Quick story: Prom weekend for my 18-year-old daughter. She left the house in jammies at about 1 pm. I said, "Why are you wearing jammies?" She said, "Stop asking dumb questions dad." Then my wife says, "It's okay" and looks at me like I'm an idiot. I was like, "I didn't say it wasn't okay, I just was wondering why someone would leave the house to go somewhere in the middle of the day wearing jammies?" They ignored me.
Day before they said, "You dress like a fisherman." Was I supposed to feel bad about that?? I was like, "That's because I am a fisherman duh!" Got the double eyeroll. I mean, I wear the most multifunctional piece of clothing ever created, a hoodie sweatshirt, every day. Why wouldn't I?? I mean, Al Lindner does it and he's my hero man!
I thought about begging my son to come home to restore our household male-female balance, and then I was like: I'll just get another dog! 🤣
Took Lucky the Lab for a swim at the closer of 2 local lakes, the one I can't get on because of ultra-low water so there's an ultra-flat "ramp." That "ramp"/lake bottom is now a ramp, kayak-inflating, rigging and chilling area, SUP launching area, a fishing area, a picnic spot and who knows what else. It's an EPIC fire drill. Gal in a minivan who was trying to back up to the parking lot honked at a guy trying to back in his little tin boat, like she had the right of way. Beam me up Scottie!
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Reminder: If your email program cuts off the bottom of this email, click "View this email in your browser" up top to see the whole thing. Sorry bout that – email programs keep changing stuff.
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How Lee Livesay won another one at Fork.
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> "...I ran up more north than I would normally fish this time of year and fished that 6th Sense 300DD and Hog Farmer Stand Up Hair Jig...shell bars in 8-12'.
> "I caught 3-4 off that 1st spot, and 2 big ones off that 1st spot the 2nd day. [Then he] fished all kinds of other stuff, a little deeper water, then a 9-14' spot – I caught a big one off there the 1st and 2nd days.
> "The 2nd day I...caught 1 good one in that little bit deeper spot and that was it, then I went and looked around. I went to the spot where I ended up catching them the 3rd and 4th days really good. I caught three 5-lbers off it...and looked the rest of the day.
> "The first 2 days I got to look a lot in the afternoon but never found anything new.
> "I went through all my progressions the 3rd day...I lost one on my first spot, hit a dozen new spots I hadn't fished and nothing, the mid-range depth stuff, nothing. Then I came to [his main spot] – I got there between 9:00 and 10:00...caught 23 lbs off it in probably 2 hours.
> "I went and ran whole bunch of stuff after that...probably drove 2.5 hours without stopping and never found a group of fish. I never put the trolling motor down.
> "I ran back to a group of white bass to try to get the whites fired up – if you do that, sometimes you can catch a big one. I caught 2-3 whites on the big flutter spoon, then I threw my jig in there and caught that 8-lber."
> Day 4: "Same deal, same starting spot, nothing. Next spot, nothing. I fished 5 new spots, some old history I hadn't fished in 20 years, nothing. I kept looking...we had a north wind change so I fished some stuff for that, nothing. Topwater, nothing....
> "I knew had to be back at that spot at 9:30. I got there at 9:29, set down and caught one my first cast – a 5-lber on the jig. I rotated through the jig and the big worm on a big shakey head, then caught a 4-something on a 500DD, and had what I had in a couple hours...went looking again.
> "I thought it was time to find another fresh school, so I went and ran it all. I wasted hours driving around and idling – I looked at the whole lake pretty much. I went to where I caught that 8-lber the day before but they weren't there, the mid-depth fish were not there – at the end of the day I knew I had to go back to that spot.
> "...the jig again, the big worm – I caught 2-3 more and was upgrading. That's when my weight really jumped up. I had 1 bream bed I was going to go to at 2:30 [but] my last good one was 5-05 and it spit up a big shad. I was like, Man these fish are feeding on shad. But it was really thick and I didn't want to get my crankbait hung up.
