Night time did prove to be the right time for bass, at least for bigger fish, for a couple of us last Saturday night. Fishing was disappointingly tough at West Point though. Part of the problem was the wind. I have never fished at night with such a strong wind. The wind made it extremely hard to feel your bait and bites after dark.

Eleven members and guests fished the Spalding County Sportsman Club tournament from 5:00 PM to 1:00 AM. We brought 18 keeper bass to the scales weighing about 28 pounds after eight hours of casting. There were three limits but six people didn’t weigh in a fish. Three members left before weigh-in since they had one fish each and did not care about trying to get points.

I won with five at 8.36 pounds, Russell Prevatt had five at 6.51 pounds for second, Billy Roberts was third with five weighing 6.44 pounds and Niles Murray took fourth and big fish with one bass weighing 4.39 pounds.

Al Rosser fished with me and we started on a deep brush pile that I just knew was holding bass, but we never got a hit. After working it and some rock piles we started down a rocky bank at about 7:00 and Al got three small bass, too short to weigh, and I lost one small one.

Then at 7:30 Al got hung near the bank and as I moved the boat to try to get him loose I saw what looked like brush with fish in it about 20 feet off the bank. I turned and cast to it and landed a keeper spot, then threw right back and got my second one while Al was breaking off and retying his line. After 2.5 hours of fishing without a keeper I got two on back to back cast on a jig head worm. That is crazy.

About three hours later Al got hung up again and I cast a Texas rigged worm across a point the wind was blowing on and a two pound largemouth almost jerked the rod out of my hand. I landed it and kept fishing the point but the wind was too strong to really fish it effectively.

We went back to the rock piles to see if bass had moved into them in the dark but the wind was blowing right into them. I switched to a half ounce jig and pig trying to control my bait in the wind but even with it I could not really feel the rocks. We gave up and moved back to the deep brush we started on just as the small front blew through and the moon came up.

At 11:30 I felt a thump on my jig and pig and landed my biggest bass, a 3.32 pounder. After that the wind died some and we wore out the brush without another bite. By 12:15 we decided to try one last place and I got my fifth keeper, a spot bigger than the first two I caught, on the jig and pig.

I thought I might have big fish for the tournament but was shot down when Niles walked up with his bigger bass. Niles said he caught it on a spinner bait on the last cast he had time to make before heading to weigh-in.

So Niles caught the big fish after midnight and my three biggest all came between 10:00 and 1:00, so the bigger fish hit for the two of us late. Billy and Russell said they caught most of their bass before dark.

Lake Wedowee Club Tournament

Lake Wedowee can be a frustrating lake for a bass tournament, as members of the Potato Creek Bassmasters found out in mid-September. You can keep any size spotted bass there but the club has a 12 inch minimum size limit. And largemouth between 13 and 16 inches long must be released, so in club tournament a 12.5 inch largemouth counts but a 14 inch largemouth has to be released.

Niles Murray told me he landed several nice largemouth in the slot that had to be let go and he could not weigh them in. It can drive you crazy to have a 12 inch spot in the live well then have to release 14 and 15 inch long largemouth!

In their September tournament 12 club members fished eight hours to land 38 bass weighing 39.20 pounds. You can see not many fish over the slot were landed! There were three limits of five bass and everyone caught at least one keeper.

Michael Cox had a limit weighing 5.84 pounds for first place. James Beasley landed five weighing 4.98 pounds for second, Ryan Edge came in third with five at 4.82 pounds for third and Mike Gatlin rounded out the top four with four keepers weighing 3.97 pounds. Wesley Gunnels came in fifth with three fish weighing 3.87 pounds and his 1.76 pound bass gave him big fish in the tournament.

You can catch a lot of small bass to eat at Wedowee, and have fun catching some bigger largemouth, just be prepared to let them go!

West Point Lake Club Tournament

The last Sunday in September 13 members and guests of the Spalding County Sportsman Club fished our September tournament in the monsoon that afternoon. At West Point we can weigh in spotted bass over 12 inches long and largemouth over 14 inches long.

After eight hours of fishing we brought in 31 bass weighing about 48 pounds. There were four limits and four people didn’t have a keeper. Eight of the bass were largemouth and 24 were spotted bass.

Kwong Yu won with a limit weighing 11.68 pounds. I came in second with five weighing 8.36 pounds and my 3.41 pound spot was big fish. Third went to Niles Murray with five weighing 6.78 pounds and Sam Smith was fourth with four at 6.64 pounds.

