It’s never easy to take a look back at what was going through the minds of the Classic Fisherman especially trying to figure out why they used certain baits in the 2015 event. If you look at the weather and try to just take apart presentations from that point of view,one would conclude that being the coldest Classic on record that the bass would be deep and would force the participants to fish 20 to 30 ft. plus water; that however was not necessarily the case.
Most of those fisherman spent many hours fishing shallow baits, looking for fish that would move up during the day, as their biological clock were forcing their bodies to move up and start looking to spawn regardless of the coldest weather ever In a major event. The baits that the winning circle of participants used were divided fairly evenly between deep presentations and shallow. The winning baits were fish-head spin (fished deep) football jig (fished mostly deep) drop shot (deep) jerk bait (fished shallow) swim bait (fished mostly shallow (shakey head (fished shallow) crank bait (fished shallow). So if I am trying to make sense of the presentations and why, the patterns that we could in most cases conclude from the winners leads you know-where! The truth of the matter was that as always these events prove that there are many ways to catch bass in the cold weather and in most cases people pick patterns that they are comfortable with and find fish within their own comfort levels. Meaning that bass don’t always move into patterns that they are suppose too! Leaving much room for bass fisherman to target their strengths as an angler and go win a tournament. It also says that water temperature does not always force the bass into depths where we think they should be and being a versatile fisherman is probable a key to winning consistently. That old saying “fish where the fish are,” may mean doing what you might think is wrong can many times be correct. Fish Lake Guntersville Guide Service www.fishlakeguntersvilleguideservice www.facebook.com/FishGuntersville Email: bassguide@comcast.net Phone: 256 759 2270 Captain Mike Gerry