago, chasing ghosts left behind by the bass that had moved to new areas. The bass have had a very odd year to deal with, but it’s probably odder to us than the bass. When it’s all said and done, they are still going to go through the same transitions they always do from prespawn to post spawn.
The bass are changing daily in some areas and not at all in other parts of the lake. The water is rising, the temperatures, however, have been declining and not a lot of folks have noticed that. I had noticed and found a few patterns by backing off the banks, focusing on transition areas and working baits more slowly and methodically to get bites.
However, I never got that clue in the right areas. I practiced in some of the areas I heard the top-five teams fished. That’s how it goes sometimes. Sometimes you get the bass and sometimes you don’t. But every time you don’t you should make an effort to understand what you missed and file into the memory banks.
What I missed was the bass in the best creek I found in the last week were there but they were moving slightly and behaving a lot differently because they are about to start bedding. I’ve enjoyed a little sight fishing the last week or two on Kentucky and Barkley Lakes, but I realized the only fish that were up spawning were the little guys. That’s because this lake has summer and winter pools. It creates a unique phenomenon that happen on a lot of lakes with winter draw downs that not many folks realize that I’m going to share. Because after all I’m not a tournament angler; I’m someone dedicated to helping others understand and improve their odds in fishing.
What happens a lot on lakes with summer and winter draw downs are the bass become not only conditioned to length of days and water temperatures but what parts of the bottom are in certain depths at certain times around the spawn.
What I’ve noticed as I’ve studied different bedding areas on the lake is that the best hard, gravel bottoms are in 1 to 2 feet of water if not on dry land all together. A big bass doesn’t want to be up that shallow on a fluctuating fishery. So they wait for those same areas to be covered with another 3-5 feet of water. The reason is the sections just behind these prime hard bottoms, further out into a bay or pocket are actually much softer bottoms and less conducive to spawning. So rather than sliding out deeper the fish are forced to wait as the water slides up the bank.
What I realized was happening late in my tournament day was the bass that had been staging in areas in deeper water in the bays had been progressively “sliding up” towards the bedding areas but stopping well short of them. In essence you sat in deeper water, threw to shallower water and worked your baits back a long ways to the boat to move through the transition zones that many of the bigger bass I suspect are held up in waiting on the water to rise.
Late in the day I returned to my starting area after striking out on literally 10 other stops. Within minutes I was catching keepers again and continued working from my primary areas toward the spawning flats. In between, in this mid-depth transition zone, I caught a 3-pounder. And I had one of those “I’m an idiot” moments.
Was I on 23 pounds to win the tournament? Absolutely not! I don’t think, anyhow. Probably not.
But I had committed a cardinal sin in bass fishing: “Never leave biting fish.”
I had a starting area that was so good, I nearly had my limit before the armada of boats was done launching in the distance. I could hear boats continually racing past me in the distance as I boated keeper 3 and keeper 4. I finally got to cull at 8 a.m. Culled and culled, each time having to use a balance beam as I had a few of those “go-with” fish in the well. For those that don’t know, a go-with fish is one that goes with three 5 pounders, nicely.
I finally got anxious and starting running all over the lake looking for 5-pounders that were long gone. Where I could have just hunkered down and found those 3 and 4 pounders I was catching just days before while practicing in my primary area.
So I learned a painful, gut-punch lesson. A little more time in a good area would have yielded a good check, of that I’m sure. Instead I was haunted by big bass and memories of what was 3 weeks ago and not what was now. We didn’t fish in the moment and it cost me a check. We didn’t connect the dots and I finished in the bottom of the top third in the field. We didn’t have a top-20 finish like the last 2 years because I didn’t fish the conditions and the changes on tournament day like we had done so well the past two years.
But it’s good. It will help my fishing.
My dad whipped me a few good times as a kid. Good enough that I still remember them like it happened last night and not 35 years ago. Good enough that I feel like I’m getting whooped again when I’m scolding my own son for something. Those whoopings are part of who I am today. Sometimes we got to take a whooping to be the better person for it on the other side.
So my ghosts took me to the wood shed this weekend, so did a couple of Hollowell brothers. But that’s all right. Because my fishing will improve as a result.
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