Game Plans

Smart Prep For Tournament Success

By Dan Johnson
from The Fishing Wire

Loading up on smallmouth like these takes pre-planning and lots of scouting.

Anyone who’s fished a tournament knows there’s more to competing than simply showing up on game day and relying on sheer luck to put fish in the boat. Especially if you want to win. Serious runs up the leaderboard require a dedicated blend of research, practice and preparation.

“Given the level of competition at everything from local club tournaments to larger regional events, you really have to do your homework,” says veteran bass tournament angler Scott Bonnema. Following are his thoughts on gearing up for success.

Discovery Phase

When fishing new waters, research is a great ally in the quest for victory. “It’s all about identifying where catchable fish will be during the tournament,” says Bonnema. Fortunately, a variety of sources offer intel.

Naturally, the internet is an amazing tool. Everything from angler forums and fishing reports to Google Earth and state fisheries departments can provide insight into specific fisheries. Tournament results from events held on the lake you’ll be fishing-especially during the same time of year-can also be golden. “Websites like ClassicBass.com, which post results and tournament news, can give you an idea of top locations and presentations, along with what kind of weight it may take to do well in an event on that body of water,” says Bonnema.

On-Site Recon

Bonnema is a big believer in on-the-water reconnaissance, and credits extensive scouting for his recent top-five finish and big-bass honors at the recent Sturgeon Bay Open, which saw 150 teams battle on Wisconsin’s legendary Sturgeon Bay.

“I arrived two weeks ahead of the tournament, and also fished a Cabela’s North American Bass Circuit event the weekend before, which gave me a great idea of where and how to fish during the Open,” he explains.

Pinpoint boat positioning is critical to properly fishing prime lies. Often, this is impossible in crowded “community” holes.

He cautions, though, that early recon must be tempered if you expect the fish to move between then and the tournament. “When fishing partner Mark Fisher and I started breaking down Sturgeon Bay, the water was cold and most of the bass were still in deep water,” he says. “We knew that warming water would bring them in by game day, so we focused on areas we thought would hold fish during competition.”

Given the likelihood that waves of sag-bellied smallmouths would swarm the shallows once water temperatures warmed, that meant looking for fast-warming bays with ample depths in the 2- to 6-foot range. “We focused on large bays that allowed the fish to be in seven or eight spots instead of one or two, which gave us better odds of being able to fish at least one of the areas properly,” he noted.

Which brings up a key point in Bonnema’s pre-game planning. Knowing that 150 tournament boats and countless recreational anglers would descend upon the bay’s prime lies, he focused on spots that could handle the pressure, while providing an opportunity to thoroughly fish productive areas. “Boat positioning is critical,” he explains. “So we ruled out small spots that could only be effectively fished by one or two boats.”

To find potential hot zones, Bonnema cruised the shallows, both visually scanning with polarized glasses and using the side-imaging feature on his Humminbird 1199ci HD SI sonar-chartplotter combo to pinpoint and map prime structure. “We looked for anything that would attract bass or funnel their movements, such as subtle depth changes of six to 12 inches, or the edge where a line of rocks transitioned to sand,” he says. “Such spots may vary by species and from lake to lake, but there will always be key features that concentrate whatever fish you’re after. Finding them before the tournament is critical.”

Mapping is a matter of marking points of interest with icons that enable instant recall, even months or years after the initial scouting run. “Take time to choose symbols and names that mean something, and will help you remember what the waypoint is for,” he says. “For example, I use a Red Cross medical symbol to mark hotspots where I can ‘get healthy’ in a hurry if I’m struggling in a tournament. I also use small symbols for boat position, and larger icons for structure.”

Solid pre-tournament scouting helped Bonnema bag big-bass honors at the 2014 Sturgeon Bay Open with this 8.29-pound smallmouth.

When charting a choice piece of cover or structure, Bonnema advises highlighting both the area you expect to hold fish, as well as where you should position your boat to work the spot. “In clear, shallow water, long casts can be key, so keep your boat as far from the fish as possible,” he adds. “Humminbird’s side-imaging makes it easy to mark waypoints on structure 60 to 100 feet from the boat, without ever driving over the fish.”

