Category Archives: Tournament Fishing

Are You Ready for January Fishing?

January bass fishing can be good, but it is often not consistent. Two club tournaments and a trip to Lanier proved this point during the past few weeks. Some people catch fish and some don’t this time of year, but that is true at any time of year.

Ryan Coleman and I fished Lanier last Sunday. The weather the week before had been so nice we had planned to fish all day, but the rain and cold wind made us quit after only a little over four hours on the lake. We started just before 9:00 AM and headed in when the rain got hard a little after 1:00 PM.

Ryan caught four spotted bass, two of them over the 14 inch size limit, and I had one 13 inch spot during that time. On light tackle, those bass really put up a fight. Spots seem to fight twice as hard as largemouth, and in cold water they really let you know they do not like being hooked!

Our trip was for a February Georgia Outdoor News article. Ryan grew up in Griffin and lived here until a few years ago. He now lives within two miles of Lanier and fishes it often. We fished main lake points for spotted bass since the cold air had made the largemouth we had planned on catching head for deeper water.

Ryan caught his fish on a Texas rigged 5 inch Finesse worm and mine hit a 1/4 ounce jig and pig. All the bass were near the 30 foot depth level and fought hard. They were fun to catch, and the one I landed was my first bass this year!

If you go to Lanier, try little worms and jigs in about 30 feet of water on main lake and creek points. Rocks and brush help, and the bigger fish usually stay tight to the cover. Shake your bait when you hit the brush to make them bite.

Potato Creek Bassmasters fished their first tournament of the year last Saturday, and Bruce Odom started it out right by winning with two bass weighing 2.68 pounds. He also had big fish with a 1.78 pound bass. Twenty three members fished at Jackson for 9 hours to catch 12 keeper bass.

In that tournament, Lee Hancock placed second with two keepers, Donnie Willis was third and Chris Corley finished fourth. Ten of the 23 fishermen landed a bass big enough to bring to the scales on that cold, clear, windy day.

Members of the Flint River Bass Club did not fare as well on the weather for the first tournament of the year. Held two weeks ago today, the pouring rain kept all but six members at home. Bruce Willis had a good day, catching three bass weighing about six pounds to win. Three other members caught a bass or two, and two other members did not catch a keeper, if my information is correct.

George Hamby fished with Bruce and said they caught their bass in shallow water in a 30 minute span about an hour before the tournament was over. They fished hard all day, and really worked that pattern after catching four bass fast, but did not catch any more. Fishing is really hit or miss this time of year. If you are in the right place, you hit. Otherwise you get lots of casting practice.

The Spalding County Sportsman Club is holding its first tournament of the year today, at West Point. Hope we have good luck and nice weather, but that is always a gamble this time of year. Being in a club does make you go fishing even when the weather is not perfect, and sometimes I need that little nudge in January.

All three clubs in Griffin have tournaments scheduled in February. Visit one and consider joining. You can meet lots of nice people and maybe learn something about bass fishing. Or you may teach us about it. Come on out and join us for fun, fellowship and fishing!

Get out on the water and go fishing. You might catch some bass, or you might just cast a lot. Either way, it is better than sitting at home wishing you were fishing!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times for me in my Top Six tournament

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” That quote from ‘Tale of Two Cities” pretty well sums up my fishing at the Georgia Bass Nation Top Six tournament at Lake Eufaula last Friday and Saturday.

I went to Eufaula Wednesday morning, registered the Flint River Bass Club team, got a campsite, and put my boat in the water to look for something that would work in the tournament. The first place I stopped I quickly caught a two pound largemouth and a 13 inch spot on a ledge, so I felt I at least had something to rely on.

After about six more hours of riding ledges watching my depth finders looking for fish, I had found a couple more places that looked good. That night I tried to think of what to do the next day, the last day of practice, and in the tournament.

Niles Murray and Jennifer Spell, the other two team members, met me the next morning at the boat ramp and we headed out just as the sun came up. We tried some shallow lily pad fields and a couple more places and Niles caught one fish. Then we went into a small creek. Niles and I cast at about the same time to a rocky bank with overhanging bushes and we all three saw a nice bass come up and eat Niles’s Trick worm.

He landed a four pound bass and when I picked up my rod I had a nice keeper on the jig and pig I was fishing. I told them I knew where I would start the next day. They were both co-anglers, fishing with someone else in the tournament from their partners boat. I would be fishing from mine.

We then fished a brush pile and I caught a five pounder on a jig and pig. A little later Jennifer caught a good keeper off some riprap, then added a 2.5 pound fish from the edge of some lily pads in a cove. After looking at a ledge in the area that was covered with fish we could not get to bite we went in for the drawing.

