Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2021 i Bassmaster

When Paul Elias developed the technique of kneel and reel in the ’80s to get his crankbait a couple of feet deeper, bass anglers across the nation adopted the concept. Here, it looks like Elite Series pro Patrick Walters is taking the technique to a whole new level. I can’t imagine many anglers will be keen on his new “lie down, submerge your arms and crank” concept. Just joking. Here, Walters was not caught in the middle of a retrieve, but trying to retrieve a bass that had been hooked and subsequently found a submerged tree to hang in. This moment occurred on the final day of the Toyota Bassmaster Texas Fest benefiting Texas Parks and Wildlife Department on Lake Fork. The derby was tough, especially by Lake Fork standards.…

Targeting bass during the coldest months of the year is not for the faint of heart. However, if you are willing to brave the extreme cold and follow the advice of these Elite Series pros, you may well catch the biggest bass in the lake BUNDLED UP, FROSTY breath clouding the air — don’t think the big biters won’t show themselves during winter’s chill. It’s not easy and you have to play their game, but as our Elite experts explain, a giant bite may be waiting at the end of your next cast. Here’s a handful of suggested tactics. Carl Jocumsen — SOUTHERN RESERVOIR (ROCK) Ask the Aussie pro his opinion of winter fishing and he’ll tell you it’s a drag — in the best sense of the word. In…

“HOLY MOTHER!” WERE the first words out of Jamie Hartman’s mouth when he arrived back to the dock. The two-time Elite Series champion had just spent two hours on a boat equipped with the yet-to-be released ActiveTarget technology by Lowrance. “This is so good, it will change how I fish,” Hartman said. “I know similar technology is out there, but I haven’t spent one second playing with it. After working with ActiveTarget for half a morning, I will spend the entire offseason trying to master it.” The “similar technology” Hartman mentioned is the Garmin LiveScope, which has made huge waves in the bass fishing tournament scene. LiveScope, like ActiveTarget, gives anglers a real-time view of the activity under the water. While traditional sonar images are like time-lapse photos instantly meshed…

  Date: March 9, 2020 Venue: Lake E, a flatland reservoir Water: 52 degrees, stained Weather: Cloudy, windy, high of 59 degrees, approaching storm front Pro: Jay Yelas, 54, Lincoln City, Ore. One of the superstars of bass fishing during the 1990s and early 2000s, Yelas qualified for 16 consecutive Classics, won the 2003 Classic, was Angler of the Year in 2003 and pocketed $1.3 million in B.A.S.S. earnings. He switched to FLW in 2006, where he was Angler of the Year twice and won another $1 million. Yelas returned to the Elite Series in 2019. Besides competing in tournaments, he heads the C.A.S.T. for Kids Foundation, a fishing charity for special needs children. Boat: Skeeter FXR21 with a 250-horsepower Yamaha outboard, Minn Kota trolling motor, Garmin electronics and twin…

AS LATE FALL bleeds into winter and tightens its grip on Northern lakes, avid anglers keep fishing. “We’ll fish until the ice prohibits us from launching boats,” says Michigan angler Neil Vande Biezen. “And we’ll be back out there the day it leaves.” For some, that may seem extreme. But those like Vande Biezen have learned there may not be a better time to catch big smallmouth on inland waters. When the bass leave the shallows following the fall feed, they will school up around bait on deep flats and in holes. It’s well-known that when you locate those schools, you can catch a few in the deeper areas with blade baits (like the Silver Buddy), tube jigs and drop-shot rigs. But Vande Biezen likes to go against the grain.…

GARY VONDEROHE TOOK a deep breath and sank below the water. As the breathing tube of his snorkel followed him into a cold, mossy hole in Oregon’s Coquille River, the weekend bass angler and weekday biologist for the state’s Department of Fish & Wildlife found himself in an unusual position: spearfishing for smallmouth bass. At the bottom of the river, along its sandy flats and beneath rocky outcrops, Vonderohe aimed a speargun with lethal intent. As he emerged on the surface with a harpooned smallmouth in tow, the scientists at Oregon Fish & Wildlife’s Charleston district office got to work. They were examining stomach contents from the bass, newcomers to the Coquille River system, to understand their impact on the fishery. “We found juvenile salmonoids in those stomach samples,” explains…

Norris Lake sits within spitting distance of Caryville, Tenn. The town of 2,300 is home to a small waterfall that empties into a tributary of the waterway where Brandon Card learned to lure lethargic bass from their winter homes. But, while most anglers are picking up a jig and going deep this time of year, Card likes to go shallower, pointing his boat toward the middle sections of creeks and chasing the sun to find fish savoring warm water around the docks. “Docks are a really viable pattern the entire winter,” Card says. “They have so much habitat, whether that’s wooden piers, pontoons or brushpiles. But fish use docks differently in the wintertime.” [Tackle Tips] Rod: 7-foot, 3-inch medium-heavy Reel: 6.3:1 baitcaster Line: 20-pound Yo-Zuri T7 fluorocarbon To target winter…

