Finesse Fishing Tips for Bass

The following are the products mentioned in my webinar, Finesse Fishing Tips.

Drop Shot Gear
There are so many benefits to using a drop shot and I always have at least one tied up on my front desk. Here is a link to a previous blog with my whole setup.

Shaky Head Gear
The shaky head always catches fish. I like a straight tail worm like a 4" Yamamoto Senko or Zoom Trick Worm. Another good bait is the Reaction Innovations Flirt.

I'll fish this on a 7'2" M Phenix Recon2 rod with a Shimano Sustain 2500 spooled with 20-pound Seaguar Smackdown braid with a 10-pound AbrazX leader.

Ned Rig Gear
What is the Ned Rig? Check out my video below if you haven't heard of it. It is a finesse technique that is taking over the bass fishing world. I fish it on the same setup as the drop-shot (7' ML rod) and prefer the Z-Man TRD as my soft plastic. You can also cut a Strike King Zero in half and get the same effect.

The Z-Man ShroomZ are the jigheads of choice for many, but I recently received a Do-It Mold to pour my own.



Neko Rig Gear

I love the Neko Rig. If you have never heard of it, check out my video on it below. My favorite bait is the Reaction Innovations Pocket Rocket. It has a great action as the bait is falling, but really any Senko-style bait will work.

VMC has everything you need for Neko Rigging from the hooks to the weights. I also like tungsten nail weights like the ones from Reins.

I fish this most of the time on the same setup I use for a shaky head.



Hair Jigs

There are some great hair jigs on the market. I like the Outcast Tackle Feider Fly and Punisher jigs the best. I have also found cheaper alternatives by looking for steelhead and trout jigs.

I fish this on a 7' light action Phenix Ultra MBX with a Pflueger Patriarch XT and 15-pound Seaguar Smackdown with a 6-pound Tatsu leader.

Finesse Cranking

Who says crankbaits can't be finesse? I throw the Rapala DT6 and Ima Pinjack and fish it slow for a finesse approach. My rod choice is a 7' M Abu Garcia Villain 2.0 with a Revo MGX spooled with 10-pound Seaguar InvizX.

Customization

I like to dye the tips of my green pumpkin baits with chartreuse to better imitate perch and bluegill. The Dyeing2Fish kit has all you need to do it without making a mess.

Which Navionics Card is the Best?

I wrote a pretty detailed blog post earlier this year about the different Navionics cards and what each can do. Since then I have switched my preference since a new card has been released.

This is a question I get asked "which Navionics card is the best?" all the time and my answer is now the Navionics+ Regions card.  It is also the least expensive of them all at just $149.99.

The Navionics+ Regions has all of the same data as the the more expensive Navionics HotMaps Platinum and the Navionics+ card. Those two are both $199.99.

Here is a video showing what the card can do:

Here are the differences between these three:

• Navionics HotMaps Platinum: Has excellent mapping with 1 foot contour intervals. It also has 3D view and satellite overlay which the other cards do not. You buy the card for the region you plan to use it in.
• Navionics+: The great thing about this card is it is how much coverage it has. Meaning it is not restricted to a region. You can buy it and use it wherever you go in the U.S. and Canada, fresh or saltwater. All you have to do is download the area you plan to go. Same great 1ft contours as the other cards.
• Navionics+ Regions: All of the same great features as the Navionics+, but restricted to regions. If all you do is fish one state or a few states, this is a great choice.

My post from earlier this year has more details on Navionics and what you can do with them. Hope that helps! If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment below.

Story of Three 5lb Smallmouth

These past three trips have been great. I have caught a five plus pound smallmouth on each of them and it makes me realize how lucky I am to live in the Northwest. Each of them were a little different and all very fun! Here is how I caught each and what rod, reel and line did the trick.

Long Lake - 5.03lbs

I caught this one last Wednesday while "video game fishing". I saw a big arch in 28 feet of water and dropped it straight down and watched my drop-shot fall on the Lowrance. It bit immediately and I pulled it up pretty easily. I didn't think it was that big until I saw it. It made a few runs and then it tried to jump under the boat and smacked into the boat. After that it went nuts and dove down several times. I was using the new Seaguar Finesse Fluorocarbon in the 5.2-pound size. It held up fine and was a blast battling the fish on such light line.