I was boat 20 so there were only 19 boats ahead of me the next morning at blast off, but after running five miles to the small creek there was already a boat fishing there. So I went to the brush pile where I had caught the five pounder the day before. That fish hit at noon, with the sun high. The sun was just coming up when we stopped.

Neither my partner nor I caught a fish from the brush, so we went to the riprap. I quickly caught two solid 15 inch keepers on a Bitsy Bug jig and pig. Then we fished the lily pads and a 3.5 pound bass hit my topwater frog. I felt pretty good with three keepers at 9:00.

After fishing the pads we went to the ledge where we had seen the fish and I caught a 14 inch keeper. At 10:00 I went back to the brush pile and within a few minutes I landed two bass just under three pounds each on a Rattleback jig with a Zoom Fat Albert trailer. That culled my smallest fish so I told my partner he could have control of the boat the rest of the day since I had a pretty good catch.
He wanted to run up a creek and fish a frog in the lily pads, so we did that the rest of the day. I missed two good bass on the frog and he caught three, and missed about ten hits. It is often hard to hook a bass on a frog in lily pads.

Just as time ran out my trolling motor batteries went dead. It was not a problem since we had to go in, anyway, and we had been churning through lily pads for four hours, rough on any motor. I had fished at Lake Martin for ten hours on Saturday and seven more on Sunday a couple of weeks earlier with no battery problems, so I was not worried.

At weigh-in I had just over 12 pounds and felt good about my catch when I headed to the campground, hooked up the battery chargers, cooked and ate dinner and went to bed.

I was asleep by 8:00 since I had to get up at 4:00. A little after 9:00 my microwave beeped when the power went out and woke me a little. The wind had gotten bad and I was so groggy from sleep my only thought was that I hoped the power would come back on so I could have coffee in the morning.

Just after 3:00 the microwave woke me again when the power came back on. I had enough sleep that I woke well enough to think about my battery chargers. They don’t work very well with no power. I got up and checked and they were back on, too.

When I got up an hour later my batteries were still charging so I left them on until the last minute when I had to leave to pick up my partner for the day. When I met him he said he had checked and I was in fifth place out of 98 people.

We ran to the brush pile as soon as we started and the wind was so high it was hard to fish. Nothing hit but I was not worried, the sun was not bright yet. We tried to fish the riprap and lily pads but the high wind kept the fish from biting. At 10:00 I went back to the brush pile and found out my batteries were already so drained I could not control the boat in the wind.

For the next five hours we had to find a bluff bank where the wind was not so bad and drifted and fished. I never caught a fish and dropped to 24th place!

I have two new batteries in my boat for the Flint River tournament at Lanier today!

Humminbird® Pros Win Inshore Redfish Tour (IFA) 2014 Championship

Captains Rick Murphy and Geoff Page commit to insanely long runs, take top honors

HOUMA, LA. – Captains Rick Murphy and Geoff Page are no strangers to top IFA Redfish rankings. In 2004 and 2010 the duo won IFA Team of the Year. In 2011 and 2013, they won qualifying IFA events, but until now, never an IFA Championship.

“We would have been proud as pumpkins with 5th or 6th place,” says Sarasota, Florida-based Captain Geoff Page. “After the first day we were in 11th place and we didn’t think we could win it. Our goal was just to get a Top 10. The win never crossed our mind. And then it just fell in our laps.”

Still, the win is the result of an ambitious plan-one that required a 108-mile run each way from Houma, Louisiana, to Venice. The trip was 200 miles plus round trip!

Murphy started scouting the Houma area a week prior to the tournament while Page fished around Venice, marking waypoints on his Humminbird 798ci HD SI.

“Here I am scouting in Venice and Rick is eliminating any potential waters near Houma. And not once did I have to consider how to get to Venice – that was all Rick’s inherent skill, Humminbird GPS and Yamaha Fuel Management Gauge,” says Page.

Wasn’t long into practice that the two realized Venice would be the place to be come tournament time. Because Venice extends so far into the Gulf, it serves as a natural stopping point for baitfish moving from west to east or east to west in fall and winter.

“We knew that 26- to 27-inch reds near Venice would weigh more than anywhere else. Pogies are plentiful there and they pack a ton of protein. All we had to do was figure out how to get there,” says Homestead, Florida’s Captain Rick Murphy.

Skeptical that the run could even be made without diverting far into the Gulf, the duo sought the advice of locals familiar with labyrinthine canals, marshes and bays.

Page laughs: “Homeboys told us, ‘A little crazy, but you can do it!'”

“I marked all the waypoints on my 798ci HD SI unit. When we decided to use Murphy’s Pathfinder to make the 200+ round trip journey, I simply saved all my waypoints onto an SD card and plugged them straight into Murphy’s 1199. It worked flawlessly and took just a few seconds! I’ve always said fishing a Humminbird is easy, but that wins the prize – literally!”

