Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2021 i Bassmaster

It is doubtful many Elite Series pros are going to add Gene Autry to their playlist when driving to the destinations lined up for the 2021 season. Still, the upbeat tempo of the singer’s “Back in the Saddle Again” certainly mirrors the attitudes of the pros, eager to hit the water and compete after a chaotic 2020. Even the lyrics make sense: “I’m back in the saddle again, out where a friend is a friend.” We might even hear a “whoopi-ty-aye-yay” from the winner of the first event on the St. Johns River in early February. The second event is on the Tennessee River. Of course, the country band Alabama created the theme song for this late February derby. In their “Tennessee River” hit, they pretty much spell it out…

When fishing the shallows for bedding bass that you can’t see, what are some of the best presentations to get those fish to react, and how do you work them?Karl Webber, Dallas, Texas Bassmaster Elite Series pro Tyler Rivet Here in Louisiana, we have about 2 inches of clarity most of the time, so we don’t get to see many spawning fish. When faced with those conditions, I cast directly to the bank with a JackHammer bladed jig if there isn’t much cover, or with a swimming jig if there is. If it’s real shallow, I hold the rod tip high and keep the bait coming to me steadily. The fish will either hit it or roll on it, letting you know they are there. If there is grass, I…

It’s your turn to write a cutline for your favorite magazine. Follow B.A.S.S. on Instagram (@bass_nation) and comment with a clever caption on this cartoon that will be posted on our feed on March 3, 2021. If your caption is chosen, it will be printed in an upcoming issue. Last Month’s Post Last Month’s Winner: Ladies and gentlemen your 2021 B.A.S.S Wrangler of the Year! Have a photo or opinion you’d like to share with us? Submit yours to editorial@bassmaster.com.…

HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL. Or so we are led to believe. Especially in spring. One problem, however. For bass fishermen, it’s not really one season, it’s three — three interlaced phases of the spawn, guided and altered and frequently mangled by weather, water and the sometimes fickle nature of our finned adversaries. The prespawn, spawn and postspawn stages are rarely distinct, overlapping one into the other like the subtle pastels of a watercolor but without the relaxing result. From lake to lake, region to region, year to year, the exact formula for success is always a work in progress. For most, it’s not so much about where to start as it is about what to do once you get there. It’s generally a case for trusting what you see, and the…

GREG MANGUS IS one of those anglers who like to tinker with lures and think outside the box. Sometimes it leads to a new technique. Like a couple of years ago, when he and friend John Bales were fishing a northern Indiana lake. Mangus grew weary of catching small, keeper-size bass on drop shots and small swimbaits. “We couldn’t get a big bite on anything else, so I started messing around with a bladed jig,” recalls the Angola, Ind., angler who is known as one of the best in northern Indiana and southern Michigan. He pulled out a JackHammer bladed jig rigged with a soft-plastic trailer, tossed it into 20-plus feet of water, let it sink and began ripping it off the bottom, similar to how he fishes a spoon…

1 [Finer Points Of Finesse] Finesse worms are slender, soft-plastic lures used with a variety of subtle bass fishing presentations. Most range from 4 1/2 to 6 1/2 inches long, with either a straight tail, a flattened spear tail or a small twist tail. Here, Elite Series pros show you how to rig and fish finesse worms to entice wary bass in tough conditions. Shaky Head Tactics A shaky head is a compact jighead typically weighing 1/8 to 1/4 ounce. The head of a finesse worm is rigged on the jighead with the hook point either impaled in the worm’s body or left exposed. Presentation method: (1) Cast, let the worm sink to bottom. (2) Drag/hop the worm along the bottom until you feel it contact cover. (3) Pause, shake…

“This Month” pays tribute to a proper bassin’ man and local legend in the Memphis area, Joe R. Sills. Sills passed away on Jan. 15, one of hundreds of thousands of Americans lost in the COVID-19 pandemic. He was well-known in Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas as an outdoors writer, band director and a bassin’ hammer. He was also my father. Dad picked up fishing from his father and became a subscriber to Bassmaster Magazine in 1968. I know this because every single issue is still carefully stored in his old house. Dad and I share a name. But we also share some skills. As an outdoors writer, he penned 23 years of stories for the Mid-South Hunting & Fishing News. When I got my first assignment for Bassmaster…