> "I waited til the last second...I picked up that 6th Sense 6" Flutter Spoon and on my first hop I catch an 8-03. It just had 1 hook in the bottom lip – I had that Gamakatsu G Finesse on there thank God. I fought it, it got stuck in a tree, I got her back up, lipped her at 2:45 and that was it. That was my final bite and final fish. It weighed 8-03."
His main spot
> "It was a little do-nothing high spot in some timber, about halfway back in a major creek – really thick timber. No point comes off the bank...[it's] a high spot that comes up before the channel...a little section in the timber that's kind of clear...hard bottom. The shallow side was about 13' and the deep side was 17'.
> "They'd swim around that little hard, clear spot, and they'd get on some trees every now and then. I was using Mega 360 – they were constantly moving, they never sat still...and Spot-Locked where I thought I could get them out of the timber the best."
Baits
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Couple more:
Electronics
> "I was finding my fish with Humminbird Mega Side Imaging and Down Imaging, finding those fish in the timber.
> "When I was fishing my spots, the 2 things that were huge for me were Spot-Lock with the Minn Kota Ultrex, and the Humminbird Mega 360. A lot of times I'd Spot-Lock and fish out of the back of the boat because of the way the wind was blowing. And I was watching them on Mega 360...pan around and show where those fish were moving every cast."
Shout-outs
> "Ballistic Boats, Mercury Marine and GeigerTec mounts. I ran that thing like a dog up and down the lake every day...it was rough.... I have confidence I could run that could run that rough stuff as fast as I wanted to and nothing would break."
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😁 No idea what that's from but if fit! Here we go:
1. Is it time to rename the Fork Elite the Livesay Family Benefit Tourney??
> "No, not even close. We want 'em to keep coming back."
2. Is it true you promised Chase Anderson 5 free guide trips a year if he'd have an Elite on Fork every year? 😁
> "Yes.
> "Not really."
3. If the Super Bowl was tomorrow, would you play in it and catch the winning touchdown or what man dang!
> "For sure. I'm a gamer."
4. How many wins at Fork will it take to get Whiskey Myers to perform at one of these deals?
> "Two. I think they're ready. It's gonna happen."
5. When you're fishing an Elite on your home lake on a weekend, you're obviously a magnet for boats. How do you deal with all that while fishing for 6 figures?
> "You know you just have to make it a positive. I like those guys following me around – little kids, family and friends. I'm fishing for them...I want to catch 'em as bad for them as I do for myself.
> "There's always good and bad, but you just have to be positive."
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4th and 5th Fork Elite baits.
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Hope to have BP (2nd) and G-Man (3rd) in the next one:
4th: Shane LeHew
> "Cane Walker was the predominant bait. Fished on shad/gizzard spawn points, 1-5'. Later in the day fished around shallow stumps and trees when the sun would get high. Same depth range.
> "Days 3 and 4 the 10" Power Worm was the dominant bait. Same shad-spawn points. I believe the cloud cover hurt my topwater bite a bit and I had to slow down with the worm.
> "The 8-05 the last day I was pitching shallow trees with the worm. Panned over to a tree that had fallen in 8' of water with Garmin LiveScope. The fish was sitting right in the middle of the tree and caught my worm on the way down."
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5th: Marc Frazier
> "I was targeting shallow hard spots 2-8' in the mornings, then moving deeper as the day progressed – eventually getting to 16-25' where I caught a big one each day and the largest bass of the event on the last day. Deepest spot was a big long point that came out into the channel."
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Comeback of the year? 119th to 1st! 🤯
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Is this a record?? Gotta be man, dang. 3-day 'Yota derb on the Harris Chain and winner Jonathan Semento started in 119th!
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> ...word spread like wildfire that Lake Griffin was the lake to avoid. Hydrilla spraying, algae blooms and rising water temperatures had turned the water color into a hue that resembled pea soup. Some who spent time there quickly changed lakes after just a few hours of practice.
> Semento, who lives in nearby Okahumpka, knew better.... His mind was already made up that Griffin would be his horse.... When he locked through the first morning, he was stunned to see that only some 10-15 boats were going to Griffin....