So, using the GPS on his Humminbird 1199ci HD SI Combo, Murphy was able to map a quick route to their preferred redfish waters.

“I ran the Intracoastal Waterway and Houma Canal down past Cocodrie Bayou and headed east through marshes, using the Humminbird GPS to navigate old oil landcuts, coming out about 16 miles northwest of Grand Isle. From there I continued using the GPS, following the barrier islands in the Gulf to Venice.”

Murphy says the key was dropping waypoints during the entire route to aid in navigation.

“All I had to do was go from one waypoint, push exit, and go to the cursor for the next waypoint. That kept me on the right path, rather than hitting ‘Go To,’ which might divert me around an island. I ran the 1199 in split-screen with mapping and satellite overlay: 1-mile scale on the left and ¼- or ½-mile scale on the right side. I set the cursor 16 miles away; made it real simple.”
Following Murphy’s mapping run the Tuesday prior to the tournament, the team felt confident in their plan.

“We transferred all my waypoints from Venice to Rick’s 1199 and we were ready to go,” says Page.

Pushing Pogies, Boxing Reds

“On Day One we did the route in I hour 45 minutes, fished for 3.5 hours and then ran back to Grand Isle, got fuel, and ran home for weigh-in,” says Murphy.

What they found were “millions and millions” of pogies and some fat reds, including the second and third biggest fish of the tournament, including a 9.67-pound fish on Day One that measured a mere 1/32-inch from the 27-inch cut off.

The duo’s program involved Murphy using a Yeti cooler as a platform on the bow of his Pathfinder 2300 HPS for added elevation to spot active reds.

“I’d stand at the cockpit and help Rick spot fish, which he’d get first crack at. Thing is, he’s probably one of the best sight fishermen in the world. If he saw a fish he’d press stop on his iPilot remote and take the shot. If there was another fish in the boil, I’d cast,” says Page.

“I ran the Minn Kota iPilot remote in my left hand and a baitcaster in my right. It was all about spinnerbaits. Vibration was key – big blade and the thump of a Bass Assassin paddletail on the back,” says Murphy.

Moving the boat slowly ahead with the Minn Kota iPilot remote, Murphy would literally part massive schools of pogies with the boat, pushing them toward shore.

“The redfish went nuts as soon as the pogies hit the grass. You’d have about three to five seconds to throw to a redfish boil and intercept them. It was pretty intense sight fishing,” says Murphy.

“It was a cool deal. We worked island after island without ever cranking up the big Yamaha. Just point the iPilot toward the next island, hit the due north button and get ready for the next throw down. You might see three fish, you might see 13 … and they’re Louisiana fish, which don’t spook like Florida reds. You’d throw a spinnerbait at ’em and they’d run it down and eat it,” says Page.

After Day One the team was in 11th place with 16.85 pounds. On Day two they started in the first
flight of boats and shaved 15 minutes off their morning run, reaching Venice in 90 minutes.

“On Day Two we had a 9.77 and a high 8 for a two-day total of 35.29,” says Murphy. “It was a really great surprise. Definitely made the running worth it!”

Page says the Championship win demonstrates just how important the right equipment can be.

“Sure, we found the right fish, but we never would have been able to reach them without stuff that works. Humminbird and Minn Kota were a big part of it, as well as the reliability and speed of our Pathfinder boat and Yamaha motor. Keep in mind it was pretty dark when they cut us loose in the morning. But we had good waypoints so we could get there safe and sound, even at some pretty high speeds.”

Although humble, Page says the bragging rights will be used.

“We’re in our early 50s now. Sure, we can go hard all day long on the water, but do you think we could stay awake through the ninth inning of the World Series games? We’re like the old men of IFA Redfish, but this win proves we can still hang with the young bucks!”

Murphy and Page also earned $44,990 in cash and prizes.

For more information visit humminbird.com, contact Humminbird, 678 Humminbird Lane, Eufaula, AL 36027, or call 800-633-1468.

Why I Love Lake Martin

As usual, the three bass clubs in Griffin had a great trip to Martin for our annual tournament last weekend. The weather was great, except for a bad thunderstorm that hit Sunday morning a little over an hour before daylight and delayed our blast off for 30 minutes.

Some members of the clubs went to Martin a week early and spent five or six days trying to come up with a good pattern for the two day tournament. Many of us camp at Wind Creek State Park, others stayed in cabins there, and some got motel rooms in Alexander City. I love camping at Wind Creek, it is a beautiful place and the weather is usually great.

