Few years back Jordan Lee won the MLF Heavy Hitters on the Kissimmee Chain. Fast forward and he did it again, but in a different way. In 2020 he won it fishing offshore brush. This time he was offshore too, but froggin' Here's the deets.
Going in and practice
> "I didn't really have a plan. About the same week 4 years ago I won there. I won fishing offshore brush...in Toho. I didn't expect that to be the exact same. I thought that Toho had a decent bit of grass in it, but I wasn't sure so I just went there with an open mind because I knew it would be different.
> "I didn't even load any waypoints in...just because of how FL changes so much. So that was my plan...just to keep an open mind. I knew I wanted to fish Toho just for the simple fact that I won there....
> "...we had 3 days of practice. Day 1 I noticed lot of hydrilla in the lake. I was kind of just focusing on fishing the same general area where I won.... I caught some on topwater fishing open water...a walking bait, throwing a dropshot around. I was catching some fish and thought I could do okay but nothing crazy.
> "Day 2 I was fishing on the south end of Toho where tournaments have been won in the past. It's basically just choked out with hydrilla down there. Mats everywhere...giant field of matted grass, and where it wasn't matted it was just hydrilla.
> "I started flipping but I wasn't really feeling the flipping bite because there's so much grass. I noticed blowholes like on Guntersville where the bass bust through mats. There wasn't really any bream popping like there is in Guntersville....
> "I picked up my frog thinking, Surely not. My first cast I had one come up on it – a small fish, but 4-5 casts in a row I get bit. Most of them were small...not even setting the hook...didn't want to have these drag marks coming through there. I was trying to be sneaky about it.
> "I kept going down the mat and ended up getting about 30 bites in an hour or so. I was getting an insane amount of bites and some good fish. I could tell they hadn't been fished for by the way the grass looked – there wasn't any frog trails.
> "...needed to bounce around out there and find as many places as I could with fish. So that's what I did the rest of the day...started getting bit.
> "I knew it would be tough overall, so I pretty much knew that this could be something special. I wasn't seeing that many boats out there....
> "Day 3 we had some storms coming in. I ran down to try a totally different area...didn't get many bites. I took out at 10-10:30...but day 2 the bites were plentiful so I knew I would able to put a frog in my hand and kind of mill around."
Tournament
> "Day 1 was just incredible how many bites I got...I lost just as many as I caught. I had a pretty good lead on the rest of the field throughout the day.
> "After the 1st day catching as much weight as I did I knew I was gonna be in for day 3. So it was all about strategy then. I needed to eliminate water and expand on what I found. And leave those areas alone and try to manage them. If boats happened to come in where I fished...try to guard that....
> "Day 2 I was trying not to catch a lot but trying to find some new areas....
> "I knew Day 3 wasn't going to be as easy and it wasn't. I went to the same general area and the mats looked a lot different – from airboats running through there or local pressure. You can tell by the looks of the grass and the frog tracks where fish are drug out. That made me a little concerned but it was kind of what I was expecting.
> "I hit one good stretch that got me well in the cut. By that point I'm thinking...the final day I really need to focus on those small areas...waypoints in the grass where I'd gotten the most bites and maybe the bigger fish.
> "Especially with the [change to a] 3-lb minimum. I was getting a lot of fish that were 2-2.5 lbs...5, 6, 7 maybe 8 bites per day over 3 lbs. So obviously I knew it would be tough the final day.
> "[Day 4] I get in this mat and catch 3 in 15 minutes that were 3.5-4.75 lbs – all good fish. This 1 mat didn't look any different but I had caught them there the day before. It had a lot of 2-3 lbers, but a section of it...I knew were good ones.
> "I ended up hitting it from a different angle...catch 2 more. So I caught 5 of my fish out of one 50-yard section fishing it real slow.
> "It was pretty flat out there...in about 5'. [He was looking for] areas where it was really canopied – had a good top on it. If it was not disturbed, a big mat and you could see a couple holes where fish blew up...you could just tell you were gonna get bit."
Baits
> Berkley Swamp Lord frog in gp, maverick (black) and "copperhead."
> "I had 2-3 different ones tied on. Color didn't really seem to matter, but I always like throwing the darker colors over that grass. Especially when it gets tough and it's real bright and sunny out, I feel like that darker color can show up better [to the fish].
> "Compared to a popular-brand frog, I feel like the Swamp Lord is a little softer [and] a little bit bigger profile. So when I'm in those mats like that...I needed something that was gonna weigh down on the mat...where it leave the line on the mat. We call those 'rat tracks.' If you throw a small lightweight frog you're not gonna get that, so the fish are not going to see it or feel it...without adding any extra weights to it.
> "The softness of it, the hookup ratio – I was pretty much perfect the last day landing fish. You gotta land your bites and in frog fishing that's pretty hard, so having a soft [frog] helps."
> 7' 6" H and 7' 9" H Abu Garcia J-Lee Rods (he fished the 7' 9" with the rattling frog and around the big ones), Abu REVO STX Reel (8.1), 50-lb Berkley X5 Braid.
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