How Zack Birge won another Bass Pro Tour tourney in dirty water

Zack won at Lake Eufaula, OK in 2024 when the water was so dirty possums were walking on it. Okay I mad that up but you get the picture!

Fast forward to another dirty water/shallow fish deal – last weekend’s 2-laker on Whitney and Waco in TX – and man it was over fast on that final day. Zack blasted ’em and the rest of the guys just could never catch him. Here’s how he did it.

Going in and practice

> “I was kind of unsure what to expect. I’d never been down there and had never seen either lake. So in practice I did a lot of running around, exploring, just looking at everything.

> “I was trying to get some kind of inclination…what’s gonna happen from day to day.”

They had 3 practice days this time because of the 2 lakes and:

> “I chose to fish 3 days on Whitney [the first lake] – mainly to try to set myself up to for sure make it to Waco. To make sure no stones were left unturned.”

His Whitney starting plan:

> “…areas where I could use FFS…2 creeks that had a good bit of bait in the back of em and a lot of bass back there. But it was super-hard to get them to bite.”

Tournament:Whitney

> “…of course the only thing I could get ’em to bite was that Coike. So I caught ’em on that for 1 period both days.

> “…in the very backs of these creeks it was 10-12′ and most of the fish were around bait balls and suspended.

> Day 1: “After [the FFS] period was over, I fished around a couple places and ended up getting into a backwater area. I caught one right of the bat but was blowing and the water had kinda stirred up. …the only creek I had found grass in on Whitney.

> “I knew there was a bunch of fish in there but I couldn’t get ’em to eat. So I made just a slight color change on a ChatterBait and as soon as I changed I had like 5 bites in 10 minutes. I caught ’em pretty good there to get through that 1st day.”

He was fishing the bladed jig in a bay with scattered grass in the middle along with some old willow thickets and isolated willow bushes.

> “Day 2 I did the exact same thing the morning using [Lowrance] ActiveTarget 2 in my FFS period. But after that the wind was rippin’, so I decided to pick the creek apart. [He was hoping] to catch enough out of it that I felt comfortable I would make Waco [without having to make a run in that rough main-lake water].

> “It was a good decision because I caught 2-3 on a Senko really quick just going down bluff walls in the backs of those creeks.

> “…undercut bluff banks – right on the wall or a spring where a little water trickled out. Fish were always on those. I let it skip as close to the wall as I could and let it freefall….”

> “I ended up having a better day on day 2 than I did on day 1.

Baits: Whitney

> HideUp Coike (clear salmon pepper), 2/0 BKK dropshot hook, 3/32-oz nail weight (chopped down a little), 10-lb Yo-Zuri 9-Strand SuperBraid (white) to 10-lb to 10-lb Yo-Zuri T7 Fluoro, 7′ M Alpha Angler Wrench Spin Rod.

Why he thinks bass would eat the Coike:

> “My only thought on it is bass are opportunist predators. If they see something that could be a meal, they eat it.

> “To my knowledge there’s nothing floating in the lake that looks like that [so] that’s the only legitimate explanation I can come up with

> “It was like you flipped a light switch on when you picked that up compared to a minnow or jerkbait.”

> Wacky rig: Yamamoto Senko (gp), same everything except no weight.

> 3/8-oz Z-Man JackHammer (fire craw) with a Spunk Shad (gp), 20-lb Yo-Zuri T7 Fluoro, 8:1 high-speed reel, 7′ 5″ MH composite Alpha Angler Mag Rebound Rod.

> About the color change: “I was throwing ‘dirty white’ – I’d been catching them on that and for some reason they got off it. I was looking for something with more contrast in the dingy water.”

Tournament: Waco

> “…I kinda just did map study on Waco when I realized Iw as gonna make it. …looking at Google Earth, really zooming in on places and trying to find something I thought fish should be swimming to.

> “What I was really looking at was the wind had been blowing really hard out of south for a couple days. So I knew stuff on the north bank was probably blown out, but the wind was going to rip out of the north [the next day], so I didn’t want to fish the south and end up getting blown out….

> “So I was looking for areas on the north side that would have be protected…and also were protected from the south wind that had been blowing really hard. The only place I could see on the [Google] map that would fit that was that pond that I got into.

> “It took me a while to get in there because I stopped short of it, and I fished in a little pocket and out. …had my jack plate up and I couldn’t get it to go back down.

> “So when I…tried to run toward that pond, I could only run 50 yards and the motor would get hot and shut down.I’d have to wait a minute, let it cool off, then I could run another 50 yards….”

He said it took him about 10 intervals to get to where he had to use the trolling motor and then about an hour 45 to get into the pond. When he got there, Edwin Evers – who finished 2nd – was on one side of the pond so Zack went the other way. They both caught ’em, and both went back there on the final day.

The pond:

> “It kinda had a little rim ditch around it [about 2.5′ deep]…like a little depression all around the outside edge. The whole center part [which was shallower] had flooded willow bushes – really thick, plenty of habitat [with a] ditch on the outside.

> “…isolated sticks…laydowns on the outside edge of the bank. Really that was about it for cover. A lot of bait was in there too – I think that was a pretty important part of it.

> “Another thing that helped was in the middle of the day, right straight up noon, there was a little bit of a shad spawn in there.

> “About every time you’d make a lap you’d catch 3-5.”

> The final day: “I don’t know if it was the baits I was throwing, or they were a little more snappy [vs Edwin’s fish]. Edwin left out of there…toward the end of the 2nd period [and for Zack] they went to biting good again.

> “I made good decisions all week, every single day…to catch fish and stay on fish. it changed every day a little bit. On Waco, I made good decision to get in that pond and sit in there and catch them all day.”

Baits: Waco

His main bait was the swim jig:

> 1/4-oz Lethal Weapon Swim Jig (white) and a 3/8-oz Dirty Jigs No-Jack Swim Jig (white). I threw both of those mainly because I wore the No-Jack out.

> Trailers: Strike King Rage Craw (white) and Missile D Bomb (white). “The bait didn’t really matter, it just had to be white.”

> 40-lb Yo-Zuri SuperBraid (dark green), 7′ 3″ MH F Alpha Angler Zilla Rod.

> He also flipped: Zoom Speed Craw (gp blue flash), 3/0 BKK Offset Worm Hook, 3/8-oz tungsten weight, 40-lb Yo-Zuri SuperBraid (dark green), 7′ 3″ MH F Alpha Angler Zilla Rod.

Electronics

> “I got to utilize Lowrance ActiveTarget 2 for 1 period on Whitney – I didn’t use it on Waco. Then when I got over to Waco…I used my charts and my maps to navigate around.

> “Power-Poles were super handy this week, especially at Waco. Being back in that shallow pond, I don’t know haw many times I sat there Poled down and made 20 casts before I moved again.

> “…I stayed on the trolling motor all day [so] having good batteries…Monster Marine Lithiums. That Move is a good trolling motor and is super-quiet too. That was really important…ease around there real quiet.”

Shoutouts

> “My family came down – they surprised me. My wife and kids, my mom and my business partner. It was pretty special…they couldn’t come to many, and I did well enough to win it. …yesterday afternoon I could hear them cheering every time I caught a fish. It was pretty cool.”