I did my usual, leaving Wednesday afternoon and getting to Wind Creek in time to put my boat in at the ramp, go around to my campsite and leave it then walk back to the ramp for my van. It was so nice I didn’t even mind the walk. Also, I was not worn out from fishing all day.

Thursday morning I got up before daylight and went looking for places to catch fish. I landed four nice keepers on a crankbait before it even got light enough to see. As the sky got gray I picked up a topwater plug and caught nine keepers and several throwbacks before 9:00.

After riding around some looking at different spots I went in and took a nap in my van. Then I went back out and caught several more bass after lunch. Two of them hit a top water plug at 2:00 in the bright sun, and they were the two biggest fish I caught all day. I was sure I had found something good.
After eating dinner at the campsite I got in bed early. Since I thought I had figured out what I needed for the tournament I slept in Friday morning. But when I went out at 7:30 and tried topwater in some new places I didn’t have much luck. I did catch a nice three pound largemouth on a worm in a brush pile, another good keeper from under a dock and two or three drop shoting deep points. So I had a plan “A,” “B,” and “C.”

Good plans often are great until the fishing starts. Saturday morning I had a limit of fish within 30 minutes, but they were all small. By 10:00 I lost count of the keepers I had caught when I went over 18, but only one was close to two pounds. So I took off up the river.

That worked. I caught a three pound bass and others that culled every keeper I had in my live well from that morning except one.

Sunday was completely different. At 10:00 I had caught a lot of short fish but only two little keepers. So I went out on a point to drop shot, and fish came up schooling. I caught two drop shoting and two on top so I did get my limit. Then I went to the brush pile where I had caught the three pounder Thursday and quickly caught two decent spots from it.

In the tournament 23 fishermen brought in 166 keepers weighing about 223 pounds in 17 hours of fishing. There were no fishermen with no bass and we had 33 five-fish limits. On Saturday only two fishermen didn’t weigh in limits, but there were only 12 with limits on Sunday.

In this tournament we fish it like two one day tournaments. On Saturday Bobby Ferris won with 9.84 pounds, I was second with 9.82 pounds, James Beasley had 9.52 pounds for third and Raymond English was fourth with 9.14 pounds. Robert Proctor had big fish with a 3.67 pound largemouth. My 3.05 pounder was second biggest.

Sunday was much tougher. Lee Hancock won with five at 8.26 and had a 2.95 pounder for big fish, Kwong Yu was second with five at 8.22, Billy Roberts placed third with five at 7.51 and Raymond English was fourth again with five at 7.41.

The thunderstorm that delayed us broke my heart. A guide I know fished a pot tournament Saturday and he and his brother had seven fish that weighed 21 pounds. He told me they caught four spotted bass over three pounds each the first 30 minutes they fished, but it got tough after that.

The place he told me they caught them was a point the had shown me about five years ago, and I won that year with fish I caught there before the sun got over the trees. The sun hitting the water there is like a light switch being turned off – they just stop biting.

I was going to make the 20 plus mile run to that point Sunday morning, but the thunderstorm delay meant I could not get to it before the sun got up. As I said, the best laid plans last until the tournament starts!

I can’t wait to get back to Lake Martin!

Where Do Tournament Caught Bass Go When Released?

After Lake Champlain Fish Tournaments: Study Finds Where the Fish Go
from The Fishing Wire

Today’s feature, an interesting study on where bass go after being released at weigh-ins, comes to us from Lake Champlain International; www.mychamplain.net.

By Daniel Kelly

The Crew

The Crew

The Lake Champlain bass dispersal project crew (Credit: Lake Champlain Research Institute, SUNY Plattsburgh)

Lake Champlain has been a popular bass fishing spot for some time, made so by its size, surrounding scenery and abundant fish habitat, especially in its northern end. The lake’s expansive tributaries also draw in anglers who like to rev up their fishing boats and make waves.

But with prized bass there getting more and more attention, scientists with the Lake Champlain Sea Grant wanted to know what impacts all the activity was having on the fishery.

“There are probably 75 tournaments on this lake each year,” said Mark Malchoff, aquatic resources specialist with the Sea Grant. “And about four to six of them are big ones with sometimes 100 boats.”

Malchoff, along with investigators from the Lake Champlain Research Institute at the State University of New York – Plattsburgh, wanted to quantify the impacts of catch-and-release policies at the competitions and how bass disperse after they’ve been released back into the water.

Their study began with tagging fish. Some were fitted with radio transmitters, but a vast majority were tagged with T-bars: tiny tags inserted between spines in dorsal fins. All of those had Malchoff’s phone number and email address on them.

“You sort of release them and hope someone finds one, but there’s no guarantee,” said Malchoff. “It’s a classic letter in a bottle.”