Day 1 he had 9-15 = 119th. Day 2 he caught the biggest limit of the week so far, 24-15, and was in 7th. Day 3 he beat that with 25-03 and won the deal by almost 4 lbs!
> "I was pretty frustrated that 1st day. But I knew those big fish were offshore and I just needed to relocate them. On the 2nd day, I moved around a lot more and found them about 200 yards from where I caught them 2 weeks ago.
> "What made it possible to relocate them was the fact that I had the whole lake to myself."
> The key spot the fish had moved to was a 100-yard stretch of clumpy eelgrass in 4-6' of water. The grass was healthy and green and full of bream, as evidenced by the number of bluegill his bass spit up in the livewell.
Fished 2 ChatterBaits – a 3/8-oz (golden shiner) for clumps in 4' and a 1/2-oz (chart/white) for clumps in 6', both with Yamamoto Zakos:
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Gitcha BassBlaster Top 5 weekly vid update!
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Started a new thing, little video rundown of the top 5 deals each week – thank you to Sea Foam for floating it. Little rusty on-cam 😁 but gonna get there! Posting them on all BB social and will be linked here. Hope you dig it and it makes you laugh one way or the other! 🤣 "Live action yee yee yee!"
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Should be out every Friday afternoon on social and YT.
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1. We lost a few bassin' brothers this weekend.
Dang. Major boating weekend coming up too, please be extra-careful out there.
> According to TWRA, 60-year-old Daniel Keeling was fishing on his bass boat on Sunday morning when he ended up in the water. Officers were called to the lake when people spotted the boat unoccupied around 11:15 am.
> Officers arrived to the West Sandy portion of Kentucky Lake and found Keeling's boat and began a search in the area. The Henry County Sheriff's Department and Rescue Squad handled the search, and Keeling's body was recovered a few hours later.
> Keeling was not wearing a life jacket.
> Around 10:30 pm Friday, a 20' vessel and a bass boat crashed into each other, LDWF said. Two people were thrown from the boats, but survived. The body of the 20-foot boat's operator...was found afterwards.
> Search crews found the body of Kenneth St. Romain, a Baton Rouge-area dentist, before 9:00 am on Sunday, LDWF said.
> While at the scene, officials reported discovering that a person who had been riding in a bass boat alone had died. The person was identified as 17-year-old Eric B....boat had been in a crash with another boat that had 6 people on board....
Bless you bassin' brothers. Please pray for their families. 🙏✝️
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> ...the Flipping Biffle Bug was built from the Biffle Bug. It has the original Bug's signature shape, kicking back legs, gliding tail, and ribbed and hollow body. A key difference is the addition of solid head that gives the bait a creature-like appearance and adds size, along with solidly holding a flipping hook in thick cover.
> Also a pair of swimming front legs replace the small bug legs, and the back swimming legs are enlarged.
> The Flipping Biffle Bug is 4.5" long, which is 1/4" longer than the original Biffle Bug.
Comes in 15 colors, here's "dark watermelon candy":
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Don't see it on TW yet but it's here. Talked to the Gene Larew folks about enabling Tommy's whole Biffle Bug obsession but I think they heard me wrong...😂
3. Couple good pro forward facing sonar vids (YT).
No, not talkin' bigfoot – Boyd and Wade. Wade is a visor legend: 👊
- Boyd Duckett, professional angler and owner of Duckett Fishing
- Wade Middleton, President of CareCo TV, TV show host, and creator of Bass Pro Shops Collegiate Bass Fishing.
> "We are happy to announce that we will be returning to Springfield, MO!! We will again be at the John A. & Genny Morris Convention Center for this year's event. Come join us Saturday, Aug 20. Doors will open at 9am and the event will start at 10:30. There will be a luncheon and entertainment included.
Is it a fluke deal? Or a Flukemaster?? 🤪 Congrats to him:
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Lake Somerville. Don't know anything about it, sounds like a brother needs a hand.
If you recall the "Wrangler Angler" days of B.A.S.S., now they are sponsoring the MLF Bass Pro Tour – and guess what their fishing line of clothes is called: Wrangler Angler.