Rod: Phenix MBX Classic Spin Rod 7' Light
Reel: Pflueger Patriarch XT Spinning Reel (Size 30)
Line: 5.2lb Seaguar Finesse Fluorocarbon
Bait: 3.5" Reins Bubbling Shaker Green Pumpkin
Hook: Gamakatsu Drop/Split Shot Hook Size 1
Weight: 3/16 oz. hand poured cylinder weight with Do-It Mold

Lake Coeur d'Alene - 5.12lbs

I made it out to prefish CDA one day and it was brutally cold. I only had a few hours and really didn't want to run around much. I located a hump on my Navionics+ Regions card and decided to give it a shot. With my depth highlighting set to show 20-40 feet only it was very easy to see the hump. I lined up, made a cast and the fight was on. This fish was short, fat and mean!

Rod: Phenix MBX Classic Spin Rod 7' Light
Reel: Pflueger Patriarch XT Spinning Reel (Size 30)
Line: 5.2lb Seaguar Finesse Fluorocarbon
Bait: Yum Warning Shot - Ghost Shad
Hook: Gamakatsu Drop/Split Shot Hook Size 1
Weight: 3/16 oz. hand poured cylinder weight with Do-It Mold

Lake Coeur d'Alene - 5.60lbs

This one was my favorite of them all. It was the biggest and also came when it counted, in the last half hour of our tournament. My partner had an idea to try a hump for the end of the day and it worked out. My first cast there I caught this fat smallmouth. I also caught two more before we had to go back. The key was fishing the swimbait very, very slow. Its hard for me to fish that slow but that's how they wanted it.

Rod: Phenix M1, 7'2" Heavy
Reel: Team Lew's Custom Pro Speed Spool SLP Casting Reel
Line: 15lb Seaguar Tatsu
Bait: Keitech 4.8 Swing Impact FAT - Gold Flash Bluegill
Jighead: 1/2 oz. Revenge Swimbait Hedz

The Mighty Columbia - WA TBF Recap

The Columbia River nearly got the best of me last weekend. It was the final Washington TBF tournament and I was in 3rd place in the points going in. The Top 7 for the year makes the State Team as a boater and 8-14 become non-boaters. I was pretty safely inside the Top 7, but I made it way too close.

Pre-fish bass selfie

I went down and practiced two weeks prior and found some good fish.  Each time I returned to this stretch I would catch one good one.  I went back multiple times at different times of the day to gauge if one was better than the other. It didn't seem to matter and I always caught one in the general area. Everywhere else I went I caught 12 inchers or non-keepers. Since that was my only solid place I had to put all my eggs in that basket.  

When the tournament came around the forecast was for 25-35mph winds. That was not good as I was out in the middle of the river in a notoriously rough section.  I went anyways and had about an hour before we got blown off of the spot. My co-angler caught two 3lbers, but I couldn't get a bite.  I scrambled and caught a tiny limit fishing bridge pilings.  I used a Dry Creek Tube, Aaron's Magic Roboworm and a Reins Bubbling Shaker to get my fish. 

Day 2 was nicer and I went again to my area and only caught one small fish.  Then leaving my next spot I lost my lower unit.  Turns out I had a gear go bad and it blew up the whole thing. Instead of getting mad, I got on the trolling motor and headed to the closest bank and caught one right away on the tube.  My partner and I made a plan to get back and with the help of other competitor's, we had a plan to pick him up around 12 and get him back to the weigh-in with our fish in time for the 1:00 weigh-in.  That gave me less than two hours to grind out a limit.  Obviously I couldn't go far, so I made the best of the area. I did it. I got a limit and caught a walleye in the process on the tube.  My last fish came with about 15 minutes to go and was the difference maker, the season maker really.

I finished in 7th place by two points, the last spot to be a boater.  I was so thankful to have filled out my limit and glad I kept going for it.  The tube saved me and so did all of the people who helped me get my co-angler and fish back. I also had some great friends who helped to get my truck to the ramp that was 20 minutes from the launch site.

