Southern Trout Eaters DVD Review from Rob Newell FLW Bass Magazine March 2012
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Lake Guntersville, of Swimbaits and BigBaits
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y61-TAbo6HE]
Here is additional recap and insights into the mighty pool of the Tennessee River called Lake Guntersville. This is footage compiled from the 2012 FLW Everstart Tournament from May 3-5th 2012. There are some subtle details in the footage above. Suspended fish, getting caught on swimbaits. Sometimes in the form of the castable umbrella/Alabama Rig, sometimes just a single paddle tailed tube swimbait. Realize, that guys were able to catch 17-19 pounds per day sight fishing/bed fishing during this tournament. I had 15 pounds per day catching fish on the 8″ Triple Trout over milfoil and hydrilla in 2-6 feet of water. So, the fish were in 1 foot of water, and all the way down in 30+ feet. The lesson here to me was that the big fish, don’t just gradually make their way to the ledges. They go out deep FIRST. Really deep. Like full summer deep, and perhaps they aren’t on the bottom, but they relate to really deep water, and will suspend 10-15 feet down, over 30 feet of water. Justin Lucas provided some really interesting insights into what he was doing to catch 30+ pounds for 2 of the 3 days. Based on the brim one of his fish coughed up in the livewell on Day 3, which you can see in the above footage, it really makes me wonder what a guy could do with bigbaits, out on the ledges of Guntersville. Mark Rose’s insights, JT Kenney’s insights, and winner Alex Davis’s insights all made me realize little subtle things I found interesting, about how to find, locate and catch fish on Guntersville and the Tennessee River at large. Look at the results here. It wasn’t a wack fest out there for the vast majority of the field. Some schools of big fish out there, and only a handful of guys with the knowledge and ability to find and catch fish out of those schools.
My friend Casey Martin was not himself all week leading up to the tournament. He was giddy and acting ‘guilty’ and that told me he either had just robbed a bank (which isn’t likely, knowing Casey) or he was around some really big fish and knew he had a shot at winning, which was the case. You will notice the Top 10 on Day 3 pretty much all had addresses that give them excellent access to ledges on the TN River. You have to understand you just don’t pull out deep and get on fish Guntersville. There are all kinds of things I am still learning, but most importantly, you need side imaging to find these deep fish, something I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t been able to afford yet. Casey was telling me he was on schools of 4-5 pounders. Catching all kinds of fish about the same size. I’d seen this before the few times I’d gotten around them on Kentucky Lake. I really believe a bigbait, not just a swimbait, would get more of those 5-7 pounders to get fired up and eat. Casey was bummed with 23 pounds, like that was a small limit the final day. “I caught like 20 four pounders”…. Kills me!
Justin Lucas capitalized on a single, well placed, swimbait to catch 2 of the heaviest stringers weighed in, in the entire event. Suspended fish with a swimbait, TN River style. Very interesting. Mark Rose and Alex Davis were using castable U-Rigs with Shadalicious swimbaits to catch suspended fish. Casey was using the Picasso School E Rig with Shadalicious swimmers too. Suspended fish are a common theme of the TN River, and the Alabama Rig exposed how many big ones lives in no mans land, and now there is a tool to catch them. But as Justin Lucas showed, a well placed single swimmer can trump even the U-rig, and I wonder what an 8″ Huddleston or a larger swimmer like the Sledge Hammer swam in those same schools might do? 40 pounds? Anyway, I found Guntersville extremely ‘interesting’ to say the least. I learn something new every time I fish that river, and I’m finally getting my feet under me a little bit.
My tournament involved the 8″ Triple Trout fished over milfoil mostly. I had some opportunities at some 5-7 pound bites. Some really nice fish came close to biting, but ultimately I weighed in 15 pounds per day, and for the first time weighed in all 10 fish in a tournament on a bigbait, which was a ‘moral’ victory. I think if you got to the grass BEFORE the big ones had moved out deep, you could really do some damage and showcase what bigbaits could do up shallow on Guntersville. That bite is there, no doubt. However, it’s May and getting toward June which means even more fish will migrate to the ledges and get offshore. The Tour heads to Kentucky Lake in June, and I’m waiting to see who embraces the bigbait mentality on the ledges, or perhaps it won’t be necessary at all? These guys catch really big sacks on 3/4 football heads and Strike King 6XD cranks, but shoot, my limited experiences has showed me the bigbait, stroked or swam around the schools, which I rarely find, gets mega bites. Sometimes its about finding ’em, sometimes its about catching ’em, but most times it’s a balance of the two, and the Tennessee River is proving to be another ground zero where swimbaits and bigbaits are on a collision course, in a tournament environment.