My boat was still in the shop so Kwong let me fish with him. We ran to his favorite spot to start and cast for about 15 minutes without a bite. Then, for the next 20 minutes or so it seemed something hit our topwater baits on almost every cast. He landed four keepers and I got three in that time, and I missed over twice as many as I hooked. I guess my timing was off.

After about 30 minutes without a bite we left. I suggested a point I like to fish and Kwong got a nice keeper there on his first cast, but we got no more bites. From then till almost noon we caught some small fish including some little hybrids that came up schooling.

I landed my fourth keeper by a stump on a jig and pig that passed up Kwong’s Fluke. Then Kwong got two good largemouth of about three pounds each and I got my fifth keeper, a small spot, then the big spot hit.

It got real slow after the heavy rain started and we didn’t do much until Kwong got another three pound largemouth just before we had to head in. Kwong had four of the largemouth weighed in – half of them!

Last summer on a Saturday night 12 members of the Spalding County Sportsman Club fished our August tournament at Jackson Lake. It was miserably hot when we started at 7:00 PM and still hot at 3:00 AM when we weighed in. A little breeze started at about 1:00 AM and finally dried all the sweat, but it was too little, too late.

After the eight hours of fishing we brought in 16 bass weighing about 24 pounds. There was one five bass limit and five people didn’t have a keeper. Only two of the bass weighed in were largemouth, all the rest were spotted bass.

Javin English won with a limit weighing 6.20 pounds. My one bass weighing 4.44 pounds was good for second and big fish. Third went to Chris Davies with two bass weighing 4.32 pounds and Niles Murray was fourth with two keepers at 2.52 pounds.

Lightning and pure luck helped me catch my one bass. I started fishing near the boat ramp and as it got dark started to run up the lake to fish some other spots. But lightning flashing off in the west made me stay near the ramp and the van. A phone call home to Linda confirmed it was storming here, so I stayed where I was. I wanted to be able to get off the lake fast since storms usually move west to east, from Griffin right to Jackson.

At about 10:30 the storms had not gotten any closer and I moved across the cove to fish another point. At 11:00 I went back to where I usually fish and another club member was fishing there, so I worked on around the point. That is where I caught the one fish I hooked all night, at 11:55 PM. I surely am glad it was the right one to hook!

That followed a pattern I have settled on the past few years. For years I would get upset and let it bother me, and affect my fishing, if a boat was fishing where I wanted to fish. But about three years ago I headed to a point on Lake Eufaula where I had caught several keepers the day before. I wanted to start there on day two of our tournament but a boat ahead of me stopped on it.

I went across the creek and started down the bank, and landed three good keepers on a spinnerbait. The boat on the point never got a bite. Then and there I decided to just go to another place and now worry about it, and that has worked well for me several times.

It was strange, the storms never moved toward us, and it never rained on us at all.

Determination, Confidence Keys to Palaniuk’s Elite Tournament Win
from The Fishing Wire

Brandon Palaniuk won big at the Bassmaster Elite on the St. Lawrence River by making round-trip runs of over 200 miles daily to connect with Lake Ontario’s big smallmouths. He’s also pretty good at catching largemouths, as shown here.

Palaniuk caught most of his fish at Chaumont Bay, which he located by map and internet study before the tournament.

Palaniuk said confidence and determination were as important in the win as his choice of lures and tackle.

The St. Lawrence win put Palaniuk in the Bassmaster Classic, where he’ll be chasing fat Guntersville largemouths.

Yamaha Pro Brandon Palaniuk knows that in professional bass tournament fishing, confidence and determination can often be as important as lure choice and technique when the final weights are tabulated. He demonstrated just how important by winning the recent Bassmaster Elite tournament on New York’s St. Lawrence River.

“It’s hard to define how important personal determination can be in achieving a certain goal,” explained Palaniuk, “but I know that in this win it was absolutely crucial to me. I don’t want to say that being determined means you have to gamble and take chances, but rather, the stronger your determination, the stronger you focus on achieving that goal, and sometimes that actually makes achieving it a little easier.

“One of my goals is never to miss the Bassmaster Classic,® but heading into the St. Lawrence River event I knew the only way I had to make the Classic was to win one of the two remaining tournaments. Because I’d made some bad decisions and poor execution during this season, I was so far behind I could never qualify on points.

“In my mind, I had no options, except to win, so that became my immediate goal. I was determined to achieve it. Once I put myself into that mindset, preparing for the tournament was actually a little easier. I began to study the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario very carefully, and perhaps a little differently than the other competitors.”