EVERY BASSMASTER ELITE Series pro has a painful tale of a near-win, a total bomb or something in between where a key decision shifted outcomes one way or another. Within these tales, we find a rich harvest of techniques, tactics and timing that can help all anglers sharpen their game. Here, we look at four Elites who finished high in the 2020 Bassmaster Angler of the Year race and the events they believe most impeded their cause. STAY ON THE JUICE Jake Whitaker Event: Lake St. Clair; AOY: Fifth place Scenario: Describing an event heavier on quality than quantity, Whitaker said, “The bite wasn’t great, but the ones that were biting were big ones. You had to have that 21- to 22-pound mark [daily] to be in contention.” Due to COVID-19…

RAPID-FIRE ADVANCEMENTS IN fishing electronics have bass anglers plunking down big bucks to own the latest in this technology. Sadly, many anglers skimp on something equally important that costs far less: polarized sunglasses. Polarized sunglasses won’t pinpoint a submerged brushpile or show you a school of bass suspended 15 feet deep in front of your boat. However, they are invaluable for seeing spawners, cruising fish and the bass eyeballing your popper that needs just one gentle twitch to make it commit. Shallow cover beneath the surface always has and always will attract bass. Polarized lenses cut the surface glare and let you look deeper into the water to see things like stumps, boulders, grass, grass clumps, holes in grassbeds and grass edges. Because you see more of these objects with…

THE B.A.S.S. NATION jumped into kayak tournaments in 2020, organizing five contests from Alabama to California and averaging 144 anglers per competition, despite ongoing COVID-19 concerns. Logan Martin Lake The Huk Bassmaster B.A.S.S. Nation Kayak Series powered by TourneyX presented by Abu Garcia got off to a soaker of a start on March 5 on Alabama’s Logan Martin Lake. The tournament took place on a rainy Thursday, which coincided with the last day of practice for contestants in the Bassmaster Classic on Lake Guntersville, with the weigh-in and Classic Outdoors Expo being held at the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex in downtown Birmingham. All of this led to special recognition for the top kayakers. After 222 fished the one-day contest, the Top 10 finishers — in no particular order — were announced…

Did you know there is a mathematical formula that defines the dynamics of fish jumping out of the water? Google “Journal Of The Royal Society,” and search for jumping dynamics of aquatic animals. Six researchers published the paper in March 2019. To say the read is exciting would be a vast overstatement. For example, the abstract states that maximum jumping height scales with body length, where the Froude number is a ratio of inertia to gravity. (No, we don’t know who this Froude fellow is, but he must have liked fishing.) The scientists listed the reasons fish jump: to escape from predators, capture prey, breathe, communicate or simply jump for the fun of it. In this photo, Elite Series pro Taku Ito would be the predator segment of this formula,…

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IT’S A COOL but clear March day on Lake Tenkiller, and Jason Christie is sitting in his boat tying on lures for a day he wants to spend chasing spawning bass. He’s already put a 1/2-ounce spinnerbait on one rod, a Christie Critter on his flipping stick, a shaky head worm on a third rod and a Rogue on still another. Clearly, he’s not going sight fishing with a mixed arsenal like that. “There are a lot of different ways to catch spawning bass if you don’t want to look for them specifically on beds, or if you can’t actually see them,” he explains. “Here on Tenkiller where I live, I know I won’t see any fish on beds today because of the water clarity and water temperature, but I’ll…

O’Neal Lake was a training ground. The modest impoundment in Tennessee’s Hatchie National Wildlife Refuge has everything young bass anglers need to hone their skills: standing timber, pad fields, submerged grass, beaver lodges and well-defined, deep trenches. My dad was a master of them all. And over the years, he mastered an almost foolproof pattern on the lake that we used to dominate countless local fishing tournaments and boat bass for just plain fun. If you read the front of this book, you know by now that my father, Joe Sills, passed away this year from COVID-19. He was a legendary local angler in the mid-South and a former state youth director for B.A.S.S. Graciously, the editors at Bassmaster have seen fit to allow this month’s pattern to come straight…

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. [Trophy Trends] To request an application, write to editorial@bassmaster.com or B.A.S.S., The Lunker Club, 3500 Blue Lake Drive, Suite 330, Birmingham, AL 35243. A photo documenting the catch must be provided, along with the length and girth of the bass. Only suitable photos will be published in Bassmaster Magazine. We will only accept entries for bass that are released…