Friday, May 01, 2009
Bassmaster Elite's winning ways
Pros' tactics can help weekenders catch more bass.
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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HUDDLESTON -- The Bassmaster Elite pros have moved on to their next big tournament.
But before they departed Smith Mountain Lake they left behind a wealth of information on tactics and techniques the region's fishermen can use to boat more bass.
Because many bass were moving into the shallows to spawn during the tournament, patterns targeting those fish were a key element during the tournament.
With the spawning season running into June, bass anglers don't have to wait until next year to try those methods. They will work now.
While sight-fishing for spawners was the big deal, it wasn't the only approach. Several anglers did well using other techniques.
Here's a look at some of the key tactics put to work in the tournament.
Sight-fishing
With his trolling motor whirring him along a rocky shoreline, Kevin VanDam stood on the front deck of his Nitro bass boat and scanned the lake.
"Big smallie!" he said, spotting a nice smallmouth bass guarding a nest on the gravel bottom in about 6 feet of water.
The first key for targeting spawning bass is to be able to find the fish, which means polarized sunglasses that cut down on surface glare are an absolute necessity.
Mark Taylor | The Roanoke Times
Blue Ridge Brawl winner Kevin VanDam used a variety of approaches, including shaky head worms and drop shot rigs, to target spawning bass like this 4 1\2-pound largemouth.
VanDam, from Kalamazoo, Mich., said he carries glasses with six different lens types to fit various situations. That's a nice perk of his sponsorship deal with Oakley.
Anglers who actually have to buy their shades can get away with having one or two pairs. Generally, amber, brown or copper lenses tend to be the best overall tints for fishing because they provide for good visibility in a wide variety of conditions.
Typically, the more the glasses cost, the better the optical quality of the lenses. That said, inexpensive sunglasses can be serviceable, and it won't be as painful when you drop them overboard.
Prime areas to locate bedded largemouths include sheltered coves and pockets. The fish will typically build their nests next to an obstacle, such as a stump, a fallen tree, a boat dock piling or a rock pile.
Beds are usually lighter color than the regular bottom, and some can be a cinch to spot when the sun is high and there is little chop on the water.
Smallmouths will also bed around woody cover but typically prefer rocky cover with a gravel bottom.
Throughout the tournament, pro anglers used the term "locked on" to describe bass that are firmly committed to a spawning bed.
If a bass doesn't move when a boat approaches, that's a good sign that it's locked on.
In that kind of protective mode, those bass are often the easiest to prompt into striking.
If both a female and male are on the nest, the male -- almost always the smaller of the two -- will be more aggressive. Providing an angler doesn't already have a limit in the boat, some will put the male in the livewell, which will increase the chances of prompting the female to bite.
Anglers typically start targeting bedded fish with a plastic lure that uses a good-sized hook, which will increase the chances of a sure hookset.
Is there a best plastic lure with which to start?
Probably not.
Pros are all over the map on this one. Some start with crawfish, others lizards, still others tube lures or creature baits.
VanDam's go-to lure during the Blue Ridge Brawl was a 4-inch long Strike King 3X Elaztech Finesse Worm, fished on a shaky head jig head.
"I caught probably 75 percent of the fish I weighed in on that lure," said VanDam, who fished the bait with a spinning rig on 8-pound-test Bass Pro Shops fluorocarbon line.
When bass were not receptive to early offerings, anglers tended to get more subtle, scaling down lure sizes and taking more of a finesse approach, often going to drop shot rigs with finesse worms and wacky-rigged soft jerkbaits.
Preferred colors were generally muted, such as green pumpkins and various browns.
The swimbait approach
Having now come to Smith Mountain Lake twice, Elite Series anglers can't stop gushing about how much the lake's bass love swimbaits.
Not that they love to eat them, but they sure love to follow them.
Before the June 2007 tournament, many anglers tried fishing big swimbaits around docks, and were shocked by the number of big bass that would emerge from under the docks to casually follow the lures.
Those bass wouldn't eat, but the anglers figured they would be more aggressive this time around.
It didn't really happen.
Many threw swimbaits, and a few caught fish on them. Byron Velvick, who finished 11th, extolled the virtue of swimbait during the final weigh-in, saying that casting the big lures was a way to connect with good fish.
"Believe in the swimbait," Velvick said. "It's an awesome thing."
Keep in mind this was a guy who had brought only two 2-pounders to the scales only moments earlier.
Swimbaits did put some fish in the boat for Mark Tyler of Vian, Okla. But not directly.
While patrolling the shoreline Tyler would often cast a 3 12-inch Optimum swimbait around and under docks.
The lifelike lure didn't draw many strikes, but it did get lots of follows from bass that wanted to make sure the intruder was leaving the area.
Tyler would then spend more time looking for the bed, and then would come back later and target the fish.
Just fishing
While nearly all anglers focused their efforts on finding spawning fish in clear water, a few just went fishing.
One of them was Greg Hackney, who finished fourth.
Hackney, known as a power fisherman, spent a fair amount of time flipping woody cover with a Strike King Perfect Plastic Rodent in green pumpkin color.
"I knew what kind of stuff they were getting on in clear water," said Hackney, who sight-fished some, too. "So I knew what they'd be getting on in the dirty water."
