Hite at “his bridge”

As expected, Brett Hite started today at the North Grand Island Bridge, where he has been all week. And he’s showing that he’s learned some subtleties in fishing these huge bridge pilings. Hite just landed his second smallmouth bass in the first 30 minutes this morning. It weighed 2 pounds, 3 ounces, giving him 3-10 so far.

“There’s just no use leaving this area,” Hite said yesterday. “There’s a lot of stuff to fish here, and nobody else is fishing it.”

Hite is drop-shotting a Yamamoto Shad Shaped Worm with a green pumpkin candy colored back and a pearl belly on a 1/4-ounce Reins Tungsten weight. That weight is key.

“It’s almost like fly fishing,” Hite said. “You want your drop shot to move at the same speed as the current. If you get it too heavy, it gets hung up and it doesn’t look natural. So the trick is to cast upstream and just kind of bounce it along at close to the same speed as the current.”