Inserting Tracklng Device

Inserting Tracklng Device

Surgery underway on a Lake Champlain bass (Credit: D. Garneau, SUNY Plattsburgh)

The approach was useful because two tag methods allowed researchers to find if one was more reliable for tracking and if there were any effects caused by the tags themselves. Malchoff says there was good agreement between the two, with both helping researchers track bass movement through Lake Champlain during and after tournaments.

Largemouth bass, researchers found, are especially affected during tournament time. They experience more stress than smallmouth, as judged by a series of indicators including bloody fins, hook wounds or fin damage. A lot of the stress comes from being housed in livewells, which takes its toll. They may also be targeted more as competition labors on.

“With tournaments – the big ones at least – by day three, only the Top 10 to 20 anglers are still fishing,” said Malchoff. “At that point, they’re targeting the biggest fish they can find.” And with live fish valued more at weigh-in time, fishermen try to keep fish swimming. “But the farther you move them (in livewells), the more likely it is they’ll get beat up,” said Malchoff.

A post-op tagged smallmouth (Credit: Lake Champlain Research Institute, SUNY Plattsburgh)

Released Smallmouth

Released Smallmouth


Smallmouth bass also exhibited signs of stress, but not as much as largemouths. Both bass types appeared more prone to bloody fins as water temperatures increased. And after they had been released back into Lake Champlain, researchers found that bass swam toward the north side. There is plenty of high-quality habitat on that end, says Malchoff, and going north saves a trip over deep-water areas to reach the southern end.

All the findings boil down to a few things fishermen and tournament organizers can do to protect and conserve bass in Champlain. “Don’t transport them as far (in livewells), and lake temperature – in a lot of places, waters are warmest in late July or early August – avoid scheduling tournaments at those times if at all possible,” said Malchoff.

Researchers also provided evidence against a commonly held notion that many types of fish stress could be attributed to barotrauma, or damage caused to them by sudden pressure changes. Fish that don’t maintain equilibrium don’t always need to have their air bladders deflated, Malchoff says, something that tournament anglers often do.

“My real interest is looking at tournaments as a sustainable resource,” said Malchoff. “And like a lot of things, there’s always room for improvement.”

A Saturday Kids-Buddy Tournament and A Sunday Club Tournament At Bartletts Ferry

There is nothing quite like seeing the excitement on a kid’s face when they catch a fish. They light up and almost vibrate they are so happy. Last Saturday at the Spalding County Sportsman Club Youth/Buddy tournament at Bartletts Ferry three kids showed us that joy.

We were disappointed there were only three youth in the tournament, but it was well worth the effort to put on the tournament. Raymond English brought his grandson Preston and he won the youth side with three keepers weighing 3.39 pounds. Russell Prevatt’s grandson Bryson had two weighing 1.52 pounds for second and Zane Fleck’s grandson Dakota had three weighing 1.22 pounds for third.

I am glad they all caught fish. The fishing was tough but they worked hard for seven hours to land fish on a tough day. I will long remember watching Bryson, the youngest angler in the tournament at seven years old, bring a bag of fish up to the scales.

The weigh-in bag looked almost as big as he is and with water and fish in it, it was very heavy. Although he struggled with it, he wanted no help! He was so excited he couldn’t stop talking. It was great.

Kids win prizes rather than money and I was disappointed I didn’t have the tackle bags ready. I am trying to get some donations and will present the prizes at the next club meeting. Unfortunately, I have used up all the tackle I had collected for prizes.

In the Buddy side of the tournament Raymond and Preston won with five fish weighing 9.63 pounds. The way the tournament works is kids weigh in the fish, up to five 12 inch largemouth and any size spots since there is no legal limit on them, and the adult and kid combine their best five for the team weight. Spots have to be 12 inches long in the buddy tournament due to club rules.

A father and son were supposed to fish with me but due to a last minute problem they couldn’t make it, so I fished as a “team” by myself. I had three keepers weighing 6.49 pounds for second and my 3.70 pound largemouth was good for big fish. Russell and Bryson had four weighing 3.13 for third and Zane and Dakota had four weighing 2.25 for fourth.

Fish hit a little bit of everything, from Trick worms to spinner baits. I caught one at daylight on a spinner bait, one at 11:00 on a Texas rigged Mag 2 worm and the big fish hit a jig head worm at noon. The fish were scattered on the cloudy, cool day and there was not much of a pattern. I caught fish from one foot deep to 22 feet deep.

During the buddy tournament I decided to look for new places to fish and it worked. The first two hit on places I had never fished before, and the third one hit on a point that has always looked great but I have never caught a fish before, so I had quit fishing it years ago.