2012 Lake Guntersville Everstart Insights
I caught all 10 fish I weighed in on the 8″ Triple Trout in Sexy Shad. I was not on winning fish, but 15 pounds per day isn’t horrible fishing. Lake Guntersville put out some high 20s and 30+ pound sacks last week, but if you notice, a small minority of guys (who tend to guide here year round, or live in the area) knew the ledges where the big ones pulled out first. Only JT Kenney, who is no slouch on any lake, was the sole ‘out of towner’ in the Top 10 on the final day.
The winning and Top 10 fish were deep. Like 30 feet deep. Most of the Top 10 guys agreed that the fish were suspended and not glued to the bottom, which made the umbrella rigs + swimbaits and the single stand alone swimmers good choices. Justin Lucas nailed two 30 pound sacks swimming a single Hollow Belly mid water column off one spot. The same spot Richard Peek fished. They shared a single spot. Casey Martin fished a couple spots and found himself sharing water with JT Kenney and Mark Rose. Basically, the ledges of the TN River aren’t stacked with fish yet. The big ones are clearly moved out, but there is miles and miles of ledge without fish.
Grass Fishing:
I committed to shallow grass fishing for the event because that was the only thing I had going. I couldn’t find the ledge bite. I was super stoked to find fish eating the 8″ Triple Trout though. The Sexy Shad color is just a good choice, and they really ate it well. I caught 12 keepers on the first day, and missed one big bite right at the boat. The rain the first day seemed to help the bite and prevent me from seeing the big follower too well, but still, I felt like any cast I could easily stick a 5-7 pounder. I fished around North Sauty in fairly community hole type water. In fact, I fished around guys like Tharp and McMillan, so I figured I couldn’t be too out of my head. My co-angler partners got a kick out of me throwing that Triple Trout and getting fish on it. I think they are now Triple Trout converts. 15 pounds per day isn’t great on Guntersville right now, but it was good enough for 38th place and a check, and helped me secure 8th place overall in the South East Division for 2012, which just for pride sakes, is cool.
More to come on Guntersville and recapping the Everstart. I got a few inbound requests on what I did, and I’m hoping to provide some film and footage that better shows what I was doing up shallow in the grass, and what the other guys are doing out deep on the ledges to catch these bigger sacks.
Swimbait Tails by Category: May-June 2012 FLW Bass Magazine Reprint
2012 Santee Cooper FLW Everstart Recap
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwLQGri_yvY]
Wacky Rigging. One of my favorite things to do in a small bait, finesse, tough bite, you just need to catch 5 fish and haven’t had a bite in a while style of fishing is wacky rigging. Wacky rigging is the canary in the coal mine to me at times. If you can’t get a bite, wacky rigging, you are very likely not around ’em. My 2012 FLW Everstart tournament on Santee Cooper, started by picking up my boat in Augusta, GA on the way to lake, with a fresh fiberglass patch from the damage it sustained from Seminole. So, I only had 5 days to prepare for Santee Cooper, and in case you don’t know, Santee Cooper is 2 lakes, connected by a canal, and it HUGE. I mean, a man could spend a lifetime learning Santee Cooper, and because it has grass in it, which even the types of grasses are constantly changing (and growing and being sprayed or eaten by introduced grass carp), Santee Cooper is a lake that changes often. Add to that, South Carolina’s real estate on the Eastern seaboard. South Carolina, goes from extreme mountain trout eaters in the West, to the lowland black water swamp, palmetto tree + Spanish moss frog, swim jig, skippin’ jigs, buzzbait, 30 pound sack capable water, to Atlantic Coast beaches that people surf regularly ( I scored fun 1-2 foot peelers at Hilton Head one 4th of July circa 2006, 10 foot single fin, 80+ degree water, and a lot of hootin’ an’a hollerin’!) in the East. Santee Cooper is big fish fishery and it didn’t disappoint. Look at the weights from the event, lots of 11-15 pound, 3 fish sacks getting weighed in. Guys on 4-6 pounders pretty good, just numbers hard to come by. Santee Cooper is on a healthy cycle and it could be a sleeper for an incredible event if scheduling and weather permit. I wished I’d had more time to practice and explore things, because a bigbait bait there is inevitable. I threw Slammers, 3:16 Sunfish, 22nd