Lure Selection

While some anglers pare down tournament tackle to a handful of rods, reels and baits needed for a few pet presentations, Bonnema brings a complete arsenal on the road. “I’m not saying you need to spend a fortune on tackle,” he says. “But, you’re already spending hundreds of dollars on gas, food and lodging. You don’t want to lose because you don’t have the right size or color spinnerbait.”

At Sturgeon Bay, for example, Bonnema and Fisher dialed in a very specific combination of rod, reel, line and lure to fool the system’s biggest bass-including the monstrous 8.29-pound bronzeback Bonnema landed during competition, and another 8-pound behemoth taken during practice.

“After much experimentation and tweaking, we found that light-green, 3½- and 4 ½-inch, paddle-tail Trigger X Slop Hopper produced better fish than standard grub bodies,” he says. The softbait was threaded on a 3/16-ounce VMC Darter Head Jig. “Having the line tie stick straight up on the jig head was key, because we were moving it very slowly, barely ticking the tops of the rocks,” he says.

A 7-foot, medium-light Team Lew’s spinning outfit engendered long casts and solid hooksets, while transmitting details on bottom ticks and subtle takes alike. Bonnema spooled with 10-pound Sufix 832 superbraid mainline and added a 5-foot, 7-pound Sufix Invisiline leader for added stealth. “Swapping out any one of these components completely changed the presentation and resulted in fewer big fish,” he adds.

As a final tip to budding tournament competitors, Bonnema recommends building a game plan with multiple fallback strategies. “After figuring out the best locations and right equipment, put together a few ‘Plan B’ options to allow for wind and weather changes, fishing pressure and other factors that cut shut down your main program,” he says. “That way, you won’t be scrambling when the bite changes on game day.”

In 2004 Ronnie Gregory showed me around Lake Eufaula before the Top Six Tournament and the places and patterns he put me on helped me place 7th.

On a Friday in August the next year Ronnie and I went to West Point. He fishes there a lot, and he helped me get ready for a Flint River club tournament we were fishing on Sunday. Ronnie’s knowledge of the lake was impressive, and he took me to some spots that I never fished before, even though I have been fishing that lake since it was built.

In five hours of fishing from 6:30 AM until 11:30 AM we landed five keeper bass and several under the legal size. Ronnie started the day right with one weighing about 4.5 pounds and it was the only largemouth keeper. The others were all spotted bass.

Most of the fish hit in brush down about 12 feet deep and I hope that pattern holds up for the tournament today. We are fishing until 3:00 PM and Ronnie showed me some places he says the bass bite better after noon. We did not catch anything there but I will try them. That is detailed knowledge of a lake when you can predict what time the bass will probably hit.

Then on Sunday 20 members and guests fished the Flint River August tournament at West Point Lake. Fishing was very tough and there were only 28 keepers weighing 47.13 pounds brought to the scales. There were eight largemouth and 20 spotted bass weighed in.

Kwong Yu won the tournament with 3 bass weighing 7.23 pounds, Tom Tanner was second with 4.66 pounds, Roger Morrow placed third with 4.41 ponds and Tony Roberts came in fourth with 4.40 pounds. Bobby Ferris had big fish with a bass weighing 4.20 pounds and placed fifth.

After Ronnie Gregory showed me some brush piles on West Point before the tournament I was fairly confident about this tournament. Ronnie and I fished for five hours and landed five keeper bass weighing about 10 pounds. Those five would have easily won the tournament, but they hit too early.

The brush piles that produced keeper fish on Thursday morning had nothing but short bass in them during the tournament. I did manage to land one barely legal spot weighing right at a pound and placed 14th. Linda fished with me and although she caught more bass than I did, all her fish were too short to weigh in.

Sometimes it seems practice before a tournament hurts rather than helps!

on a Saturday night in July a few years ago 14 members of the Spalding County Sportsman Club fished our July tournament at Jackson. We fished from 7:00 PM until 2:00 AM trying to avoid some of the heat, and it was slightly cooler after the sun went down. Fishing was tough in the heavily stained water, with seven members not bringing in a keeper fish.