On Sunday ten members of the Sportsman Club fished our September tournament on Bartletts. After eight hours of casting we brought in 26 keepers weighing about 33 pounds. There were three five-fish limits and two people didn’t catch a keeper. We had six largemouth, 18 spots and two shoal bass weighed in.

I won with five weighing 6.98 pounds and had a 3.16 pound largemouth for big fish. Sam Smith had four weighing 5.41 pounds for second, Niles Murray had a limit weighing 4.87 pounds for third and his partner Raymond English had five weighing 4.57 pounds for fourth.

I started out where I had caught my first fish the day before but got no bites. Then I ran to where I caught my second fish and again got no bites. By 7:45 I was where I had landed the big one the day before and quickly caught a barely 12 inch long spot, then a largemouth the same size.

At noon I had fished a lot of places and still had just two keepers. In desperation I went out on a point and saw fish near the bottom, and used a drop shot worm to catch three keeper spots and several throwbacks. That gave me my limit with an hour left to fish, but they were all small.

For the last hour I decided to go to the point where I had never fished before Saturday but had caught a keeper that day. There were fish on the bottom and I missed some bites on the drop shot worm, and thought they must be bream. Then, with five minutes left to fish, the big fish hit. I didn’t think I would ever land it but managed to net it after a long fight.

This is my favorite time of year to fish. The weather is beautiful and fish tend to bite better. And boat traffic is supposed to be lower, since Labor Day is supposed to be the end of boating season, but it was not that way Sunday. The beautiful weather had a lot of pleasure boaters on the lake and I rocked and I rocked and rolled all day from their wakes.

Catching Spotted Bass On Lake Lanier In November

Lake Lanier was the site for the November Spalding County Sportsman Club tournament a few years ago. Nine of us fished for eight hours and caught 19 bass weighing 31 pounds,15 ounces. That is a good average size for any lake and it is even better if you know most of the bass we caught were spotted bass. They tend to be smaller and lighter than largemouth.

James Pilgrim, Jr. had a limit of 5 keepers that weighed 9-2 for first. He had one of the prettiest spots I have ever seen, a 4 pound, 4 ounce fish that took big fish honors. Kwong Yu also had a limit and his 7-7 weight was good for second place. David Pilgrim had 4 keepers weighing 6-0 for third.

I caught only two spots but they weighed 5-8 and that was good for fourth place. I caught one on a jig and pig at 8:00 am and the other on the same bait at 2:00 pm. Both were on rocky points. My big one weighing 3-8 was the biggest spotted bass I have ever caught, but it wasn’t quite big enough!

James, David and Kwong said they caught their fish on worms in fairly deep water. They were fishing brush piles 20 to 30 feet deep. I am always amazed how deep the fish hold at Lanier. The shad I saw on my depthfinder were all 35 to 40 feet deep and other fish were holding under them. I caught a couple of little hybrids jigging a spoon in 40 feet of water.

I never fish that deep on other lakes. I guess it is the clear water at Lanier. If you try Lanier anytime soon, plan of fishing deep water. Jigging spoons are a good way to fish that deep.

The pro fishermen found similar conditions at Lake Russell that year. They also caught fish deep. The winner jigged spoons and slow rolled a spinnerbait through standing timber in 30 feet of water. Russell also has very clear water. Remember, the clearer the water, the deeper the bass will usually hold.

Can I Catch Bass On An Ice Fishing Jig In the Summer?

Ice-Fishing Bait Helps Palaniuk To Top-10 Finish In Bassmaster Tourney
from The Fishing Wire

Brandon Palaniuk

Brandon Palaniuk

After grabbing an early lead in a Bassmaster tournament last month, Brandon Palaniuk told the media he was keeping details of his tackle and tactics “locked down for now.” It’s time to bust out the key and set his secret free. In the heat of the summer he caught ’em on an ice-fishing bait – a Rapala Jigging Rap®.

“It’s a little trick up my sleeve that I’ve kept secret for a long time,” says Palaniuk, the only Bassmaster Elite Series pro from Idaho. “Before I made the Elites, I had thrown them a little at home. I’ve caught open-water fish on them all the way down to 70, 80 feet.”

When fished through the ice as they were designed for, Jigging Raps work best with a vertical pump-and-swim action. A successful open-water presentation, however, requires aggressive rod snaps throughout a horizontal retrieve.

“When you snap the rod, it will dart a foot or two off to the right, and then it falls super fast,” Palaniuk explains. “And then you snap it again and it might dart two feet back over to the left – or forwards, or backwards. It’s a constant change of direction.”

After weighing a 20-pound-plus five-fish limit to lead the first day of the Bassmaster Elite Series tournament on New York’s Lake Cayuga in late August, Palaniuk told Bassmaster.com he was fishing a pattern he had all to himself. It’s likely those Empire State bass hadn’t seen anything like a Jigging Rap before – at least not in the summer.