Congratulations to the newest members of the Bassmaster Lunker Club™. Membership in the club is free and open to any B.A.S.S. member who catches a largemouth bass weighing 10 pounds or more, a spotted bass weighing 5 pounds or more, or a smallmouth bass weighing 6 pounds or more, from Jan. 1, 2020, to the present. New Lunker Club members will receive an official certificate with holder and a gift pack. 11-4 Dewayne Purvis 1 Caney Lake, Louisiana Zoom Super Fluke (watermelon red) 10-3 John Faylor 2 California Delta, California Snag Proof frog (black) 10-7 Charles Wood 3 Private pond, North Carolina Hawg Caller spinnerbait 11-1 Eldon Alligood 4 Tired Creek Lake, Georgia 10-inch lizard 6-11 Frederick Brauneck 5 Grand Traverse Bay, Michigan 3.8-inch Keitech swimbait (ayu) 10-6 Chadwick Terry…

This was the sunset on the final afternoon of the last Elite Series event of the season on Lake Fork. Beautiful? Absolutely. However, it was even more symbolic. As anglers idled away from the weigh-in to put boats on trailers for the last time in 2020, there was much to ponder. The global pandemic made a hot mess of our sport’s highest level of competition. Lockdowns forced cancellations. Social distancing mandates and testing protocols, which not only differed from state to state, but county to county, left tournament organizers scuttling to find dates and locations to safely run events. But, they did it. There were only two professional sports organizations that completed seasons: NASCAR and the Bassmaster Elite Series. The rescheduled events were held in the fall and fishing was…

Familiarize yourself with the 30 by 30 concept. It’s a global initiative to protect 30% of all worldwide lands and water by the year 2030 in an effort to combat rising global temperatures. 30 by 30 is being supported internationally by leaders from 25 countries. What’s with all the fuss? The World Bank estimates that 502,000 square miles of global forests have disappeared in the past 25 years. Those forests, along with oceans, are capable of absorbing 90% of the increased heat generated by carbon dioxide on our planet. Members of the U.S. Senate are already promoting 30 by 30. Protection efforts are likely to target commercial fishing operations, and American sporting groups are weighing in now as they circle the wagons to protect recreational angler access while simultaneously supporting…

When fishing a river system, is it more important to nose into the wind or into the current while fishing ledges?@Slaterolb63, Instagram Bassmaster Elite Series pro Ed Loughran Really, it’s about boat control for me. Ideally, in any river system, I want to work my bait with the current, not against it, so I point my nose into the current and fish ahead of the boat. That allows me to bring the bait with the current, which is a more natural presentation. The problem arises when you’re trying to fish a specific spot on that ledge with a strong wind at your back. That’s when I will put my trolling motor on Spot-Lock, let the boat spin toward the wind and fish off the back deck. If the water…

LIKE A CLIMBER slowly making his way up the steep, icy ridges toward the summit of Mount Everest, a journey that can take several months, Clark Wendlandt’s climb to the pinnacle of American bass fishing, the 2020 Toyota Bassmaster Angler of the Year title, has also been a long one. Twenty-eight years, to be exact. It’s been that long since the Texas pro entered his first B.A.S.S. event, the 1992 New York Invitational on the St. Lawrence River. The larger fish were in Lake Ontario and the big water was rough that year, but Wendlandt, then just 26 and farther from home than he’d ever been in his life, headed into the waves anyway. Seasoned veterans like Shaw Grigsby and Larry Nixon turned around and stayed in the St. Lawrence,…

BASS ANGLERS ARE creatures of habit. When we get to our favorite lakes, we’re drawn to the same baits that we caught them on the last time we were there. That’s fine. But what if it’s a totally different time of year? Like winter, when the fish can be lethargic and last summer’s baits are less appealing. Make no mistake about it; the fish still eat the same forage, and several of the summertime bait genres still work. You just have to choose those that have more appeal to the mood of wintertime fish and oftentimes fish them differently. “Everything slows down,” says Georgia pro Drew Benton. “Shad are slowing down and in some cases, even die. I try to have that mindset with each bait I’m fishing.” So, how…

AFTER A LONG, stressful season of being a Bassmaster Elite Series nomad, most of the pros head home and take a needed break from fishing. However, many of them soon get the itch to resume casting. They know that the late-season fishing on their home waters is some of the best of the year. Check out how five Elite pros from different parts of the country treat themselves to a bass bonanza during the holidays. Bryan Schmitt, Maryland In late November, Bryan Schmitt gets an irresistible urge to fish the tidal waters of the upper Chesapeake Bay and the James and Potomac rivers. Prior to becoming an Elite Series pro, Schmitt often fished local bass tournaments on these waters in November and December. He claimed that those derbies yielded some…

1 [Modify Gear And Mindset] Fair-weather anglers, consider this fact: Three of the five biggest largemouth ever recorded in Bassmaster’s “Day On The Lake” series — lunkers ranging in weight from 9 pounds, 10 ounces to a whopping 11 pounds, 14 ounces — were caught in either January or February! Stay tuned as Bassmaster Elite Series pros show you how to connect with a big winter bass. Adjusting To Winter It’s critical to adjust both your presentations and your expectations in winter. According to veteran Texas pro Jay Yelas, the biggest mistake winter anglers make is fishing too fast. “Cold water means sluggish bass, which demand slow presentations,” he points out. “Concentrate on reducing the speed of every retrieve you make. Also, remembering that you’re fishing for one or two…