Me on my 90 minute trolling motor run to the closest ramp

Here is the State Team pic (minus me) while I was stuck downriver

Another cool thing about my pre-fish and tournament was how much I was able to map the river with SonarChart Live.  I did it throughout and that should really improve the map here.  Here is a cool example of one spot that has already been updated.  It was a blank canvas and now it has some contours!

 BEFORE

AFTER

Newman Lake Recap - 2nd Place

Finally starting to recover from that marathon 12 hour night tournament Saturday night.  It was worth the sleep depravation though, because I finished in 2nd place.  I was thinking about this yesterday and it is my fourth 2nd place finish on Newman.  Good news is I can catch them there. Bad news is I finish just short. I can't complain though, Newman is a fun lake and I'll take 2nd place anytime. 

Here's how I did it:

It may seem like a repeat of all of my other recaps, but once again a black Eco Pro Tungsten jig and Aaron's Magic Roboworm accounted for most of my fish.  I started off quick and caught four on the drop-shot and Roboworm and then another small keeper on a Paycheck Baits Repo Man topwater. Limit by dark.  That was my goal and I had around 8lbs at that point. I then hit the same bank over and over and tried to keep my boat right on the deep drop offs, but still close enough to pitch docks. The Lowrance night view was a lifesaver for my eyes and really makes the Navionics 1ft contours stand out.

Once it got dark I tried all kinds of stuff. Topwater, the Ima Disrat, Dirty Jigs Scott Canterbury Pro Buzz and Z-Man Chatterbaits. Nothing was working until I started to pitch the jig to docks.  I caught several nice ones doing this and the way they hit it is why I keep coming back for night fishing.  They crush it! One change I did make was going from a Zoom Super Chunk Jr. to the full sized version. The bigger size makes much more action and I like this in lowlight or dark conditions. 

I had a limit for around 13lbs when the sun was starting to come up around 4:45.  I still had one 13inch keeper, so I decided to hit a smallmouth spot and immediately caught one on a Strike King Tour Grade Football jig. That one was almost 3lbs and got me up to the 15lb range.  My total was 15.63 and my biggest was 4.10. The others were all about 3lbs and was enough for me to put together a solid limit.

Next I decided to make a move and my cranking battery wouldn't start!  12 hours running lights, two HDS 12s, livewell, Oxygenator and more added up to a dead battery.  I was also charging my phone all day and running WiFi on my graph so I could map all night with Navionics SonarChart Live.  Bad move and dead battery.  It wouldn't even jump from my trolling batteries or a cranking battery from a boat that was close by.  I spent the next hour on my trolling motor crossing the lake and missed out on any more of the morning bite, but I made it!

Filling in the Map at Long Lake - Navionics SonarChart Event

Friday is the day that Long Lake will be mapped even better than it already is. I will be holding a SonarChart event on behalf of Navionics.  Feel free to join me and learn more about how to map lakes and do your part to improve the map.

I'll be launching at Riverside State Park (9 Mile) at 8:30 a.m. and will be mapping until around 3:00. Depending how many boats we get, we may have an informal bragging rights "photo tournament" to see who catches the biggest bass.  

Long Lake has been greatly improved over the past few years thanks to everyone uploading their logs, but there are still two big blue areas that haven't been mapped.  I know there is water there because I see it my Navionics Platinum card with satellite overlay. It's shallow in many of these areas, but I have fished there and know it is accessible. 

My goal is to map it all and I invite anyone who wants to help to come out with me and improve this and other areas on the lake. I'll show you just how easy it is to map the lake and if you have a WiFi enabled graph, you can see it done right before your eyes with SonarChart Live.

If you want to get a jump on things, read the Plotter Tutorial to see how easy it is.  I'll have all of the SD cards as well.

Moses Lake TBF Recap - 3rd Place

Well....I finished in 3rd place at Moses Lake this weekend. I am happy about it, especially after my practice and the fact that I had never fished this lake for bass. Here's how it went down and what I used to finish where I did.

Practice

I had some general ideas of places to check out and hit those first.  After a few hours of nothing, I got a largemouth up shallow on a Z-Man Custom Chatter Bait with a Strike King Rage Menace Grub as a trailer.  I fished several more places like it and never got another bite.

