If you’re getting the BassBlaster for the first time it’s cuz a bud signed you up!
Today’s Top 5
Who woulda thunk it? Told me he’s feeling “really wow” and then said something that sounded like French. Sorry dude no speako! Anyhow, here’s what he used, from his winning pattern article on BassBlaster.rocks:
> “The key deal was 250-yard stretch. The front of it was shallow, 18” deep. Once you got in it, it got a little deeper. My Lowrance unit read 2.5′ as the deepest water in that area, and that was that 250-yard stretch.
> “…a mixture of hydrilla, pond scum, hyacinths, some old floating grass, isolated lilies, soft spots, really thick mats, points — all that was mixed in, and I caught ’em off everything. The deal was just fishing real slow back and forth, back and forth.
> “I’d drop the Power-Poles along the mat, and the first flip was 1′ in. The 2nd was 2-3′ back, the 3rd was 5-6′ back. The next flip was 2′ over and 6′ back, then 4′ back, 2′ back, then on the edge. Then I’d move 2 feet to the left, then Power-Pole down…all the way down that mat. I only had 250 yards of mat, so it was real important [to be that thorough].”
His only bait was a Luck-E-Strike Ringmaster in black/blue, TX-rigged with a pegged 1.5-oz tungsten weight, a 6/0 Strike King Hack Attack Heavy Cover Flipping Hook and either 65-lb Seaguar Flippin’ Braid or 80-lb Seaguar Kanzen braid on a Shimano Curado with a 7′ 5″ #8 X-heavy Falcon Cara rod.
Props to Cliff, who is now in the Classic (he was 77th in the points but made the Elites). He said: “It was down to the bottom of 9th, 2 outs, 2 strikes, nobody on base, facing Roger Clemens in his prime.”
Lol. Crazy as it sounds, Jason Baggett of Contingense.com found those things in the Atchafalaya Basin, north end of Palourde Lake.
More from the Open:
> Is this what flipping with a 10-footer will be like?
> Info from Hack and Boom Boom coming Thursday.
– The fisherman formerly known as “Little Alton,” aka Alton Jones Jr., talkin‘ ’bout his Open win at the Red Reever.
Makes me wonder: How many guys don’t win because they’re reluctant to adjust because they spanked ’em in practice? I’m going with: 90% of the field. Seat-of-pants bassin’ is this unusual:
> Noy Vilanysane broke a nearly 10-year-old lake record at Lower Otay Lake yesterday with his catch of a 102.9-lb blue catfish while competing in a bass tournament. The catch broke the previous lake record…98.45-lb caught in December of 2007….
> Noy was fishing for bass during the 2nd day of the San Diego Team Series…year-end championship event, and using 8-lb line on a spinning rod with a small 4″ paddletail swimbait.
> According to Noy’s posts on social media, the battle took about 1 hour….
Hole up, hole up. You’re in a bass derby and you spend an hour fighting a CATFISH?? My man Drake was like:
1. It tastes like pickle juice. Not as acidic, not as strong, but fer sher pickle juice. Was kind of hoping it tasted like my fave sports drink: green apple Gatorade — which tastes like a Jolly Rancher, which probly means it’s bad for me:
2. I don’t get muscle cramps, never did even back in my athlete days, but I believe I can feel Pickle Juice acting a bit like Gatorade (electrolytes). Good part is the PJ has NO sugar = great. Too much dang sugar in Gatorade, which means a sugar crash. [On the bottle Pickle Juice claims 10x more electrolytes than sports drinks.]
3. Actually looked forward to drinking it after a workout, which to me means: The taste grew on me (I like pickles anyway) and it’s probly doing something good for me.
4. Tried to get my athlete kids to drink it, they said no way. Told ’em that just meant more for me yo!
So if you want a shot of electrolytes with no sugar, preservatives or other bad stuff, gitcha some Pickle Power. And you gotta love the redneckian option of buying a blue 55-gal drum of it!
News
1. Lew’s sold.
That’s a surprise:
> An affiliate of Peak Rock Capital, a leading middle market private equity firm, announced today that it has acquired Do Outdoors Inc., doing business as Lew’s Fishing….
> “We believe Lew’s is an excellent platform for expansion through continued investment in new-product development and strategic add-on acquisitions.”
Bring on the roll-ups! Looks like Peak Rock owns no other fishing companies but does own Hunter Specialties and…a mushroom company. Maybe they grow cool mushrooms?
Cool. Here’s the pic, in case you’ve never seen KVD out of his superhero uni:
His favorite lipless is one of these — alien from Aliens, Cookie “Straight Outta Sesame” Monster, Strike King Red Eye Shad — guess which:
That Red Eye Shad color is blue gizzard shad = sweet.
4. TN: Brandon Card College and HS open derby.
This weekend, Norris Lake.
5. MO: 2 bass boat crashes at Ozarks.
> …was operating a Ranger bass boat upstream at 5 p.m., Oct. 29, when the vessel allegedly experienced a mechanical issue causing the throttle to stick open. The boat collided with a neighbor’s dock at the 3MM of the Gravois Arm.
Another was two boats, Viper-Triton crash.
Hope all are okay.
6. Lure maker suing Bass Pro Shops.
> The plaintiff holds Bass Pro Intellectual Property LLC and Bass Pro Outdoor World LLC responsible because the defendants allegedly unlawfully claimed a monopoly over all multi-section and jointed fishing lures.
If that’s true, wow.
Tip of the Day
Crochet’s shallow-flip hookset.
Interesting stuff, from his winning pattern on BassBlaster.rocks:
> “The most important thing I did all week was the hookset. In my mind this is the point that won me this tournament. Instead of setting the hook real hard and heavy — I like to swing like I’m crazy — what happened was…the bait would go through the mat and zero bites on the fall. So the bait went to the bottom, but when I’d pick the rod up and I’d feel a fish on it, in that shallow water and heavy cover instead of setting hook like I’m crazy, I’d have the rod at 2:00 and I’d just set the hook straight up, short and sweet.
> “I’d flip out, pick the rod up to 2:00…from there wouldn’t go down to create slack…I’d jerk from 2:00 to 1:00, real short and sweet. Bam! A compact hookset. I’d still set it hard, but no slack line and real quick.
> “Most were hooked right between the eyes. I think that was a huge deal to putting them in the boat. Because in real shallow water like that, in real heavy cover, if you crack on them real hard and slack-line ’em, those fish are coming out flying. And once that fish comes out of the water, it’s about 50/50 if you’re putting them in the boat.
> [How he figured out that hookset:] “I probably lost 8 million fish like that [jerking too hard] over time, just learning the hard way.”
Guess Hack was cool with the ‘Cajun crazy’ hookset:
Quote of the Day
I don’t think I’m ready for the tour, but I didn’t embarrass myself.
– Dion Hibdon talkin‘ ’bout fishin’ at a fruit jar on Lake of the Ozarks.
Okay, not really. Talkin’ ’bout golf:
> “I had never golfed before, so I wasn’t sure where my ball was going to go.”
Never bet against a Hibdon. Ozarks fish/golf derby Nov. 16-18.
Shot of the Day
Random
So can hydrilla plants be engineered to sniff out bass??
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