How Nick Hatfield won MLF Heavy Hitters at Smith Mntn Lake

2nd-year MLF Bass Pro Tour pro Nick Hatfield has done well. Maybe overshadowed by a few other 2nd-year BPT pros here and there, but for sure well overall. He’s also won at various levels coming up, but did not have a tour-level win til last week. Here’s how he rolled into and outta town at Smith Mountain Lake, VA.

Going in and practice

> “[He found] 2 points about 300 yards apart – 1 on one side of the lake, 1 on the other, really close together. I had a couple other points right there in that area that had some fish on them, but they weren’t as consistent.

> “One was actually shooting out in the main lake, right at an S-turn of the lake where the lake narrowed…a lot of boat traffic. It had rock and scattered grass on it – I could catch them out to 10-12′.

> “The other point was at the mouth of a pocket off a small island – a down-current-facing point…1.5-3′ of water – they were up there chasing the herring.

> “[The fish] were doing the same thing on both points. The herring bite was really good first thing in the morning, and then I would throw a swimbait or jerkbait all the way up into the day….

> “I found [his main point] in the middle of the day. Boat traffic was crazy, the waves were crazy. I was fishing a point I’d found and I saw fish schooling on [what ended up being his main point]. I thought they might be stripers.

> “I run over there – there’s fish all over LiveScope, I see them everywhere. I see 3, 4, 5-lb bass just schooling on herring. Every time I throw out there there’s herring following my bait. …I think the herring spawn lasted longer there than it should have.

> “The area was in kind of a pinch point…I think it reloaded well. The boat traffic and the waves…honestly I think it helped me. I think it helped push other baitfish up shallow, and kept the herring pushed up shallow on that point. Every time those wakes pushed them up there, they’d go to actively feeding and I’d catch one every time.

> “After practice I told my wife I found a couple places…had a lot fish on them and caught some really big ones in practice. I left them alone and tried to find other stuff like it. I found a couple things I could get some bites on. Other than that it was pretty much a grind.

> “I thought maybe I could fish for fry-guarders or fish the bank with a frog and swim-jig. But I was really just banking on those points with the herring spawn to pan out.”

Tournament

> “[Day 1] I was boat #1. I think that was a key part in how I ended up winning. I went straight to that [main] point and caught 5 for 15 lbs in the 1st period.

> “It had gotten really slow toward the end of the 1st period – it was one of those things where I didn’t really know what I had found at the time. I knew it was good and had a lot of fish on it, but I didn’t understand it fully.

> “They were running the ScoreTracker up at a much-faster pace than I was able to do so I decided to move around and try other things. It just didn’t work out. I ended the day with those 5 fish….

> “I was pretty down – I should’ve stayed down there, I should’ve done this, done that.

> “…day 2…I decided I’m going to go to that point, sit there and catch ’em, and figure out how to catch ’em when they’re not schooling. Whether that works or not, that’s what I’m gonna do.

> “…that’s when I started to learn a lot about the 2 places I’d found – what was going on, how to catch them….”

In the Knockout Round, he caught 20+ lbs off those points and then let them rest:

> “It was tougher to get bit…. I ran to a couple points further down the lake [and] ended up catching some nice ones.

> “The Championship Round, with it going to a 3-lb minimum, I was catching a 3+ lb average…. I really thought if I could catch enough of them that if the guys struggled for any reason or the bite they were on died, and I could catch another 40-50 lbs…I thought I would have a chance.

> “I just fished those 2 points. I fished some other places, places I fished in the Knockout Round, but I couldn’t get bit off them. So I kept running those 2 points. I’d let them sit for 10-15 minutes….

> “It just happened. It was just one of those things – I can’t really explain it. I made the right calls, they bit for me early and I got off to a big lead…everything just happened really quick.

> “…finding those fish in practice…turning that into the tournament – it’s crazy how it all happened. …instead of running around and letting my mind pressure me, I stuck it out, I trusted.”

Baits

Nick is a huge student of Japanese bass fishing so bear that in mind:

> Jighead minnow: 7″ Japanese minnows (any shad color, the brighter the better) on a 3/16-oz Scottsboro Hellfire Jighead with 3/0 and 4/0 hooks, 10-lb Cortland Master Braid to 12-lb Cortland XTR Fluoro, 6′ 6″ Megabass Destroyer Whippet Spin Rod.

> Free rig: Various gp plastics including a Zoom Brush Hog and Geecrack Bellows Gill (or Bellows Shad?), 4/0 Hayabusa Offset Wide Gap Hook, 3/8-oz dropshot weight, 20-lb Cortland Recon Fluoro, 7′ 2″ Megabass Destroyer The X-Bites Rod.

> “It’s just something I started playing with lately. I like to throw a Carolina rig, and a free rig is a little easier to tie up.

> “I watched several on LiveScope go to it, they’d sit with it, I’d pull it, they’d move to it…. Once I started fishing it without watching LiveScope, I’d barely move it, let it sit still and I’d feel them hit it. Seemed like the slower I could drag it, the better.”

> Megabass Vision 110 SR Jerkbait (gp crystal shad – “it mimics blueback herring pretty good” – and stock hooks), 12-lb Cortland Recon Fluoro, 6′ 11″ Megabass Destroyer Oneten Jerkbait Rod.

> “The SR means ‘shallow runner’ – they just released it…l used it at Chickamauga and did well with it. I can jerk it a lot faster and can get it to move a lot quicker. It has a cupped bill like the Ito Shiner [similar but smaller]…I found with the Ito Shiner I can jerk it as fast as I can work it and it doesn’t seem to want to tangle up or blow out. I really like that cupped bill.”

> 5/8-oz Japanese lipless (clear chart with #4 Hayabusa NRB-coated trebles), 16-lb Cortland Recon Fluoro, 7′ 2″ Megabass Destroyer The X-Bites Rod. (“It’s a great all-around rod and I wanted something a little stiffer than a cranking rod so I could bury the hooks into ’em better. I don’t like to jerk when I set the hook on a ‘Trap, I like to pull into them.”)

> The final day was just the jighead minnow and the lipless.

> 3/8-oz Beast Coast Sniper Football Jig (various gp colors) with a TRD-type trailer (gp), 10-lb Cortland Master Braid to 12-lb Cortland XTR Fluoro, 6′ 11″ Megabass Destroyer Addermine Rod.

Electronics

Bear in mind 2 things: FFS was allowed all day every day, but the pros did not fish out of their own boats.

> FFS: “I used it more or less to find ’em in practice and I did use it in the tournament to catch a handful of them. But for the most part I was using it to see where they were set up.

> “When they’re up there in like 2-3′ of water, I could’ve watched them every time bite my bait. But I would see them come for it, and when came off the bottom for it, there’d be 4-6 or sometimes 10-15 coming after it. And I missed a lot of them watching the screen.

> “It’s like fishing a topwater – it’s best sometimes to not even see the blowup. I wanted to wait til I felt the bite and it load up, and then set the hook.

> “It was a huge player in how I found the fish on the places where I found them. [In practice] I’d shoot it up on the point and wouldn’t see a fish, but the second I threw a bait up there it was like they came out of the ground after it.

> “On those shallow points it was really nice to be able to use my Power-Poles and Pole down [to] keep myself in the same spot, a long cast away from them…..”