My buddy came and met me at 1:00 to pre-fish for a few hours.  We caught a few cranking with shallow divers all the way down to the 6XD.  I was scratching my head and decided to take a minute to look at my maps.  Moses Lake is a generally a shallow lake and finding water that was 15-20ft close to docks was my target area and we ran some of those and started catching smallmouth.

Day 1

We started on a rocky flat and then hit some bridge pilings and came up with nothing. Then I ran to one of my deeper rocky areas and my non-boater caught two right away. After a few more passes through the area we ran to another rocky area my non-boater knew about.  It was 9:05 when we arrived and at 9:31 I dropped my fifth keeper in the livewell.  It was fast and furious with a Roboworm on a drop shot.  We caught several more and then it slowed down.  

My next plan was to go target largemouth where I got the one in practice.  We fished and fished for them with nothing to show for it and then my non-boater caught a 4.75lber that ended up being big bass for the non-boaters.  After that we fished about a mile of shoreline and stumbled onto a rocky point.  With 20 minutes to go I caught two, he caught one and then I lost another. We ran out of time.

I was cranking a Norman Middle N and a ima Pinjack in craw colors on an Abu Garcia Villain 2.0, 7' medium rod, Revo MGX reel and 12lb Seaguar Tatsu. 

I weighed 14.76lbs and was sitting in 4th.

Day 2

I started where we left off the day before. Good call. In the first half hour I caught a walleye and both myself and non-boater each had three keeper smallies.  I was using the same cranks and my non was using a squarebill.

It was a short day with a 1:00 weigh-in and I fished my other Day 1 spot over and over and over and was able to round out my limit and cull a few times.  As you can see....we pounded the area.

I'd show you the pics of the cranks I was using, but the are wedged between some rocks somewhere on Moses Lake. I lost tons of gear this weekend.

This box was jam packed before this tournament

My Day 2 weight was 10.75lbs and I moved up to 3rd!

Here is my VLOG from the event.

Which Navionics Card is Best?

The question "Which Navionics card is best?" is one that I get all the time. So much in fact that I decided to put this post together to help everyone out. It can seem confusing at first, but it is fairly simple to decide which one is best for you. For this blog, I will just focus on the Navionics+ and HotMaps Platinum cards.

First, you need to see which card is compatible for your unit.  This is easy to determine by viewing this compatibility guide. Once there you will see a listing off all of the major brands of chartplotters and then find your model.  From there you will be able to first see which card will even work in your unit.

You will also see several three icons, each of these will show what the each card will do with your specific graph, which is based on the capability and age of your electronics. The three are as follows: Nautical Chart, SonarChart and Community Edits and this is what the icons will look like on the compatibility guide.

Here is a quick rundown of each one:

• Nautical Chart: Your basic charting that also includes many, many lakes including over 2,500 exclusive Navionics HD lake surveys with up to 1’ depth contour increments
• Community Edits: hundred of thousands of edits from the Navionics Community viewable on select GPS chart plotters. These things include points of interest, hazards, fishing spots and more.
• SonarChart: This is what you want to have if your graph is capable. It is HD mapping with the best detail you are going to find and thousands of lakes that no other cards even show. Can't say enough about how much I love using SonarChart detail on my Lowrance units.

Here is more info about SonarChart from Navionics:

SonarChart™ is an HD bathymetry map, great for locating fishing areas and revealing more bottom contour detail. It reflects ever-changing conditions by integrating sonar logs from the Navionics Community with existing data. Sonar logs and tracks can be accepted from many of today's leading chart plotters as well as our mobile apps for iOS and Android. 

Use your plotter/sounder or mobile device to create personal HD bathymetry maps in real-time with SonarChart Live. SonarChart Live is also the most efficient way to enhance SonarChart because your sonar logs are automatically sent to Navionics from your mobile and you can monitor the improvements while navigating.

So now that you have decided which card will work in your chartplotter, the next thing to do is pick the best one for you. If only one works, the decision is easy. If your graph will take any of the cards it will come down to a few different factors. Fresh or saltwater, region and more can all factor into deciding which one is best for you.