Century Bluegills, and skipped the 6″ weedless Huddie too. I didn’t have tons of practice, but my gameplan was mostly around catching 4-6 pounders off cypress trees, but of course trying to just go fish and find big ones coming or going or on beds. I thought I could win with the wacky rig—if I got the bites and got them in the boat, there are just some awesome moments in tree fishing where you can get on ’em good. I had good bites going, just not lots of them, and it was the same stuff I had done here 3 years ago when I finished 7th place. I had the bites to win last time. This time, I didn’t have the bites to win, but I had a shot at it, and I knew I could compete and perhaps win, just like last time, but this time, things didn’t work out quite so well, but I did jump off a big one that cost me a Top 20 or so. 5-6 pounder eats my Senko on the base of tree with sparse grass around it in about 3 feet of water, and rips line off immediately for 10 feet right under the surface just hot and full dig style and when I went to turn and stop her, she reared up and jumped mouth open wide reverse flip backside roll tail grab fakey and spits the hook. Fudge. Whatever, I’m sitting in 7th place overall in the the SouthEast Division, and had a great tournament and finished 35th place, just solid, nothing great, but I’ll take it because Santee Cooper is tough as she is awesome at times. I had 3 fish on Day 1 for almost 12 pounds, so fun day getting 2 bigguns onboard, and one 14.5″ keeper. Big fish on the spinning gear around trees is just exciting and fun. I kept working and working, and also had a grass pattern going that never panned out, so I felt like I fished pretty damn hard and smart, just didn’t have the next levels of fish I needed. Look at how few guys caught limits both days. See Results Here. Ken Ellis won the tournament wacky rigging a Trick Worm on deep trees. So, I was on the right track and had the right gameplan, I just didn’t have the trees and the knowledge of what trees. Finding deeper trees is a key, sparse grass is key, and areas adjacent or near spawning grounds, where the fish are pulling out of their spawning areas and resting up, feeding up and hanging loose on the natural cover/structures in the lake.
I stayed in Eutawville (“Utah-Ville”) at Bells Marina and fished with my good friend Ron and his son, that I’d met here a few years ago when I was here last. Ron helped me quickly get a feel for the lake and more specifically, the tree bite. The best trees tend to be deeper 2.5 to 4 feet of water, and have sparse grass around them, or just be on the ‘point’ or generally favorable position to feed from in a stack of trees. However, it’s sort of like flipping at some level, where you just have to put your head down and make hundreds of perfect presentations time and time again, and eventually you get a bite. And where you get one bite, you usually get more bites. Little flurries, I love you so! I tried to find good areas of trees in practice. Which I did. I also tried to find a grass bite, which I did with some help from my man Bobby Wood and Ron Buck. I practiced with them a day and really did some damage on Skinny Dippers and Swim Senkos around lilly pads, gator grass, and mixed stuff. With the cool weather we had for the tournament, my grass bite died on the vine. You just knew they were in the grass and biting for someone, but I had trees and grass to balance, and after starting each morning in the grass and coming up empty both days, I decided my grass bite was dead and didn’t try it afternoon of Day 2, just stuck out the trees, which helped because I got my 5th fish with 10 minutes left and helped me get a paycheck. I caught all 8 of my keepers on the wacky rig and only missed one bite, but it was a big one. Wacky rigging is a work in progress for me, and I love doing it. I love super finesse and super big stuff, opposing poles, positives and negatives, north vs south/ east vs west, natural attractions and relationships between the two ends of any spectrum. I love how it points out things to my bigbait fishing, because I think my success with bigbaits in a national tournament will be somehow directly or indirectly related to a super small bait bite or understanding of fish and fishing. For example, keeping it simple, just throw a Senko or a Trick Worm, or just throw a Triple Trout or a Huddleston or Slammer, having the right tools narrowed down for your window and using the small baits to either quickly fill a limit or be there as backup to back fill a couple big ones.