Lead weighted and balanced to perfection, Jigging Raps inimitably simulate the erratic characteristics of a wounded baitfish. “The big thing is how erratic it is,” Palaniuk says. “For fish that are in a negative, inactive mood, it triggers a feeding response.”

The Jigging Rap’s unmistakable minnow profile features single reversed hooks on the nose and rear – so regardless of how a fish attacks, it’s running smack-dab into a hook. A center treble hook – hung from a belly eyelet – further increases your hook-up ratio.

Fishing much deeper than most other competitors on Cayuga, Palaniuk saw only one other angler during the tournament. Targeting smallmouth, he ended up catching both brown and green bass off of two small rock piles in about 25 feet of water. A shell bed extended from the rock pile area down to about 40 feet. “The fish would stay anywhere from that 25-foot to that 40-foot zone,” he says.

Palaniuk found fish in those spots in the two-and-a-half days of practice before the four-day tournament began. Despite being able to see them clearly on his depthfinder, however, he couldn’t get them to bite at first.

“There were schools of these fish, so I’d drop on them with a drop shot and they’d follow it down,” he recalls. “But I wouldn’t be able to get them to eat.”

But on the last day of practice, inspiration struck.

“I pulled out the Jigging Rap to try to get a reaction strike,” he says. “The first drop with it, I had one eat it.”

It was a No. 7 size Jigging Rap in the Glow color pattern – white with a chartreuse head. He threw it on a 7-foot, medium-action spinning rod spooled up with 8-pound-test braided line attached to an 8-foot, 8-pound-test fluorocarbon leader.

“That first drop of the Jigging Rap, a couple followed it down, and the first few snaps of the rod, I got one to eat it,” Palaniuk says. “So then I kind of got excited. I was like, ‘Man, I’ve got something figured out that they’re going to eat!”

After dropping the Jigging Rap a few more times and shaking off a few more bites, he determined he’d found a school of 4-pounders.

“So, I just always had one tied up and on the deck throughout the tournament,” he says. “And when I would see fish on my electronics I would drop on them. If there were two or more fish, I’d drop on them like that and see if I could get bit.”

Ultimately, the Jigging Rap bite did not yield enough big fish for Palaniuk to win the tournament – he ended up placing eighth – but it did account for several of the fish he weighed and helped clue him into a couple other ways to get bites. Based on the way bass had been biting the Jigging Rap in practice, Palaniuk decided on the first day of the tournament to stroke a 1-ounce Terminator Football Jig, rather than crawl it across the bottom, a more traditional presentation. That decision led to a 20-pound, 1-ounce limit and the Day 1 lead.

“The reason I started stroking it was because of the fact that I got on the Jigging Rap bite,” he explains. “I just started ripping it off the bottom, like you would a Jigging Rap, and that’s pretty much how I caught 20 pounds pretty quick.”

Most of the bass Palaniuk caught on the Terminator Football Jig hit on the fall immediately after a vertical stroke. “You’d rip it up and I think you’d catch their attention, and they’d follow it up, and then instantly, if you’d let off at all, they ate it,” Palaniuk explains. “It’s almost like you’re fishing a spoon. Once you rip it up off the bottom, they eat it as soon as it changes direction – starts to fall.”

Although many believed, going into the tournament, that shallow-grass largemouth would be the ticket to success on Cayuga, Palaniuk – true to form – opted to target deep-weedline smallies.

“I always like doing something different,” he explains. “I feel like that’s how you put yourself in contention to win and how you can separate yourself from everyone else – if you can find the quality fish doing something different, that not every else is doing. The reason I found those fish is because I was looking for smallmouth.”

As it turned out, however, he caught both smallmouth and largemouth from his deep spots. Brown and green bass were “pretty evenly mixed in the school,” he says.

Lightning and Fishing

I admit it, I am scared to death of lightening. When I was about eight years old some friends and I were “camping out” on the screened in back porch of my house. A bad thunderstorm hit in the middle of the night and I just knew I would be hit by a bolt of electricity. Since that night I get nervous when I hear thunder, even if far away.

Over the years I have had many bad experiences with thunderstorms while I was fishing. Once summer while fishing way up the river at Bartletts Ferry a powerful storm suddenly popped over the surrounding hills. The rain was torrential and lightening started cracking all around us.

There was little cover so I pulled the boat into a small creek where the overhanging trees should give me some protection. I sat there in the boat, using the trolling motor to keep the wind from blowing me back out in open water. After a few minutes I realized the boat was not being affected by the wind. The heavy rain had put so much water in the boat it was sitting on the bottom.

