It's only fitting that the late Buck Perry was inducted into the Bass Fishing Hall of Fame prior to the start of the 38th annual Bassmaster Classic.Perry, known as the father of structure fishing, would have been proud of the top finishers who employed many of his teachings to catch impressive bags of bass under difficult conditions.For example, Lake Hartwell was some 15 feet below normal, water temperatures lingered in the upper 40s and low 50s, and weather conditions varied from near freezing temperatures to bluebird skies and mild temperatures.Anglers at the top of the leaderboard knew it was about timing, targeting the baitfish and following bass' deep migration routes to do well in this event.No previous Classic produced so many deep patterns built within Perry's structure fishing principles, nor has there been such a variety of lures and techniques employed by the pros. Here's how the Top 5 caught 'em.
CLASSIC CHAMPION ALTON JONES
Alton Jones did something during a Bassmaster Classic he's never done before: He started the tournament on a spot where he had made only one cast during practice.
"My son and I pulled in there, made simultaneous casts and each caught a quality bass," says the 44-year-old Waco, Texas, pro. "We left that spot and I never saw it again until the tournament started."
That gamble paid off with his first Classic victory. And while he fished similar areas, the sweet starting spot gave him the confidence in a deep water pattern that would hold up for three days and under a variety of weather conditions.He caught his limit on a jigging spoon with the first seven casts of the tournament. And while most of those were culled once he began catching bigger ones on the jig, he knew he had a productive area that could hold up under changing weather conditions. He caught 17 pounds, 5 ounces the first day, then added limits of 18-11 and 13-7 to win by more than 5 pounds.Jones targeted mouths of spawning pockets on the lower end of the lake near the dam. To be productive, those pockets had to have heavy timber in the mouth, specifically at 30-foot depths. He located those with his Humminbird Side Imaging unit that depicted clear images of the timberline.When I looked around the deep pockets, I noticed the bottom was bare until you got out to about 30 feet," he explains. "It was a moonscape between the shoreline and the timber."Furthermore, those mouths that had ditches wiggling out of timber into the pockets were the best. The timber provided the bass with a safe haven in winter while the ditches gave them a direct route to spawning areas once the water warmed.The spoon bite died after the first day, and the jigs — Booyah's Pigskin and an A-Jig — kept him atop the leaderboard. Jones said he created his own skirts at the event, incorporating Buckeye Lures' Mop Jig skirt, which has thick, round rubber material and strands of silicone. Both brown/purple jigs were tipped with a Yum Chunk to resemble local crawfish. He dragged the Pigskin over isolated wood along the outer edge of the timber and the A-Jig into the thick stuff."It was slow and tedious because of the depths and the fact the fish wanted a slow moving bait to imitate the crawfish," Jones describes. "Whenever I felt that bait hit a piece of wood, I knew I was about to get bit."
LURES:
TACKLE: Jigs: 7-foot medium action Kistler Magnesium rod and Ardent XS casting reel spooled with 14- and 17-pound Silver Thread Fluorocarbon line. Spoon: 6-6 Kistler Magnesium medium-heavy rod and Ardent baitcaster spooled with 17-pound Silver Thread Fluorocarbon line.
TECHNIQUE: The spoon was jigged vertically in deep ditches around timber in the morning while the jigs were crawled slowly over wood in the ditches the rest of the day.
Mississippian Cliff Pace located bass in areas similar to Classic winner Jones, but he couldn't get the consistent bites from the quality fish.
Like Jones, he found bass schooling in heavy, deep water timber at the mouths of coves, but he had to rely upon three distinctly different methods to catch them.
"The bass were in the timber waiting for baitfish to get riled up by stripers that were hanging around the deep water," he describes. "I've found that largemouth are opportunists, and when the stripers get the baitfish stirred up, the bass move in for the kill."On the first day, the bait got "penned up" in the backs of the pockets where he could pick the bass off by throwing a Buckeye Lures Su-Spin Blade tricked out with a V&M Pork Shad soft jerkbait. The Su-Spin Blade has two blades that clatter beneath a lead head onto which he attached the soft jerkbait.
Pace made long casts into the balls of shad holding in about 5 feet of water and cranked the bait slowly back to him.
That produced most of his 18 pounds, 10 ounces the first day. He followed up with limits weighing 14-11 and 11 pounds on Days 2 and 3.When the sun came out the second day, he had to move deep and employ a drop shot rig in 46 feet of water around the timber. And on the last day, he had to alter the plan because the bass suspended 35 feet down.When I dropped down to the fish, the fish that bit would follow the bait to the bottom and eat it," he describes"But it was tedious fishing."He also caught some fish by casting a jigging spoon into areas where he saw bass busting baitfish and on a jig that he worked through bends in ditches winding through the timber.
"The jig produced my bigger fish, especially when the bass were on the bottom and packed into those tight turns," he explains. "I had to work it really slowly to get them to bite."Pace said he had to change spots often, noting that the longer he sat on one spot, the tougher it got."It's kind of funny, because if I didn't see fish on the graph, that told me they were on the bottom and would bite. But if I saw them on the graph (suspended), I knew it would be difficult to catch them."
CLASSIC DETAILS: NO. 2 CLIFF PACE
LURES: 1/4-ounce Buckeye Lures Su-Spin Blades (white) rigged with pearl and blueback herring V&M Pork Shad; V&M Pork Pin and finesse worms (green pumpkin/chartreuse tail and green pumpkin/blue); 1/2-ounce V&M Cliff Pace Signature Series football jig (Moneymaker color, which is a natural green) tipped with an unnamed 5-inch twin-tail grub (green pumpkin); 3/4-ounce Hopkins spoon (silver).
TACKLE: Su-Spin Blade: Shimano Curado D baitcast reel spooled with 15-pound Trilene fluorocarbon and matched with a 7-foot medium-heavy Castaway Skeleton rod. Spoon and jig: Curado D reel, 7-3 Castaway GrassMaster Braid rod and 15-pound Trilene fluorocarbon. Drop shot: 6-10 Jeff Kriet Castaway spinning rod, Shimano Symetre spinning reel spooled with 8-pound Trilene fluorocarbon, 2/0 Gamakatsu hook and 3/8-ounce drop shot sinker 10 inches below the hook.
TECHNIQUE: He used the Su-Spin Blades in the backs of pockets when bass moved in shallow to feed on baitfish, used the spoon to make long casts to bass busting bait in open water, and drop shotted the finesse worms in deep timber in the mouths of coves.
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