The Yamaha Pro had never been to Lake Ontario before, so he studied past tournament results on the Internet and poured over maps of the 193-mile long lake, where one location continually stood out to him, historically as well as geographically. That area was Chaumont Bay, some 40 miles out into Lake Ontario, or just over 105 miles from the tournament launch area in Waddington, New York. Numerous previous events had been won there.

“I felt I had nothing to lose by going that far,” continued Palaniuk. “A lot of the anglers did not think it would be possible to run that far, more than 200 miles round trip, for four consecutive days because of the weather, so all of them stayed in the St. Lawrence.”

On the first practice day, Palaniuk trailered to Chaumont Bay and caught between 23 and 25 pounds of bass in shallow water, fishing a topwater lure and a jerkbait. He was so excited he spent the night in his truck right there at the boat ramp and used his second practice day fishing deeper water, 20 to 35 feet deep. He wanted a backup plan, and again he boated nearly 25 pounds of fish.

“I can’t tell you how good I felt after those two days and after I successfully made the long run the next day from the tournament launch ramp to map my route,” he added. “Even though I’d had eight-foot waves on the lake that day, I had made it safely down and back, and I really didn’t think I’d be facing anything worse. I think my determination made facing those waves easier, because in my mind I did not have any other options.

“I also knew I had found the quality of bass I needed to win, and that they were willing to bite.”

The Yamaha Pro brought 23 pounds, 9 ounces to the scales the first day of competition and took the lead. He’d caught the fish in just 90 minutes, and that’s when he realized the full potential of the area he’d chosen. The second day, with calm conditions, he added 21-15 and increased his lead; again, his confidence soared. The final two days he brought in catches of 20-9 and 23-5, giving him a four-day total of 88 pounds, 12 ounces. His winning margin was more than seven pounds.

“I think, if I could pass on any lessons from this experience to other anglers, it would be that prior preparation can be critical, especially when you’re choosing your fishing areas. Studying maps and previous tournament results can be invaluable and give you a solid starting point as well as help your confidence.

“At the same time, you can’t really be afraid of failure. In my case, in making the 200-mile round trip each day, I knew I had the equipment that could make that run, and after I completed the run that last practice day, I was absolutely sure I could make it every day.”

Rapala Pros Gamble and Win in New York Bassmaster Tournament

Taking chances paid off last week for three Rapala bass pros who finished in the top 10 in a Bassmaster tournament on New York’s St. Lawrence River.

They weren’t taking chances, however, on what to fish with, but rather where and how to fish. And their gambles paid off – Brandon Palaniuk won the tournament, Ott DeFoe placed third and Bernie Schultz placed sixth.

Palaniuk’s big run pays off

Rapala pro Brandon Palaniuk won the Bassmaster Elite Series event and $100,000 with a 220-mile daily roundtrip to Lake Ontario via the St. Lawrence River.

Because Palaniuk needed a tournament win to qualify for next February’s Bassmaster Classic – the so-called “Super Bowl of bass fishing” – he took a chance on a 220-mile round-trip run through waves as big as six feet to Lake Ontario. Depending on weather and waves, the gambit would afford him only 30 minutes to two hours of fishing time, and would not guarantee that he’d be able to get back to weigh-ins in time to score his catch.

“I was making such a huge gamble,” Palaniuk told Bassmaster tournament emcee Dave Mercer on the weigh-in stage Sunday. “I had all the confidence in the world that I was going to win that gamble, but it’s still a gamble – there’s so many things that can go wrong.”

But the gamble paid off. Palaniuk sacked consecutive bags of 23.9 pounds, 21.5, 20.9 and 23.5 to win the tournament and the $100,000 prize.

“I literally had nothing to lose,” Palaniuk told Bassmaster TV’s Mark Zona and Tommy Sanders in an interview webcast after the tournament on bassmaster.com. That’s because decent – or even good – finishes in the season’s last two tournaments would not earn him enough Angler of the Year (AOY) points to qualify for the Classic. Only a tournament win would qualify him. Bassmaster’s “win and you’re-in” provision awards a Classic berth to any angler that wins a Bassmaster Elite Series event.

Of the 99 other pros fishing the tournament, few others ran to Lake Ontario. And none ran as far as Palaniuk. One top contender proclaimed such a run not worth the risk.

“A lot of these guys were afraid to make that gamble out on the lake because of [AOY] points,” Palaniuk explained.

