If you’re getting the BassBlaster for the first time it’s cuz a bud signed you up!
Today’s Top 5
Dude said:
> Got her in the boat and man it was an ugly fish. Long and skinny like me and just about as ugly.
Lol! Are bass-heads awesome or what?
Wow did not think J-Pow sitting out a bracket round was that big a deal — in a negative way — but I guess it was, at least to some at B.A.S.S. Donny Barone didn’t like Jacob laying down on the playing field, but another B.A.S.S. scribbler, Bryan Brasher, took the opposite POV:
> I believe we hurt the sport some this past week on the waters of my hometown, Buffalo, N.Y., and the Niagara River.
> Doing so within a game, laying down, is tanking and affects the integrity of the game, and the game and its integrity is more important than those who play it.
> Throw not overboard the bond of friendship, just leave it outside the lines of the game.
> This kind of thing happens all the time in professional fishing. Anglers with a good limit in the livewell routinely back out of the way to let another angler catch enough fish off a certain spot to try and make the Saturday cut…. There’s probably an example of it from every tournament we have.
> You simply can’t charge a guy that kind of money and then tell him how to fish. Jacob Powroznik doesn’t work for B.A.S.S. or for…Trip Weldon. How can they demand that he fish harder?
> …in a pay-to-play sport, no one can force Powroznik to put on that kind of charade if he doesn’t want to.
They both have a point, but for this one bassin’ idjit the winner here is Brasher cuz:
> J-Pow is a customer of B.A.S.S.
> Pro bassin’ is a “real” pro sport in some ways, not in others (which is good!). Won’t ever change. Gotta accept some different stuff.
> “We got up on this flat in the river, it reminded me of something I’d fish back on St. Clair, and we started to see good fish.”
> The pattern he found was that small groups of big smallmouths were holding on clean areas of rock, or what he called “blue diamonds” because they appear bluish in the water. The deal was sweetened if a spot had some sand grass present. …slimy areas either didn’t have smallmouths or the smallmouths there weren’t willing to bite.
> “You needed to have current, but not too much. And all of these places were shallow — probably 12 feet or less.”
> “I’d take my time, drop my shallow-water anchors, and work an area before moving a little bit and fishing some more. I saw probably 80% of the fish I weighed before I caught them. Sometimes I’d have to rotate baits to get them to bite. The fish knew I was there, but they would still come eat.”
He dropshotted a Berkley PowerBait Twitchtail Minnow, a Gulp! Fry Worm and a Gulp! Minnow (gp, watermelon pearl and shad pearl), but also fished a Megabass Vision 110+1, a Duo Realis Spinbait 90 and the dreaded Flanders (Ned) rig.
Here’s a breakdown of the top 10 baits:
Dropshot = 60%
> 1st-5th all did it, and 2nd-5th were all Canadeeans.
> Jackall Crosstail Shad (2nd, 3rd, 4th) and Gulp! baits (1st and 5th) were top baits.
AJ Slegona (7th) dropshotted the Yum Warning Shot (pictured in bold bluegill, sweet color) and Yum Kill Shot:
Jerkbait = 20%
Tube = 20%
Jig, vibrating jig, spinbait and spinnerbait = 10% each
Would love to show a shot of NJ homie John Vanore, who finished 8th using a Keitech bait that actually WASN’T a Swing Impact Fat (was a Tungsten Casting Jig with a Zoom Super Chunk), but gotta give this spot to 10th-place Neil Farlow who fished a 1/2-oz War Eagle Spinnerbait (looks like chartreuse/white):
Sounded like a spinnerbait should have worked, glad someone tried it.
News
1. Great article on FLWer Mark Rose.
Few quotes:
> Strike King COO Allan Ranson: “Mark’s honesty and integrity is something that I think consumers appreciate. It appears to me that as our culture swings more and more away from good values, the general public gets more and more skeptical of what it hears from people who are in promotional or public positions. A person like Mark with unwavering ethics will command more respect and believability from his audience.”
