With five Bassmaster Elite Series tournaments remaining, BASS heads back to the state in which it was founded. The Elite Series makes its fourth stop of the season at Pickwick Lake in Florence, Ala., for the April 29-May 2 Alabama Charge.
BASS has visited Pickwick Lake, a 47,000-acre Tennessee River fishery, for six events, including a 2002 Southern Open won by Boyd Duckett of Demopolis, Ala., with 33 pounds, 8 ounces, through three days. Finishing second to Duckett, the 2007 Bassmaster Classic champion on Alabama’s Lay Lake, was fellow Alabaman Randy Howell of Springville.
Howell, in 45th place in the Toyota Tundra Bassmaster Angler of the Year standings after last week’s Blue Ridge Brawl on Smith Mountain Lake in Huddleston, Va., said he thinks the Elite pros will hit Pickwick Lake during a transition period. Because northern Alabama has basically gone straight from winter to summer this year, he said, much of the bass spawn will be finished, contrary to the typical calendar.
“The lake is all of a sudden starting to get grass,” Howell said. “The milfoil is growing like Guntersville, and over the past year there have been big weights in local tournaments on the lower end. Anytime they’re in the grass, fish multiply.”
Howell thinks some spawning will continue, but the majority of the fish at Pickwick already will be moving into postspawn mode. Pros likely will rely on dragging a lot of plastics — Senkos, lizards and big worms — with some topwater fishing in the mix. He said fishing a little bit slower will be key.
“I don’t think they’ll be moved out all the way to the summer pattern,” he said. “They’ll be just transitioning into postspawn. We’ll see some fish caught offshore but not real deep, maybe 6 to 10 feet deep; but most of the weights will come from the shallows — shallow grass, stumps and backwaters.
Howell predicted the four-day weight to win the Alabama Charge might be around 70 pounds of largemouth, roughly 18 pounds a day. He said the tournament will see some mixed bags and a lot of smallmouth but said the largemouth dominates at Pickwick at this time of year.
“I think the lake has the potential to have real big stringers,” he said. “But postspawn will cost the bigger weights, unless we get a lot of rain in the next two weeks and the current is on and the water flows. If you have current, the fishing’s always better.”
Elite Series pro Matt Herren of Trussville, Ala., lives about 65 miles south of Pickwick and has been checking lake levels at Pickwick. He said the fishery is up to summer pool, and his outlook for the Alabama Charge is all about the spawn — he believes bass will be setting up for a standard spring pattern.
“We’re hitting it dead on in a full moon,” said Herren, who is currently 29th in the AOY standings. “In a spawn cycle; that triggers everything to get into place and brings the fish up.”
Thanks to the grass coming back, Herren said Pickwick has taken off and is more productive than it has been in 25 years. He expects to see a lot of pros going with soft plastics and topwater lures, mostly in 7 feet of water or shallower.
“I don’t think we’ll see it transitioning into postspawn; everything’s happened so fast over the last few days,” Herren said. “Fishermen will want to cycle those fish into a postspawn deal, but it’s just started happening to where they can come up and spawn. But it might happen with smallies — they tend to go on water temperatures that are cooler, surface temps around 55 or 58.”
Herren said his guess for a four-day winning weight is between 78 to 80 pounds, close to 20 pounds a day.
“It could go higher — if we get in there and hit them in a full-blown spawn pattern or we get some cloud cover and rainy conditions, that will get a good bite going. I think a lot of the weights will surprise people.”
Fishing fans can catch all the on-the-water action from the four-day event on The Bassmasters, which airs Saturday, May 9, at 9 a.m. ET on ESPN2 (re-airs Sunday, May 23, at 10 a.m. ET on ESPN2). The daily weigh-ins for all regular-season Elite events and the two postseason events will air live on ESPN3.com, ESPN’s broadband sports network.
Bassmaster.com will follow the Charge each day with BASSCast, BASSCam, real-time leaderboards during weigh-ins, photo galleries, daily results and Hooked Up with ESPN Outdoors personalities Mark Zona and Tommy Sanders. Live, streaming video will be carried by ESPN3.com. Click here closer to tournament time for a complete coverage schedule.
The Alabama Charge has a top prize of $100,000 and awards valuable points in the 2010 Toyota Tundra Bassmaster Angler of the Year title race. The full Elite field will compete Thursday and Friday, with the top 47 advancing to Saturday’s competition. From there, the top 12 will advance to Sunday for a shot at the trophy and the top prize.
The public is invited to attend the daily launches at 6:10 a.m. CT at McFarland Park, 200 James M. Spain Drive, Florence, Ala. Also free and open to the public, the daily weigh-ins are set for 3:30 p.m. CT at McFarland Park.