That storm lasted over two hours. When it finally stopped it took a long time for the bilge pump to get enough water out of the boat to make it float again.

One August I was at Jackson Lake practicing for a night tournament. The afternoon had been very hot and muggy, with thick clouds overhead but no thunder, rain or wind. Just as it got dark I was fishing beside the dam when suddenly wind started gusting over the dam and a crack of lightening direct overhead was the first sign of a storm.

Back then there was no barrel line at the dam so I pulled my boat up against the solid concrete wall. There was a metal rail on top of the dam, about 20 feet over my head, so I felt I had a lightening rod protecting me.

For over an hour I sat in the drivers seat of the boat with my head on my arms. The lightening flashes were so bright I could see the light even though my eyes were tightly shut and my arms covered them. My dog Merlin got under the console of the boat hiding from the downpour and loud cracks of lightening.

Those experiences and others make me now head for some kind of cover if the thunder is anywhere near me. And I have an app on my phone that shows weather radar, giving me a good idea how close the storm is to me.

Last Sunday at a tournament at Oconee thunder made me head for cover. I left a place in open water where I had just seen on my depth finder a brush pile covered with fish. I would not stop and fish it, it was way too far from cover.

In the Flint River Bass Club tournament last Sunday at Oconee, 13 members and guests fished our September tournament from 6:00 AM to 3:00 PM. We brought in 16 bass over the 14 inch size limit weighing about 29 pounds. There were no limits and six people didn’t have a keeper after nine hours of casting.

Niles Murray won with four bass weighing 7.66 pounds, Chuck Croft was second with three at 6.08 pounds and his 3.38 pounder was big fish, Mindy Burns had three weighing 5.19 for third and my three weighing 4.62 gave me fourth place.

I knew fishing would be tough, but not that tough. I started fishing a spinner bait on seawalls, usually a good pattern before it gets very light this time of year, and caught a three pound channel cat at about 6:15. It gave me a good fight but it was not what I was hoping for.

At 6:30 I switched to a crankbait and caught a keeper bass off a seawall. That fired me up but after almost an hour of trying the crankbait, spinner bait, buzz bait and Pop-R I had not gotten another bite. Then I got an explosive hit on the Pop-R right on the seawall. The fish fought like a big one but it was another 15 inch largemouth. Two in the live well at 7:30.

From then to noon I tried everything I could think to fish. I kept throwing the topowater baits until the sun got on the water but never got another bite. Crankbaits and spinner baits didn’t work either, and the only hit I got on worms was a ten inch bass by a dock.

At noon thunder started rumbling off in the distance so I got nervous and kept looking at the clouds. At 1:00 I was fishing a point and the thunder was getting closer, so I decided to head near the ramp so I could get to the van quickly. As I left the point I saw a GPS waypoint way off the bank on the point and rode over it. That is when I saw the brush with fish on it but I would not stay out there and fish in the open water.

At 2:00 the thunder was still distant so I went back to the brush pile I had seen and quickly caught my biggest keeper at 2:15. Although I fished the brush until I had to go in that was it for me.

Fishing A Tough August Night Tournament At West Point Lake

Last Saturday, night time was not necessarily the right time to catch bass at West Point. In the August Spalding County Sportsman Club tournament eight members fished for eight hours to land 14 bass weighing about 22 pounds. There were no five fish limits and two people didn’t catch a keeper.

Kwong Yu won with two bass weighing 6.55 pounds and his 3.51 pound largemouth was big fish. I was second with four spotted bass weighing 5.33 pounds, Raymond English had three at 3.76 pounds for third and Harvey Pilkenton had two weighing 2.67 for fourth,.

Kwong said just after dark, around 9:30 PM, he pulled up on a brush pile and caught his two fish on back to back casts. Both were nice largemouth, the only two weighed in. Fishing was that tough.

I started on a rock pile in about 12 feet of water where I have caught fish this summer and after about an hour I caught a barely 12 inch long spot and two short fish. I stayed there for another hour but got no more keepers.

I went and fished a couple more places without getting a bite then went back to the rock pile at dark and caught one more barely 12 inch keeper spot. After over an hour of fruitless casting I decided to head back closer to the ramp and stopped on a long point.

One of my first casts to it produced a skinny spot about 14 inches long. Then a little later I felt a tap, set the hook and a fish took off stripping drag. It rolled on the surface in the dark and from the sound I was sure I had a ten pounder, especially when it took of stripping more drag.

When I got it to the boat I was shocked to net a 2.57 pound spot. I just knew it was much bigger. All my fish hit a Mag 2 worm Texas rigged. Kwong said his two hit a jig and pig.

At least it was a little cooler when the sun set, so night time was the right time to be fishing, even if it was not necessarily the right time to be catching.
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