> “Mark Rose caught our interest due to the fact that he is not afraid to discuss his faith and as everybody knows neither is Buck Knives,” says company president C.J. Buck.
> Rose on the FLW Cup: “I have truly been blessed, but this (the Cup) will not define me. I am very content. All I have asked the good Lord is for me to be able to make a living and provide for my family.”
Mark’s a great dude.
2. Three Canadians fishing FLW Cup.
Including brothers Chris and Cory Johnston, who pulled out of the $100,000 Canadian Open to fish it. They’ve won the derby 3x in the last 5 years.
3. Former pro surfer now Costa-level angler.
Cowabunga dude!
4. Quick Troy Lindner frog vid.
Wy I like this: First he misses the fish, then he casts back and catches it = REALISTIC YO! All the vids of one cast, hookset, giant are kind of getting old…a little:
> Former Elite Series pro Vince Hurtado has been intimately involved in the development and field-testing of Trapper Hooks: “These hooks will raise every angler’s game. Baits stay rigged better, and fish stay hooked better, so I make more casts and land a much-higher percentage of the fish I hook.”
Former B.A.S.S. emcee Keith Alan also involved. He showed it to me at ICAST. Makes enough sense that I want to try it. Supposed to be available later this year.
7. T-H Marine buys Tonka Customs.
AL boys been on a roll…. Tonka made Wave Tamer mounts.
8. LA: Venice bassin’ picking up.
> “The bass have really bounced back the last few years…getting bigger and easier to find.”
> “Anglers who know know how and where to fish catch bass all year long in the delta. For the weekend angler, they should wait until the river falls below 5 feet on the New Orleans gauge. The water usually falls below 5 feet in late August.”
9. AL: Southern Plastics has new prez.
Lisa Hagler. Congrats to her. Southern Plastics makes plastic baits for many companies.
10. GA: Kid gets bassin’ scholarship to Savannah College.
Cool!
Not in the U.S….
12. Dude turns AC shells into fish art.
AC = air conditioner. Pretty good too:
Headline of the Day
Pulsating end to American Tackle FlipOff Challange
Pulsating?? Flip off?? A line from the article:
> The Final — between John Cox and 2015 Angler of the Year, Aaron Martin — was so close that both finalists were tied at the end of normal time and it took ‘overtime’ before Cox was eventually crowned champion after a pulsating FlipOff.
More pulsating…and Aaron Martin?? Is that Aaron Martens’ cousin?
Tip of the Day
Not that he would know (lol):
> …prefers his Senko on a weightless Texas rig with a 3/0 Gamakatsu extra wide gap hook. “I think some people use too big of a hook…they lose the action of the bait on the fall, and half the time they lose the bait because it tears off.”
> …believes smaller light-wire hooks increase the lure’s tail action and make the Senko last longer since the bait slides easier up the hook and onto the line while fighting a fish. …recommends rigging the Senko on a Yamamoto Split Shot Hook, a circle hook….
> Tying the Senko with a snell knot is another key to rigging the lure. “I like that knot because when you tug on it, it will pull that hook barb straight toward the line….”
> His favorite Senko colors are green pumpkin or green pumpkin/watermelon laminate. “One of the best colors that is probably a sleeper is the salt-and-pepper. I think it is a forgotten color, but I can take that color any place in the world and fish will bite it.”
> Yamamoto employs a simple lift-and-drop retrieve…. “It’s like working a plastic worm but not quite as fast because it takes longer for it to fall.”
Okay but…is there a wrong way to fish it??
Quote of the Day
We fish team tournaments and I pay the entry fee, but then he insists on keeping all the money we win.
– Ex-FLWer and Costa 1000 Islands weener Scott Dobson talkin‘ ’bout his bro-in-law 10-year-old son. How does he do it?
Shot of the Day
Random
If you’re forwarding every Blaster to other bass crackheads, tx much — or you can email me the addys and we’ll take care of it! We’ll never send spam, sell the list or anything else crazy….
Recommended for you
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