Local sponsor of the Alabama Charge: Florence/Lauderdale Tourism.
The top 12 pros in the AOY standings at the end of the regular season will advance to the 2010 Bassmaster Elite Series postseason, in which the Toyota Tundra Bassmaster Angler of the Year will be determined.
Toyota Trucks Championship Week is set for July 24-31 and will be played out once again on two productive Alabama fisheries. The first leg, the July 24-25 Trophy Chase, returns to Lake Jordan out of Wetumpka. The finale, the Evan Williams Bourbon Trophy Triumph, is slated for July 30-31 on the Alabama River from Montgomery.
Bassmaster Elite Series Official Sponsors: Toyota, Berkley, Evan Williams Bourbon, Humminbird, Mercury, Minn Kota, Skeeter and Yamaha.
Bassmaster Elite Series Supporting Sponsors: Lowrance and Triton Boats.
HUDDLESTON, Va. — While others zigged this week, Skeet Reese zagged and the decision paid off in spades.
Skeet Reese moves to put a fish in the livewell during Sunday’s competition.
Bucking the sightfishing trend and primarily working a swimbait, the Auburn, Calif., pro left the competition in the dust — his closet competitor was Jason Williamson more than the 14 pounds behind. Reese amassed 78 pounds, 1 ounce of Smith Mountain Lake bass to take his fifth Bassmaster victory at the Evan Williams Bourbon Blue Ridge Brawl.
Reese continued the good vibes in what has been a white-hot start to the Elite Series. But it all hasn’t been roses for Reese as he had a bitter taste after the season-opening California swing. Reese fell to Virginian John Crews on the California Delta by 1 ounce and failed to score victory on what he considers his home fishery, Clear Lake.
But Reese left nothing to chance this week, posting more than 17 pounds all four days of competition. With the victory, Reese moves ahead in the Toyota Tundra Bassmaster Angler of the Year standings by a wide margin of more than 85 points.
“I worked my tail off this week and I burned through a ton of water,” said Reese, the 2007 Toyota Tundra Bassmaster Angler of the Year. “I knew it can be a grind here and you’re never guaranteed to catch them so I never felt comfortable, even until the end. But it was a great week and it’s special to win like this.”
Reese built a 6-plus pound margin heading into Sunday but with changing conditions on Smith Mountain, the 2009 Bassmaster Classic champion knew nothing was guaranteed. Fortunately, the steady wind Reese needed blew Sunday, allowing him to put the nail in the coffin with a final-day tally of 19 pounds, 14 ounces.
Reese said the swimbait — a 6-inch Rago SKT Swimmer in light hitch — was key for two reasons. One, it was large enough to entice the right bites. Additionally, the color and design mimicked bluegill, a main forage on Smith Mountain.
Reese’s conviction in the swimbait was important as well. On Friday, nearly two-thirds through his competition day, he only had two fish in the boat. And he began to question his technique.
“I knew that these fish aren’t necessarily used to seeing bigger lures,” he said. “But there are some bigger fish in this lake and they are capable of eating bigger baits. That’s why I stuck to my guns.”
Though the swimbait was instrumental, Reese did mix in other techniques — he sight fished for a minority of his time throughout the tournament and worked a Berkley worm Sunday.
Smith Mountain sets up well for Reese. The clear fishery littered with docks is similar to Clear Lake, where Reese is supremely comfortable. And Reese has performed here, notching a fourth and a ninth in past events.
And the first event, in 2007, laid the groundwork for this week’s victory. Reese said he caught a few on a swimbait that year and developed the pattern in the 2009 event before committing full-bore this week.
While Reese held steady throughout the week, other anglers were all over the map. Williamson of Wagener, S.C., started off the event with a bang, a 22-9 limit, the biggest of the tournament. But the sight bite subsequently died off, causing Williamson to settle for second.
Still, Williamson was pleased with the week and the Toyota Tundra Bassmaster Angler of the Year points he was able to rack up.
“I have no complaints this week,” said Williamson, 29. “This was Skeet’s tournament and there is not a thing that I did that I would change.”
Dean Rojas of Lake Havasu City, Ariz., gave Williamson a scare for second but finished in third with 61-8. Ounces behind Rojas was shallow-water specialist Terry Scroggins of Palatka, Fla., with 61-5. Rounding out the top five was Matt Reed of Madisonville, Texas, with 61-2.
With a 10th-place finish in the event, Greg Hackney of Gonzales, La., stands as Reese’s closest competition in the Angler of the Year standings.