For those competitors, a conservative game plan would likely result in a good enough finish and enough points to maintain their places above the cutline for Classic qualification. Palaniuk, however, was below the cut.

“I literally had to win,” he said. “It made it a lot easier to gamble, I guess.”

After finding big fish in the Monday-Wednesday practice period before the Thursday-Sunday tournament, Palaniuk believed he had the winning strategy – provided weather and water conditions would allow a long, risky run four days in a row.

“I had such a good practice day on Tuesday that I knew I was going, no matter what,” Palaniuk said on the weigh-in stage after being crowned champion. “I felt like that was my only shot to win.”

You can follow Brandon Palaniuk on Facebook and Twitter.

Schultz gambles on shallow bite, when most others are fishing deep

Bernie Schultz used a Rapala Skitter Walk to earn 6th place in the St. Lawrence River event

Florida pro Bernie Schultz took a chance on a shallow bite, when most other top contenders were fishing deep with drop-shot rigs. The gamble paid off with a sixth-place finish, his best since Bassmaster launched the Elite Series tournament format in 2006.

“A lot of big fish were caught deep on drop shotting,” Schultz acknowledged last week in an exclusive interview. “I don’t mind drop shotting, but if they’re going to eat a reaction lure, you can bet that’s what I’m going to be doing… I guarantee I had more fun than [the drop shotters] did, because topwater is a blast.”

Schultz’s main pattern was fan-casting a Rapala Skitter Walk topwater bait over the tops of shoals and humps within a mile-long stretch of the St. Lawrence near the mouth of Lake Ontario.

“And that was fun!” Schultz gushed. “I had some big fish blow up on it… They weren’t really in a feeding mode – a lot of them would strike the bait in aggravation. But I did get a lot of those bites.”

And although he knew other anglers were mining the depth for leading limits, Schultz liked what he saw up shallow. “It was just ideal habitat,” he recalled. “And you could see the fish swimming around, on a calm day. There were ‘sweet spots’ in that mile-long stretch that I focused on.”

Some of his spots were as shallow as three feet, but he spent most of his time targeting shoals that topped out at six to 10 feet.

“Then they would drop off right into almost infinity,” Schultz said, only half kidding. “That river is deep. There was 50 feet of water right next to ten foot of water. There were breaklines related to really healthy… shallow habitat, so the fish had a chance to move up and feed or suspend off the drop in a matter of just 10 yards.”

When bass weren’t up and active on top of a shoal, “where the wind would let me work a topwater,” Schultz explained, he would throw a Rapala X-Rap along the shoal edge.

“It seemed like whatever the prevailing wind was at the time, the fish would act accordingly,” he said. “And generally, the windier [it was], they moved off to the deeper water.”

You can follow Bernie Schultz on Facebook and read his columns at Bassmaster.com.

DeFoe scuttles safe game plan, takes risk on long ride

Ott DeFoe used VMC Dropshot hooks in his finesse rig during the St. Lawrence event.

After a conservative game plan in the main river channel qualified Ott DeFoe for championship Sunday, he gambled on the tournament’s final day, making a long run to fish the Duck Island area in Lake Ontario. Not only had he not fished there in any of the first three tournament days, he had not practiced there either.

“I did something today that’s not really my style,” DeFoe said on the weigh-in stage. “Today I went for a boat ride… I said I’m in ninth place, I want to go up, I’m going to go for a ride.’ That’s generally not my style. I’m not that kind of a risk taker… Apparently it was a good decision today.”

DeFoe caught all the fished he weighed in the tournament on a VMC drop-shot hook.

The “neat thing” about the St. Lawrence River/Lake Ontario fishery, DeFoe said, is that “you can go out there and catch 18 pounds in five feet of water or you could do it 30 feet of water.”

Although good populations of smallmouth swim in the waters in and around DeFoe’s Knoxville, TN, home, he acknowledged that Yankee smallies and Southern smallies are practically a different breed.

“They are a different animal, there’s no question,” he said in an interview with the podcast Fantasy Fishing Insider. “The smallmouth where I live, you want a cloudy, rainy, nasty kind of day and that’s when they really bite. But up there – and it seems backwards – if you get a flat, slick, calm day, bright sunny skies… the fishing is just phenomenal.”

Northern smallmouth “really used to confuse me a lot,” DeFoe said Sunday on the Bassmaster weigh-in stage. “I don’t know if I’ve really got them figured out, but I sure am having a lot of fun with them.”

You can follow Ott DeFoe on Facebook and Twitter.