All Captions: Craig Lamb
Lucas primarily used a 6-inch hand-poured worm, blue and brown, rigged with a 3/16-ounce Eco Pro Tungsten Weight and 1/0 hook. He fashioned those components into a drop shot rig fished along a pier, where the bass were suspended over 8 feet of water.
Summing up his runner-up finish, Jason Christie said, âIt was fun all week.â Indeed. Christieâs payoff bait was a topwater frog. He chose a Booyah Pad Crusher, Sunburn color, rigged with a No. X Laser Trokar 3/0 Frog Hook.
Brent Ehrler focused on a creek channel slicing through an expansive flat, covered in a mixture of hydrilla and milfoil. Keying solely on one area required three lures to cover the fluctuating tides. On high tide and without floating debris he used a Lucky Craft Classical Leader CL-55 SSR, Begill (bluegill). Alternatively, he chose a green pumpkin 3/8-ounce homemade bladed jig, black blade with a Yamamoto Zako trailer.
âIt was a grind tournament, and I typically do well in those situations,â said Bill Lowen, a pre-tournament favorite for his shallow water skills. Lowen stayed in a shallow creek so narrow he could flip or pitch to both sides of the shoreline. That is what he did with 4-inch homemade creature baits.
Bass moved deep inside grass beds on high tide and back out to the edges on low tide, to sum up Andy Montgomeryâs all-day success. On low tide he used three lures. Those were Strike King KVD Perfect Plastics Dream Shot, Ocho and Shim-E-Stick. He drop shot the Dream Shot with a No. 2 hook and 1/8-ounce weight. A wacky rig with No. 1 straight shank hooked produced for the Ocho. He Texas-rigged the Shim-E-Stick with a 3/0 straight shank hook and 1/8-ounce Strike King Tour Grade Tungsten Weight.
Keith Combs started the day with a 3/8-ounce bluegill Strike King Pure Poison bladed swim jig. âItâs my version of a crankbait when fishing grass,â he said. âYou can work it really well through grass, break it free and trigger a reaction strike.â Combs fished the lure at 2 feet over grassy flats.
Brett Hite gifted Randall Tharp with a single 3/8-ounce Evergreen Jackhammer bladed jig he used all week. By Day 3 the lure bore the battle scars of success. For strike appeal he added a 3.5-inch Zoom Z Craw Jr. âI basically just junk fished around docks and punched grass,â he said. Alternatively, he used a 3/8-ounce 4×4 Randall Tharp Signature Series Jig, Golden Craw. To that he added a 3.5-inch Zoom Super Chunk Jr., green pumpkin.
For the third Elite Series event of the year Brett Hite relied on lures of his design. The pair was a green pumpkin 3/8-ounce Evergreen Jackhammer bladed jig and color matching 4-inch Yamamoto Zako for a trailer. Alternatively, he used a 5-inch Yamamoto Senko, green pumpkin/watermelon, rigged with a 4/0 VMC Extra Wide Gap Hook. He fished the Jackhammer parallel to grass edges near deeper water. âMaking contact with the grass was key to reaction strikes,â he said. Casting to laydowns and shoreline wood produced strikes on the Senko.
âIt looked just like home.â That is how Jordon Lee described his area resembling Lake Guntersville on the Potomac River. Lee punched thickly matted grass beds bordering the river channel. He used the KVD Perfect Plastics Strike King Rodent, Blue Bug and Green Pumpkin. He rigged those to a 4/0 straight shank hook and 1 1/2-ounce Strike King Tour Grade Tungsten Weight.
Gerald Swindle, another Alabama native, tapped into his comfort zone and found a similar area as Lee. âIt was a grinder, junk fishing,â he said, of his well-suited style of angling. Swindle used a 3.5-inch Zoom Z-Craw Jr., green pumpkin, rigged to a 2/0 hook and 1 1/2-ounce weight. âItâs the best setup ever invented for punching grass,â he added.
Fred Roumbanis relied on a weightless Gene Larew 6-inch Salt Flickâr, described as sinking worm, swimbait and do-nothing worm all in one. âIt has two appendages, and I was just burn retrieving it through the grass,â he explained. âThe bass were feeding on yellow perch and it matched their fleeing swimming action.â
Arizona pro Clifford Pirch, like western native Justin Lucas, likewise tapped into the obscurity of the drop shot for tricking jaded bass on the Potomac River. Pirch used a 6-inch Roboworm Straight Tail Worm, Margarita Mutilator. âI caught my fish from deep holes with clearer water ranging from 4 to 16 feet deep,â he said.