Here’s the deal with Wacky Rigging:
Rod: Shimano Cumara 7’2″ Medium Heavy (CUS72MH)
Reel: Shimano Stradic 1000 or CI4 Stradic 1000 (small spooled reels handle 10-15 pound braid really well, that line has super small diameter and although I like big spooled spinning reels, smaller spooled small spinning reels are good too. You can throw small and light baits really well, and manage you line nicely. It all matches up, where you don’t have super thin line on a big spool.
Line: 15# Power Pro connected to a 2.5 foot leader of 10# Yamamoto Sugoi Florocarbon
Hook: Owner Mosquito Hook, #1 or 1/0, get the 50 packs, because you use these things a lot and you do break off at times because of the exposed nose hook, trust me, this is a good investment. Use bigger hook size in the wind
Bait: Yamamoto Senko 5″ Or Zoom Trick Worm (watermelon seed, green pumpkin red, black neon, black blue, or junebug)
Rigging: Wacky O Tool and O-Rings: I put an O-Ring around my senko and slide the hook under the ring and just fish away. Sometimes I criss cross two rings and put the hook under the X, but I a really like the way this one fishes and rigs, it’s not perfect, but I haven’t found one that is!
Here is the deal with the Grass Bite:
Swimming Baits: Skinny Dippers or Swim Senkos or Gambler Big EZ (black blue, watermelon/green pumpkins)
Frogs/Terrestrials: Spro BronzeEye Frogs or Poppin Frog or Paycheck Transporter Frog or Picasso Shad Walker (natural colors/black)
Line: 65 or 50# Power Pro
Hooks: Owner Twistlock Open Gap (Swim Senko, 5/0 or 6/0 for Skinny Dipper), Owner Weighted Beast Hook (Big EZ, 6/0 w/ 1/4 oz weight)
Some really good fish were caught in the grass. You just had to have grass with bait or just fish in it. The grass was like the trees, lots to choose from, but most does/do not hold fish and even if they do, you have to be good to catch them, especially for 2 days in a row. Things change quickly on Santee Cooper.
The Lake Seminole 2012 FLW Everstart Preview
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnjCK-lidBk]
Tournament time again. I’m unusually optimistic about stringing together a good tournament. I have been catching fish, not in great numbers or size, but I think the fishing is generally pretty tough out there. Guys who I know can catch them are struggling, which I’m not suprised. This leg of the journey has been tough. Yes, there is a shad spawn, and yes the bass are bedding, but Seminole is a different animal than most lakes. This year, the grass on Seminole has not grown up and it’s relatively barren compared to the other times I’ve fished here. What that means is you cannot go pound the grass and milk fish out of it. Grass lakes without grass can be confusing. Keeping it consistent and being able to have solid sacks of fish for 3 days is the goal.
My gameplan: Fishing Small, getting a good solid limit, and then breaking out and fishing Big. I have various areas where I can fan cast finesse style baits and get it done. I have areas that are in danger of being ruined by muddy water coming down Spring Creek, however, I think I can adjust and fish the moment and conditions. We have relatively strong winds and thunderstormy type day forecasted for tomorrow. That means the bed fishing will be tough for the most part. Not game over, but the bed fishing on Seminole that I’ve experienced is pretty fickle. The fish are really smart, trolling motor aware, and require extreme stealth and skills to get to bite (the big fish anyway). Ideally, I get a good limit with enough time to go have some free time to go hunt some big ones. I am hunting them with Triple Trouts, 3:16 Sunfish/Bluegills and the 5″ Big Hammer sight fish rig (bed fish). The big swimmer bite has been tough, but it’s out there. I need a good 2-3 hours of chunking and winding to get a bite, and that assumes muddy water and muck haven’t messed with my water. Muddy water and muck (ie, floating grass niblets the ducks pull up, or snot grass pieces, or just wind blown garbage are the doom of the swimbait at times).
I’m fishing for a Top 10 and God willing, am able to pull off a Top 5 or better. I think I can be consistent. Worst case, I get 10-12 pounds per day, but best case, I think I can get 15+ a day, and sustain it for 3 days in a row. I think 28- 30 pounds, two day total, will make the Top 10 cut or slightly less. Guys are going to have some big sacks, but I don’t believe they can do it 3 days in a row, let alone 2 days in a row. We shall see. I feel good about catching some fish and competing.
Music from the above video clip:
“Preying Mantis”
Album: The Left Hand Side
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/lefthandside
Usage Courtesy: Body Deep Music