How Bobby Lane won the Kissimmee Open

Bobby Lane was hot in 2017 and hasn’t slowed down — he won last weekend’s Kissimmee, FL Bassmaster Open. The keys were:

– Finding the right water

– Fishing it thoroughly

Finding the right water

> “The key was I caught a 5-lber in practice on Monday in some hydrilla. The hydrilla wasn’t choked out. I had few more bites and was like, What the heck? So the next 2 days I ran all 4 lakes looking for hydrilla on the inside grass line.

> “I was running 60 mph — the high speed sonar on my Raymarine Axiom Pros is phenomenal. I could see everything on the bottom — I could eliminate all the water I needed [at that speed]. I burned 2 tanks of gas in practice.

> “There’s not a lot of hydrilla out there. I don’t know if it was from the hurricanes or all the nasty wind we had in practice — it was really battered. Where I normally catch ’em is clean Kissimmee grass, clean pads, clean arrowheads — but the fish weren’t on that structure this time I think because the wind was back and forth.

> “If you found hydrilla with [those veggies plus gator vine] and got a bite, you could find quality fish. I had 3-4 areas scoped out…. When you found hydrilla where the water was crystal clear and never got dirty from the wind, that was keeping those fish in there.”

Fishing it thoroughly

He had 2 main baits, and 3 more he fished. The hydrilla was pretty shallow, like 2.5′.

> Berkley PowerBait Rib Toad (watermelon red, and black), 6/0 Trokar TK130 Hook, 50-lb Spiderwire Ultracast, Abu MGX Reel (8:1), 7′ 3″ H Abu Fantasista Premier Rod.

> “That’s my frog. You can throw it 3 times further than any other frog out there because it’s a little heavier…when it sinks, it actually has a frog action going down — it sinks side to side….”

> “Throw it as far as you can, swim it all the way back to the boat and when they wake it, drop it and then bury the hook.

> Berkley Powerbait MaxScent The General (junebug), 5/0 Trokar Big Nasty Worm Hook, 5/16-oz Flat Out Tungsten weight, 17-lb Berkley 100% Fluoro, Abu ALX Reel (8:1), 7′ MH Abu Villain Rod.

> “I fished it slow…Texas-rigged. When you thought it was too slow, you needed to go slower…like a minute or 2 before you moved the bait.”

Said his Power-Poles were key. The other 3 baits:

> 3/4-oz Yo-Zuri Hardcore Flashi’n Vibe (metallic silver black), 17-lb 100% Trilene, ALX Reel (6.4:1), 7′ M Abu Veritas Rod. “In Toho…just the standard yank it out of the grass, let it go down.”

> 1/4-oz 4×4 Swim Jig with hand-tied skirt (black/blue/purple) and 3″ swimbait (black/blue). Same rod, reel, line as frog.

> The final day he flipped Toho with a Berkley Creature Hawg (gp), 5/0 Trokar TK135 Hook, 1.5-oz Flat Out Tungsten weight, 65-lb Spiderwire, Abu STX left-handed reel (7:1), 7′ 6″ H Villain Rod.