My favorite card is the Navionics+ card because it eliminates the need to decide based on fresh/saltwater and also the region.  The card comes pre-loaded with Nautical Charts for the whole country and then once you update the card in your computer, you can select the region you plan to fish and download the HD SonarChart for just the areas you need. It is the best detail and most updated data you will find. You can also update your card throughout the year to get more and more details as they are uploaded by Navionics users.  I typically update my card once a month and often see the difference on places I fish.

The HotMaps Platinum card is another very popular option and I use it too. It's freshwater only, but again the best detail you are going to find. It has SonarChart level detail that shows 1 foot contours. The cards are broken down by regions and you would just need to view this map to see which one works for you.  

The Platinum cards also have  the option to show satellite overlay for help with landmarks and other things on shore. Another cool thing is the ability to see the maps in 3D view.  I personally do not use this option as much since I am so used to the standard option, but many people love the feature. Those are the two biggest differences between the Navionics+ and the HotMaps Platinum.

Another thing about both of these cards is something called Freshest Data. Like I mentioned earlier, you can update your cards. Both of these allow for free updates for a year after you buy the card.  The update process is easy and you can get the latest, best and most up-to-date Nautical Chart, SonarChart and Community Edits data.

Here is a quick video I did on how to update your card:

Whatever card you decide on will be a good choice. The detail from the mapping will be excellent, it just comes down to which unit is best for you and the electronics you have.

Fall Fishing Potholes Reservoir

I talk about Navionics a lot, but this past weekend it made a huge difference in my third place finish on Potholes Reservoir. Without it, I would not have cashed a check. To give you a background on Potholes, it is a very unique place with many, many underwater sand dunes. 

When the water is high, "the dunes" are full of cover in backwaters and are a flippin' and pitchin' dream come true. When we fished it last weekend, the water was very low. It was some 20 feet lower than spring water levels and the fish were out much deeper. The places we all love to fish early in the year are now high and dry. The good news is these sand dunes and islands extend into the main lake. 

With the Navionics+ cards I was able to see these offshore humps that were usually out in the middle of nowhere, but came up to 20, 10 or even 6ft deep. I spent my time fishing crankbaits around these islands in water that was 20 feet and would cast either up to the shallow water or along the deeper water as it dropped off.  On a few of them, I would get to the shallowest point, drop my Power Pole and cast to all of the sides with a drop-shot. It provided several key fish for me each day doing that.

The other thing that came into play was fishing the rocky areas for smallmouth. Again, the Navionics card helped me. Not just to find the rocks, because they were easily visible with the naked eye, but to find hazards. Many of these rocky outcroppings came right up to the surface and running wide open over them would have been very dangerous. The same is true of the shallow sand dunes and more than one person I know got stuck on them.

What I did was set all of the water less than 30 ft to be a certain color on my graph. Since the water was approximately 20 feet low, anything less than 10 feet would show as blue on my graph. It helped me easily find spots to fish, but also helped me stay clear of potential dangers.

Here is a screenshot of what I was fishing and how it looked when I adjusted the depth range to show "shallow areas" as being anything less than 30ft and adjusted the "Fishing Range" do be anything deeper than 30ft. It showed the good spots and that is what I targeted with the crankbait.

I ended up the first day with just over 14lbs and the second day I had just under 12lbs. The first day I fished a rocky bank first thing and caught eight keeper smallmouth in about 45 minutes using the crankbait and a drop-shot.

I also had the big bass of the day on the second day with a 3.65lb bass that came on the Megabass Deep-Six on the steep side of one of these islands.  It was slower for me the final day, I went to the rock islands and caught a quick limit but it was much smaller than the day before.

This was my first time using this crank and I loved it, it dives down to over 20 feet. This was a brand new bait for my practice day and as you can see, this bait got pretty chewed up from banging into rock, sand and from catching tons of fish on it. I caught multiple largemouth, smallmouth and some nice walleye with this bait over the three days I was there. The dropshot also produced well and helped me fill out my limit each day. I never caught any really good ones on it, but it definitely helped contribute to my total weight.