With five events left in the Elite Series, anglers will be jockeying to qualify for the Elite Series Postseason and 2011 Bassmaster Classic (New Orleans, Louisiana Delta). Rojas was third in the AOY standings followed by Edwin Evers of Oklahoma and Dave Wolak of North Carolina.
Only the top 12 qualified for the final day of competition on Sunday.
Coverage of the Brawl will be featured on The Bassmasters on Sunday, May 2 at 9 a.m. ET.
ATHENS — So far this season O.H. Ivie Reservoir has produced nine largemouth bass weighing 13 pounds or more that have been entered into the Toyota ShareLunker program. All were special fish to the anglers who caught them, but the ninth was a little more special than the others: Sam Callaway of Corpus Christi will collect $500 a pound for his catch, a total of $6,670.
Callaway caught Toyota ShareLunker No. 500 at 9:20 a.m. April 9 using a Zoom Magnum eight-inch lizard in watermelon/red. The 13.34-pound fish was immediately taken to an official ShareLunker weigh and holding station, Concho Park Marina, where it was held for pickup by Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) ShareLunker program manager David Campbell. The fish, which is 20.5 inches in girth and 26.25 inches long, now rests in the Lunker Bunker at the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center. Read more →
HUDDLESTON, Va. — In postcard-pretty southern Virginia, Smith Mountain Lake promises to fish as good as it looks during the April 15-18 Evan Williams Bourbon Blue Ridge Brawl.
The lake’s beauty, however, has nothing to do with the amount of looking Bassmaster Elite Series pros will be doing. Most pros will be busy watching for bass on their way to, or already on, spawning beds.
Smith Mountain Lake out of Huddleston, Va., will be the 2010 Elite Series’ third stop. There the pros will compete for a $100,000 first-place prize. They also will be after points to qualify for the Bassmaster Elite Series Postseason in July, when the $200,000 Toyota Tundra Bassmaster Angler of the Year contest will play out in Alabama. Points also count towards elusive berths in the 2011 Bassmaster Classic.
Tournament pros sometimes get on each others’ nerves while they’re competing, but they come together when it counts.
Thursday, Casey Ashley of South Carolina hit a submerged floating log while heading back to Lake Guntersville State Park. The collision took the lower unit off Ashley’s outboard, but Arkansas pro Mike Wurm happened by a few minutes later, saw that Ashley was in trouble and stopped to help. Ashley transferred his Marshal and his catch to Wurm’s boat and made it back to the landing with three minutes to spare.
Friday, Justin Hamner of Huntsville, Ala., who regularly fishes B.A.S.S. Opens, loaned Ashley his boat. Ashley didn’t make the cut, but he did gain two more friends.
If the Fish Aren’t Biting, Change Your Presentation
Lure presentation is by far one of the most important aspects of successful Bass Fishing.
Change! Change! Change! Change your presentation again and again until you find what the fish want. Lots of days this takes two or three hours, but it pays off at the weigh in. This is a routine approach to fishing for pro fishermen. Presentation is the sum total of everything you put in front of fish. A presentation includes:
* the lure
* the lure’s color
* its running depth
* its retrieve speed
* whether any special action is being imparted to the lure.
When you start systematically changing your presentation, you should keep these five variables in mind. The first thing you should change is the color of the lure, When this doesn’t work change lure size or lure style. If spinner baits aren’t working you might switch to crankbaits, or vice versa. Similarly, it frequently pays to change the speed at which you retrieve the lure. If a steady retrieve is ineffective you need to add herk-and-jerk to the retrieve. We keep changing the presentation until we find something that works. It takes patience, and often a good amount of time.
Bass biologists tell us that bass have very small brains, however they can be conditioned to the effects of their surroundings. This includes lure presentations. We don’t know how they learn, but they do. Therefore, you need to keep mixing up your presentations until you find something that will trigger them to strike. If the fish should be hitting regular CRANKBAITS but are not, then a flat-sided crankbait or a lipless crankbait are obvious alternatives. There are many ways to change your presentations, it can seem a bit confusing. Keep in mind that you always want to use a lure or technique you are confident it. Doing this will help you catch more fish. One simple change is to just change presentation direction. If you fish down a shore you should have confidence in it. If you feel strongly that the area has fish in it then when you reach the end, you should turn around and fish it in the opposite direction. The second pass use different casting lanes, you should come by cover on a different side and in a different direction. (giving the fish a totally different presentation) Frequently, you should change lures and directions. This makes a lot more sense than starting the big motor and going to waters you do not have confidence in.
With five Bassmaster Elite Series tournaments remaining, BASS heads back to the state in which it was founded. The Elite Series makes its fourth stop of the season at Pickwick Lake in Florence, Ala., for the April 29-May 2 Alabama Charge.