We landed 23 bass over the 12 inch minimum size and their total weight was about 35 pounds. I had the only limit and my five weighed 8.22 pounds for first place. James Pilgrim, Jr. had four weighing 7.99 pounds for second and his 4.04 pound largemouth was big fish for the tournament.

Butch Duerr had four keepers weighing 7.31 pounds for third, David Pilgrim had 3 weighing 4.54 for fourth and Jason Wheeler’s 3 weighing 3.09 pounds rounded out the top five. Of the 23 keepers brought to the scales, 13 were spotted bass and 10 were largemouth.

I was on some kind of strange schedule. For the first two hours I caught about four bass too small to keep, and a 3 pound catfish. Then I caught a keeper every hour, just about on the hour, from 9:00 PM until 1:00 AM. Each fish got a little bigger than the one before it, but I started with one just barely 12 inches long. The second one was 12.25 inches and the third just a tad bigger.

My last two fish were decent keepers, with a 2.5 pound spotted bass just after midnight and a 3.31 pound largemouth just after 1:00 AM. The first fish I caught hit a Zoom Mag 2 worm and the last four hit a Rattleback Jig with a Zoom Fat Albert twin tail trailer.

Night fishing is a lot more comfortable this time of year, and the bass do feed in the dark. Give it a try one of these warm summer nights. You might like it.

How I Weighed In 25.5-Pounds At Dardanelle

By Zell Rowland
from The Fishing Wire

Zell Rowland didn’t manage to win at Dardanelle, but his 25.5 pound sack was the heaviest landed during the event thanks to his jigging expertise.

I didn’t win the B.A.S.S. Elite tournament on Arkansas’ Dardanelle May 16 through 19. I placed 17th in the final standings, which is disappointing, but I did bring in the biggest sack of the tournament on Day 2 – 25.5 pounds! Anytime you have a bag like that it’s worth talking about.

Conditions made fishing tough. Rain beat our butts every day on that Arkansas River impoundment, and conditions changed daily. Water levels shifted – up 4 or 5 inches one day, down 4 to 6 inches the next day – every day.

Drawing water or a water level change for any reason alters what the fish do daily, and sometimes even hour-by-hour. That made for tough fishing at times. Subtle changes in conditions could take place, and they weren’t always immediately evident. We had to make adjustments every day.

A heavy Booyah jig was a big part of Rowland’s secret at loading up on quality fish offshore.

I did much of my fishing on Lake Dardanelle flipping a Booyah jig and YUM Chunk trailer. I used two main colors, black-and-blue and green pumpkin. I fished black-and-blue much of the time in muddy water and green pumpkin in situations where there wasn’t so much stain.

During practice I’d found a good fish and knew it was still there, so that’s where I started on Day 2, hoping to improve on my 11-pound total from the first day. I pitched that jig to the laydown, and, sure enough, the fish was still there. But I lost him! As I stood there staring at the laydown, however, I noticed the water level was lower than it had been.

So I played a hunch. I moved to another spot with deeper water up along a rocky ledge. It didn’t have a laydown, but that didn’t matter. I caught a fish between 5 and 6 pounds right away.

Rowland chose a jig to score at Dardanelle, but he’s also well known for loading up with a variety of topwater lures.

The spot reminded me of another – a spot that hadn’t received much fishing pressure to my knowledge. I arrived there at 11:00 A.M. It took me two or three hours to fish the entire area, working up one side and down the other. Wherever I found the right scenario – where the water dropped – the fish would bite me. I didn’t get a lot of bites, but every one was a big one.

I could almost call my bites that day!

The fish were on wood and in front of boulders. But with the water falling, they had pulled to slightly deeper water than they had been for the past few days. The key to flipping the wood was to pitch to the middle of the tree and work it on out to deeper water instead of pitching all the way up to the bank.

Working the current was also a key factor. The fish that were holding near boulders were always positioned at the front of the boulder – not on the side, not behind it. They were right out front.