Cranking Gear
Rod: 7'5" MH Glass Composite Powell Max 3D cranking rod
Reel: Shimano Curado I (6.3:1)
Line: 12lb test Seaguar AbrazX
Bait: Megabass Deep-Six (sexy shad)

Dropshot Gear
Rod: 7' Phenix Ultra MBX drop-shot rod
Reel: Shimano Sustain 2500
Line:15lb Seaguar Smackdown Braid, 8lb Seaguar Tatsu leader
Bait: 4.5 inch Roboworm straight tail Aaron's Magic
Hook: Gamakatsu Aaron Martens TGW Drop Shot Hook (size 1)
Weight: 3/16oz Eco Pro Tungsten Full Contact Drop Shot Weight

SonarChart Event on Newman Lake September 10th

Tomorrow we will be holding a SonarChart event on Newman Lake starting at 8:00 AM. Show up with your boat and I will show you how easy it is to improve the maps for this great lake. I will also be doing SonarChart live and can show you how it works. 

The map has been improving over the past year os so thanks to everyone uploading their sonar logs, but there is still more work to be done. Here are a few before shots. I will be posting the after shots after we finish mapping and the files are processed by Navionics.

I will be doing SonarChart live with my Vexilar SonarPhone with the T-BOX. I mounted the transducer to a piece of wood and attached it to my PowerPole with two clamps so I can easily remove it.

See you all there!

Badger Lake Recap

Badger Lake was a tough one for me. I caught fish..tons of them actually, but had a hard time finding any big ones. I caught numerous non-keepers and approximately 15 keeper sized bass and still weighed in less than 8lbs. 

I started off the day in an area that had big fish potential, an offshore spot where an underwater ridge came up from the 50 and 60ft levels to 20 ft and even as shallow as 8ft in some places. You can see it pretty clearly on these Navionics screenshots. The first picture is the standard NavChart and the second one is the SonarChart that has been updated from user generated logs.

I started fishing there and believe I caught three keepers from there and all of them came on a drop-shot. I was watching my graph and dropping it straight onto what I saw. My biggest fish of the day was a smallmouth and came "video game fishing". It's always fun watching them on the graph and dropping it right down to them. 

Drop-Shot Gear:

• 4.5" Aaron's Magic Roboworm
• Size 1 Gamakatsu Aaron Martens TGW drop shot hook
• 3/16 Eco Pro Tungsten Full Contact drop shot weight
• Phenix Ultra MBX drop-shot rod
• Shimano Sustain 2500
• 20lb Seaguar Smackdown (hi-vis yellow) with 8lb Seaguar Tatsu leader

After catching so many small fish, I decided to try to fish for a big one and started using a football head and Strike King 6XD crankbait. The result was the same. I couldn't believe that a six inch fish would bite those two baits and get hooked, but it happened multiple times. I did end up culling a few times with the football head, but still had to weed through plenty of little fish.

One of the craziest things I have ever witnessed while fishing happened to me at Badger and it happened twice! I was reeling in a small fish and had a 5-6lb bass swipe at it and try to eat it. About an hour later it happened again in a different area and with a 4lb class fish. I tried some bigger baits and swimbaits and couldn't get either to show again. It was crazy seeing them attack my poor little bass on the end of the line.

Overall it was a fun event and I do like fishing Badger every time I go. I feel like any cast can be a giant because there are so many good ones in there.

How to Make Your Own Lake Map

Making your own lake map or improving an existing one has never been easier. Navionics allows users to record sonar logs and then upload them to navionics.com. Within a week your map will be updated. Then when you update your Navionics+ card, you will have the latest map data.

I have been doing this all summer and here is an example of a before and after for Long Lake, WA.

Before

After

Before

After

You can find detailed instructions for all of the major electronics brands here.

Video How-To for Lowrance HDS Gen 1

Navionics Pre Fishing

Here's a little video I did on the various ways I use Navionics to pre fish for my tournaments and upcoming trips.

Lake Washington TBF Recap

Last weekend I spent three days on Lake Washington, right in Seattle. It is a cool place because it is an urban setting complete with multi-million dollar yachts, floating houses, the Seahawks training facilities and plenty of smallmouth bass. According to locals, this time of year is the absolute worst time of the year to be fishing there, but the TBF tournament was scheduled so we were there.

