How Drew Gill got his 3rd win in 3 years at Guntersville

Drew “bull” Gill is now at 1 win for every year he’s been a tour pro. Not bad!

Yep the Guntersville MLF BPT was a mostly Scope deal because of the time of year, but because it was Gville it could not be won just doing that. The guys had to have something else going on.

Drew figured his shallow deal out on day 2 and rode it to the win – which basically was a 1-fish win over rookie Jacob “sky” Walker. Here’s the deets.

Going in and practice

> “What I was expecting was okay it’s cold…big fish are gonna get caught, but it’s gonna be kinda grimy for Guntersville…a little bit slow. …the shallow bite’s not really gonna play, it’s gonna be like hang a jerkbait and try to get outta your own way whenever you don’t have Scope.

> “…the no-Scope bite, I did not see them smashing them the way they did. That part really caught me off-guard….

> “The Scope deal was pretty par…for what I thought it was going to be. You’re going to have to find a basin…with some deeper water that has some baitfish around. …just find a place where the baitfish and bass collide, where their existence is congruent enough that you can use the baitfish to catch the bass.

> “I probably only practiced for about an hour and a half to figure out what I was going to do without Scope. …let’s go to the bottom end of the lake where the water’s the cleanest and try to make it where a fish can notice my bait from as far away as possible. I couldn’t be more wrong.

> “In the winter tournaments I’m very hardcore on not looking for a no-Scope deal til you’ve got your Scope deal figured out. In this one [the Scope period] wasn’t everything but it was substantial. Last year at Conroe it was everything.

> “So I was not done looking tiI I knew I found THE place for me to go.

> “I really only found 2 places I felt god about. 1 I felt mediocre about, 1 I felt great about [which is where he] ended up winning every single Scope period.”

The Scope spot: A causeway bridge

> “It was just a bridge, but here’s the thing about bridges. People use the term ‘bridge’ but a bridge on Guntersville and a bridge on the St Lawrence River are 2 very different things. [On Gville] we’re talking about causeway bridges. That’s what makes Guntersville bridges so special.

> “…it’s almost a dam. it’s a big concrete and riprap structure that separates one portion of a creek from the main lake. Through a very narrow gap is where all the water has to move. When they’re pulling water and all the water is coming out of the creek, it washes the water out from under the bridge and makes a very deep hole.

> “…I knew the bait was probably going to be piled up under those bridges. It always is in the winter at Guntersville.

> “In the mornings, the bait would get kinda out from the bridge…tighter to the bridge as the day went on.

> “In dirtier water in the winter, generally bass don’t go looking for bait. They live where they live, and if bait is present nearby, it can activate ’em. You’ve got to find a place where there’s a baitfish population, and a place for bass to reside. That bridge has a roadbed out front…8-10′ deep, a perfect place for bass to sit.

> “In the mornings the bait would spread out so wide…all the way to the roadbed. And the bass on that roadbed would get activated. …as the bait shifted around, it would activate different parts of that roadbed, the bridge itself, the riprap…and as the bait moved it would pull bass to it.

> “So I had to fish my Scope deal in the morning.

> “I was trying to use my boat positioning to corner [the bass]. I cared about where the edges of that school of bait were [relative to] the end of that roadbed [and other bass residential areas].

> “When the wind started blowing [the bait] would sift toward the riprap. I tried to get between the bait and the riprap to where…I could cut [the bass] off [coming and going]. Because when they go into the bait you couldn’t see them, so you had to catch them inbetween…using hte bait to draw them out.”

> “Guntersville is not a generally a clear lake, so the bass don’t like to live 20′ deep on the bottom under the bait this time of year. So you’ve gotta find a place that has shallow-enough water near the bridge for bass to want to reside in.

> “You could not have drawn up a more perfect place. There were 100s of them there.”

Tournament

You know how he caught ’em every day in the 1st period, here’s the other periods each day:

> Day 1: “I went downlake to throw a jerkbait and it spectacularly did not work out. It had to…for me to have no hope in going back down there.”

> Day 2: “The wind got blowing out of the west a bit and chopped up the water, and I landed on a pretty good crankbait bite. …water about 4′ visibility when it was calm, but when it blew some of that silt and sand off the top of the bars…turned it to 1-1.5′ visibility. The fish were still there and they would bite a crankbait really well.

> “Day 3 it didn’t blow…so I had to throw a jerkbait to get by. Same areas, main-river bars….”

> Day 4: “The wind did not blow in the 2nd period but it kicked up in the 3rd period, chalked-up the bars, I picked up the crankbait again and put down 20 lbs in that last period to seal it up.”

Baits

> Minnow: 4.25 Big Bite Baits Spotlight Minnow (blue gizzard – “I really like the white belly in stained water, especially around bait – it flashes hard”), 3/16-oz 90-degree ball head with a 2/0 hook, 22-lb braid to 12-lb Seaguar JDM Grand Max Fluoro, BPS Johnny Morris Carbonlite Tech Spin Reel (2000), 7′ 4″ L Phenix Feather Spin Rod.

> Why the smaller reel: “I like the decreased weight. And I’m not making long casts with it, I’m making short pitches. I wanted to keep it within 40′ to where my line angle was super steep when I was shaking my minnow. The flatter your line angle, the less your minnow rolls, and they only bit it if it rolled really aggressively.”

> Crankbait: Shallow (4-6′) crankbait (crawdad = brown back, tan sides, orange belly) with #4 G-Finesse Trebles tied on with braid (50-lb Seaguar Smackdown Stealth Grey – he only lost 1 fish of 29 bites the final day), 14-lb Seaguar JDM R18 Fluoro (heavier line to control depth – the grass was 4′ deep), BPS Johnny Morris Reel (8.3), Phenix X12 Composite Casting Rod.

> Why a high-speed reel: “That’s what I like to crank grass with. A slow reel doesn’t have the torque to pop it [out of the grass, and] with the rod [only] you’re gonna snatch it way too hard.” He says he does a quick pop with the rod tip and the reel to get the bait out of the grass without moving it too far from where it was.

> Jerkbait: Jr size (pro blue) with #6 G-Finesse Trebles tied on with the same braid, 12-lb Seaguar JDM R18 Fluoro, BPS Johnny Morris Signature Casting Reel (8.3), 7′ 1″ ML Phenix Feather Rod.

> Jerkbait action: “…only single snaps. I’d pop it once and give it a little shake at times.”

> Why he likes the R18 Fluoro: “It’s very dense and the thing I love about it for moving baits is it’s very supple [even in colder temps]. It casts incredibly well – very smooth casts so it’s really accurate.”

Electronics

He was running Garmin LiveScope:

> “I ran it tighter than normal…80′ out, mid-20s down.

> “Every bass I’ve ever weighed on Scope has been on amber [color palette].

Shoutouts

> “It was my first tournament in a Nitro and I won it. That was cool.”