Well that’s really all you need to know! Spinnerbait bite + no FFS = Jason Christie win. Here’s how his 9th Bassmaster W happened for him.
Practice
> “My initial thoughts was I knew there would be some fish still spawning and I wanted to spend as much time as far north as I could. If I ran 40-50 miles north, then…chances of a bigger population of fish spawning.
> “And you get up there and the river kinda changes – not as much backwaters, so you think there’d be more fish spawning because the river water is a little cooler than the backwaters.
> “I spent 1.5 days north and only found 1 area I thought was good. …a nook in a bay, close to the channel. It was a big area, big enough I thought I could [do okay]. It was the only place I found on the whole river system that had milfoil. I thought there might be a population of fish that would stay there.
> “I spent the last day on the takeoff pool. I found the area where I ended up doing most of my damage literally like at 3:30 the last day. It was kinda of fortunate the way it worked out.
> “It took a while to get into it – it was kinda hard to get into. It was a belly in a flat, 3′ at the deepest. It had hyacinth mats, lilypad stems, stumps and some other kind of grass – a little bit of everything and not a lot of anything.
> “I immediately had a bite – of course I had my hook covered up. It wasn’t a big fish. I went another 50 yards and had a bite…just some fish in here.
> “It was so close to the ramp I didn’t have high hopes for it because I figured people had found it and it was gonna get fished. So I was like, Here’s a place that I can use to supplement….”
Tournament
Day 1 he ran north:
> “I thought the area I had up north was better than what it was. The 1st day I had a handful of bites and zero quality bites, so I ended up bailing…. It took so long to get there, I only got to fish like 4 hours. I fished it pretty throughly the 1st day so I pretty much wrote that off.
> “I came back with like 9 lbs and ran into the other area I found close to takeoff. I culled up to 12 lbs in 30 minutes, and made up my mind that’s where I was gonna start the 2nd day.
That’s where he fished, the same way, for the next 3 days:
> “I started in there the 2nd day and I was boat 50-something. I was watching to see if anybody went in there and nobody did – I still didn’t know if anybody had fished in there.
> “I ran in there and could literally hear Mercer on the speaker releasing the boats…’That’s the last boat, thanks for coming.’ I look back and nobody’s coming. I couldn’t believe nobody’s starting in here. I keep fishing, and all of a sudden here comes Seth – he was idling in.
> “So I gotta choose a side. I chose my side and he took off on the left. In the next 5 casts I caught a 4 lber, the next 5 another 4-lber. I decided if got to 15 lbs I was gonna leave because the area wasn’t that big, especially divided by 2 anglers.
> “…just creeping along. My area was probably 3 acres and I would just creep along and make a cast at everything. It would take me about 1 hour and 15 minutes to make a circle…going as slow as you can go, just covering everything. I wanted to go really slow….and also it gives it time to rest.
> “The 3rd day of the event the lake got low. The wind blew out of the north really hard, and along with the direction of the river current drew that backwater down so I saw a lot of stuff I didn’t know was there. That’s how I caught a lot of my big ones the 3rd day, off stuff I didn’t know was there.”
Same deal on day 4.
Baits
> 1/2-oz BOOYAH Covert Single CO Spinnerbait (#4.5 single CO, chart/white/blue) with a new YUM Covert Trailer (white), 20-lb Sunline Shooter fluoro, SPRO Jason Christie MG Reel (5.6), 6′ 10″ MH Falcon Cara Head Turner Rod.
> Why chart/white with blue: “It just makes it look like it has a back in the dirtier water. If you hold it in your hand it’s not that appealing, but if you put it in 3-4 inch visibility water it looks like a shad. In that dirtier water I like some dark in my bait.
> “It’s also good all-around. I feel like I can catch ’em [with it] in the dirtiest water and borderline getting too clear for a spinnerbait.
> “When the water gets super dirty, I can literally take my fingers and spin the skirt and put the blue on the bottom, and it totally changes the color of the spinnerbait without having to put a new spinnerbait on.
> “That’s my favorite color even though we have a ‘JC special’ [color].”
> About the 5.6 reel: “I still don’t get how people haven’t figured that out. 5.6 is just the right speed for a spinnerbait.”
> 1/2-oz BOOYAH Mobster Swim Jig (b/b) with a YUM Craw Chunk (gp), 50-lb Sunline SX1 Braid, same reel (7.3), 7′ 2″ MH Falcon Cara Swim Jig Rod.
> “…I made a pass in the morning with the spinnerbait and got the aggressive ones. I felt like the females wanted that spinnerbait. Then I switched to the swim-jig a little bit.”
> Flipping: YUM Wooly Bug (b/b), 4/0 Trokar TK130 Hook, 3/8-oz tungsten weight, 25-lb Sunline Shooter, same reel (8.1), 7′ 3″ H Falcon Cara JC Pitching Stick.
Electronics
> New Garmin 360: “I had it on in practice – that place is pretty treacherous with stumps and things like that so I was super careful. I was marking stumps I couldn’t see…in the area I ended up winning out of. The 3rd day of the tournament I caught the 2 biggest fish off stumps I’d marked and couldn’t see. It was a big deal.
> “The [LakeVu] mapping we had was good. A lot of these backwaters, even though they looked good, were really shallow. They didn’t have any kind of belly or gut in them. I could only get a bite if deeper water – 3-4′ – was pretty close. Our mapping…showed the deeper water.”
Shoutouts
> “Everybody was really respectful, the anglers and the locals, where we were fishing. That could’ve gotten really bad with such a small area. The locals stayed outside and watched, and [other Elites] didn’t come in there. [With] Seth and I everything went good….”
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