Big props to the AR DNR:
> ...AGFC staff have added 7,335 new fish attractor sites across the state during the last 5 years.
I heard that multiple Hall of Famer and AR resident Steve Bowman has 1 more GPS point than the AR DNR does tho...and it's the best 1...and I heard that from Bowman himself...😆 Bowman!
VT! Congrats to 'em.
Perissa Millender Bailey, came from Ford:
> This new position on Mercury's leadership team will be responsible for leading the company's electrification business and product development strategy.
Pretty sure all politicians don't listen but A for effort!
> "The issue is the energy density gap between batteries and gasoline. Batteries are heavier, require more energy and cost more to power a boat. Gasoline has dramatically more energy per unit than any type of battery available which creates the gap between the two energy sources."
Associate Brand Manager for GSM's fishing division (so far Yamamoto and Bill Lewis).
Yikes man – because of the ultra-low water:
> When the Las Vegas Mafia wanted to dispose of a body, then the deep waters of Lake Mead were a perfect spot – with the body often stuffed in a steel drum. Known as a "Chicago overcoat", that and a pair of "concrete shoes" were enough to guarantee the corpse would never see the light of day again.
> Las Vegas police were called on May 1 after leisure boaters spotted the remains of a man in a rusted barrel near the lake's Hemenway Harbour.
> "With water levels declining, it's very possible we're going to have some very interesting things surface. I wouldn't wager on them finding missing Mob king Bugsy Siegel, but I believe there are going to be a few more bodies nature may reveal."
Lines of the Day
- From a Merc deal on "crude boat ramps," which honestly is an insult to ramps everywhere. 😁 My 2c: Nothing and no one is more motivated than a bass fisherman who is convinced big dumb fish are there. And redneckian contraptions to enable impossible feats are a daily deal all over the dang world mang!
- Ozarks Smallmouth Alliance founder Ryan Walker talkin' 'bout Ozark streams. Gotta think couple reasons for that are the moving water and smaller habitat, but still that sounds small!
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On BassBlaster.rocks right now...
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Finesse wacky rig with another innerestin' Hayabusa hook.
Check this deal out:
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> "In this setup shown in the pic with the Spin Muscle hook I use the 3", 3.5" or 4" Bubbling Shaker. The shape (V-Bend) of the Spin Muscle Hook – I like the 1/0 size – eliminates the need for an O-ring on the lure. An effortless pull of the rod tip will sink the hook point into the fish.
> "The ribbed body of the bait creates a larger profile in a finesse presentation, and also creates air pockets allowing the bait to 'flow' enticingly through the water column. The tail shakes effortlessly as the bait falls, and once the bait hits the bottom it has action even with the slightest twitch of the rod.
> "The Reins Tungsten Nail Sinkers in the fat end of the Bubbling Shaker are so thin they stay firmly in the plastic. For this setup I like the 1/96-oz, 1/64-oz or 1/32-oz. If there's significant wind I might go to the 1/16-oz."
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"...it can be too enticing to shine that beam of live out there on those offshore spots. We're forgetting about the fabulous fishing that's taking place on the bank."
- Chris Zaldain talkin' on the Bassmasters – ain't no one forgettin' Chris! 😁 Of course he's right and even before Live sonar a lotta guys couldn't wait to get out deeper just with 2D and/or 360. But man if you grow up fishing shallow it's a hard habit to break!
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Guessing our newest Supreme Court Justice would not be able to answer that question lol! Seriously tho: Elephants are not people but might be smarter than people. Bass are not smarter than people even though they outsmart us all the dang time! 🤔
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Jay Kumar's BassBlaster is a daily-ish roundup of the best (sometimes worst) and funniest stuff in bassin', picked by me – Jay Kumar. I started BassFan.com, co-hosted Loudmouth Bass with Zona, was a B.A.S.S. senior writer and a bunch more in bassin'. The Blaster is the #2 daily read on any given day in the wide world o' bass so thanks for readin'!
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