And they were extremely aggressive! You had no doubt when one bit. That made it a lot of fun. I would pitch in front of the rock and let the current flush the bait toward the boulder. The bass wouldn’t hesitate. They came up to get it. I would pick up the line and instead of the jig being up on that boulder, it would be 3 feet out front – with a fish on it!

My Booyah jig and YUM craw presented a large profile, and the dark silhouette was something the bass could see even with limited visibility. Determining how the fish were reacting to the changing water levels was equally important in pinpointing the fish.

It’s not often you get a sack of fish more than 25 pounds on Dardanelle – or anywhere else, for that matter.

Yamaha Pro Terry Scroggins Always Has Big Plastic Worms Ready
from The Fishing Wire

Bass May Hit These Lures When They Won’t Touch Anything Else

Elite pro Terry Scroggins always keeps several rods rigged with giant plastic worms, which he says produce big fish almost year around.

Terry Scroggins has a rod box on his boat filled with more than a dozen different styles of fishing rods, just like every other tournament angler, but what sets him apart is that several of his rods are always rigged with big, oversized plastic worms. The Yamaha Pro fishes 10-inch plastic worms year-round, something few of the other pros do.

“I’ve been fishing big worms like this my entire professional career, and I know there are times bass will hit a big worm when they won’t touch anything else,” notes Scroggins, whose single best day with the lure included five bass weighing 44 pounds, four ounces.

“I think the best way to fish big worms is to work them very slowly, which may be the reason bass hit them so well. It’s probably also the reason more pros don’t fish them, because it’s hard to make yourself fish slow in tournament competition.”

Scroggins does the majority of his worm fishing on offshore structure, often 20 to 25 feet deep, where he finds ridges, humps, and even rockpiles and brush. The day he caught the 44-4, he was targeting an underwater roadbed in 23 feet of water.

Scroggins likes a ribbon-tail type worm that floats, typically about 10 inches long.
“I rig my 10-inch worms Texas style to make them weedless,” explains the Yamaha Pro, “and use slip sinkers ranging from 5/16 to 1/2 ounce, depending on the water depth. There are a lot of 10-inch worms on the market, but I prefer a ribbon tail style that floats.

“When I make a cast and let the worm sink to the bottom, the tail will not only stand up, it will also sway and even swim in the current. It really looks alive, and I can easily imagine bass swimming up to look at it.”

On his initial cast, Scroggins crawls the worm up to the edge of the cover he’s fishing, and when he feels the sinker touch it, he stops reeling and just lets the worm sit there motionless for as long as 30 seconds. Then he pops his rod once to make the worm jump, then lets it sit motionless 10 more seconds before reeling in for another cast.

“On more than one occasion, I have caught more than a hundred bass a day doing this,” he explains. “During a Bassmaster® Elite tournament on Lake Wheeler in Alabama several years ago, I actually caught about a hundred bass a day on three of the four days using a 10-inch plastic worm. I started the event fishing a jig because I could fish it faster, but after the bass stopped hitting it, I changed to the big worm, and it was as if the bass had never seen a lure like that before.”

Big bass like this one have no problem eating a 10-inch worm, or even larger.
The Yamaha Pro also likes to fish big worms in current, always casting upstream above his target and slightly across the current so the water can wash the lure down naturally. What’s important here is keeping a semi-tight line to maintain better control over the lure.
In standing timber, Scroggins will start his retrieve before the worm falls completely to the bottom, slowly swimming the lure through the trees. When the worm hits a tree limb, he lets it sink several feet in hopes of generating a reflex strike before resuming his retrieve.

“Most of the time, I actually use a Carolina rig with a shorter six-inch plastic worm to find bass,” continues the Yamaha Pro, “because I can fish it so much faster and cover more water. If I get two or three strikes with it, then I’ll start using the larger worm and slow down.

“There is a lot of difference between a six-inch worm and a 10-inch worm. The larger worm naturally has a larger profile in the water, and when it is standing up on the bottom with its tail waving in the current, it certainly is much more attractive to bass, especially bigger fish.

“I’ve been fishing these 10-inch worms for more than a decade now, and I don’t hesitate to throw them in the spring, summer, and autumn. Honestly, I’ve never been to a largemouth bass lake where they didn’t catch fish.”