Practice

I headed over there with fellow Spokane Bass Club member Anthony on Thursday night and we rolled in around midnight. We were up before 4:00 and on the water as the sun came up around 5:00. I had been there one time in 2007 so I kind of had a general idea of what it looked like and I had talked to a friend who gave me two "community holes" to try. Overall the day was pretty awful, I ended up catching a limit's worth for about 11lbs, but that was fishing hard from 5:00 in the morning until 5:00 that evening. We ran all over the place and even got a warning for speeding in a 8mph zone. I didn't realize those whole areas were no wake! At least the police were cool about it. Overall I felt decent about my chances going into the event. I had caught all of the fish in different areas and on three different baits so that gave me some hope that I could expand on those areas. A drop-shot, a wacky-rigged 4" Yamamoto Senko and Megabass Pop X were the key baits during practice.

My best fish from practice

The nice police officer had pity on the out of town bass angler.

One of the areas I found with my Navionics Plus card in my Lowrance proved to be very good as it produced several fish in the tournament. It was a slight underwater point that dropped into deep water. The shallow side had a nice grassline and the fish seemed to be right along the contour lines that were the flattest.

Standard Nav Charts

SonarCharts showed a deeper detail of underwater point

Day 1

The first day started off good as I caught a small keeper fairly right away on a drop-shot. After that it really slowed down and all of the spots I went to had a boat right on them. It was about 8:00, really windy and I was already out of ideas...not the best way to start the day. I switched it up and fished some new areas and was lucky to catch three more keepers, bringing me to just over 6lbs for the day which put me in 14th. I caught them all on a Roboworm straight tail on a dropshot. I fished weights ranging from 3/16 all the way up to 1/2 and would switch them based on the wind, depth I was fishing and also the cover. The big weight saved my day when I was fishing over 25 feet of water in those white caps in a rocking boat, proving I will drop-shot in any weather.

Day 2

After the first day and my low weight, I knew I had to make a big change. Since all of my spots were getting pounded I decided to make a long run into Lake Union. While it really isn't "long" in terms of distance, it is in time spent getting there. A run there takes around 15 or 20 minutes and then an idle time of around 30 mins. So 45 mins, on a day when we had to weigh-in at 1:00 was a risk, but it was well worth it. I had some spots there, but my non-boater knew it very well. With his help, I was able to catch around ten keepers and had 10.71lbs, moving me all the way up to 4th place. All of the fish came on the Roboworm again and it was just a great all around day and gave me some great points for the season.

The whole trip was awesome, complete with a high finish (and check), a police encounter and a messed up transmission on my truck! It was fun driving almost 300 miles home going 55mph the whole way, but we made it back.

Northwest Bass Potholes Recap

This past month has been a whirlwind. I have been to Texas and Minnesota and also fished four different tournaments on four different bodies of water and can finally slow down a little. The most recent one was Saturday at Potholes Reservoir outside of Moses Lake, WA. I fished this trail with Dan from FHCOutdoors and we had out best finish yet, 23rd out of 80 boats. 

We weighed a limit of largemouth for 15.61 and were just over a pound out of the money. We were both happy with the event considering how little time we put in for this. With me being busy, Dan was able to get out one day last week before the off limits and I was relying on my limited experience there from seven plus years ago. One thing that really helped both of us for the event was the time we put in studying the maps with our Navionics phone apps (I have an Android and Dan has an iPhone). Also with the card in my Lowrance, we were able to replicate certain areas that were productive. As you can see in this screen shot, this place is like nowhere else. The key was finding areas in "the dunes" (as the massive sand dune area is called), that had narrow areas between the different islands but also had deeper water close by. Once we figured it out we were able to run and look for more areas like that. I worked out good for what we were doing and helped us catch some more fish and upgrade our limit.

We were able to catch our fish on a variety of baits in the grass, a Snag Proof Phat Frog in black, a green pumpkin Senko, a Eco Pro Tungsten Heavyweight Flipping jig and a creature bait. It is a fun place to fish and you can fish just about any way you want to. I can't wait to get back out there and hopefully come in with one of those 20+lb bags that you need to win there.