Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2016 i Bassmaster

I looked over at Allen, and couldn’t tell if the smoke was coming out of his ears or the engine. THOMAS ALLEN BELIEVES he has, for the past 10 months, had bad luck. He moved to Birmingham, Ala., from Minneapolis, Minn., to join the Bassmaster editorial team last July. After hearing about the epic bass fishing around the area, he looked forward to experiencing the action firsthand. He started with Lake Guntersville. “So, how’d you do?” I asked. “Well, I saw a lot of pretty water. But, I didn’t even get a bite. Not. One. Bite.” Next, Allen tried Smith Lake. He caught two dinks after eight hours of fishing. Then, he fished Lay Lake, which was like Guntersville all over again. Nada. “I’ve never had such bad fishing luck…

OCD. No, it’s not a new sponsor. It’s how Chapman describes himself. Favorite Food. Sushi (especially tuna). Guilty Pleasure. Chocolate ice cream. How’s the Signal? The Chapmans camp in their RV during Elite Series events (and in between events, too), and say one of the first things they “hope and pray for” is good satellite television reception. Salty Satisfaction. Although Chapman grew up in the Midwest, his family took annual two-week vacations to the Gulf Coast, where Chapman fell in love with saltwater fishing. His parents recently bought a second home in Florida, and after a month of saltwater fishing prior to this season, Chapman says “saltwater fishing may get in the way of my deer hunting.”…

Kentucky initiated the Trophy Bass Propagation Program, which introduces offspring of trophy native bass donated by anglers who catch them, with 8 pounds the minimum for females and 6 pounds for males. Nearly 100 acres of new islands will provide habitat for smallmouth bass when an $11.8 million restoration project on the Mississippi River is completed in 2018. Wisconsin passed a new law to encourage volunteers to place more permitted fish-habitat projects in state waters by removing the civil liability caused by their placement.…

A Texas newlywed lost her wedding ring to a hungry largemouth bass on Easter weekend while taking an Instagram photo on a New Mexico lake. According to New Mexico’s Silver City Daily Press, Bernadette Miller of Lubbock, Texas, was fishing with her husband, Bob, on Bill Evans Lake when she hooked into a 7-pound largemouth. “It was the biggest fish I’d ever caught, so I wanted a picture,” Bernadette said. Bob helped his wife pose with the lively fish and was about to take a photo to post to Bernadette’s Instagram account. “I didn’t really know what I was doing,” Bernadette said. “But I was just holding it out when it started flipping and bit my hand.” The fish latched onto her ring finger, and when she pulled away, the…

The 2016 version of BASSfest lands here June 8-12, but with its proximity to the bountiful waters of Lake Texoma, this place is a destination for bass enthusiasts the whole year ’round. That’s Just Nuts. Durant is home to the “World’s Largest Peanut” monument, a title it shares with similar monuments in Georgia and Texas. Choctaw Nation. Durant is the capital of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Bring Your Shorts and Sunglasses. Durant’s average high temperature this month is 91 degrees; its average low is 68. Lake Texoma By the Numbers 7.06 Weight in pounds of the lake record smallmouth bass (according to TPWD). 4.38 Weight in pounds of the lake record spotted bass (according to Texas Parks and Wildlife Department). 74,686 Surface acres…

“The Alabama Rig unlocks one of the hardest puzzles in bass fishing.” LIKE MANY ANGLERS, Paul Elias was not particularly impressed with his first view of an Alabama Rig. He remembers thinking that with five wires, each with a lure tied on, there was no way to make a quiet presentation to a bass, especially in clear or shallow water. That was before he saw the Alabama Rig in the water, before he made his first cast, before he landed more than 100 pounds of bass and won the FLW Tour event on Lake Guntersville with it. “Andy Poss, the designer of the Alabama Rig, showed it to me one afternoon in September 2011, when I was emceeing a cancer benefit tournament on Pickwick Lake,” remembers Elias, winner of the…

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 or a smallmouth bass weighing 6 pounds or more, from Jan. 1, 2015, to the present. New Lunker Club members will receive an official certificate with holder and a Minn Kota hat. Joe Lott Mississippi 116 Pickwick Lake, Mississippi ◆ 1/4-ounce War Eagle spinnerbait ◆ Water clarity: clear ◆ Depth: 3 feet ◆ Weather: overcast, windy Jim Larsen Washington 813 Dworshak Dam, Idaho 5-inch Yamamoto Senko (watermelon red fleck) Patrick Payne Mississippi 133 Lake X, Mississippi 9-inch custom swimbait (threadfin shad) Jack D. Orr Tennessee 126 Lake Wales, Florida 8-inch wild shiner Darryl Gowan Oklahoma 109 Lake Fork,…

A book published earlier this year may make bass anglers’ heads spin. But it also may help them catch more fish. High Percentage Fishing: A Statistical Approach to Improve Catch Rates is described on Amazon.com as “the Moneyball of largemouth bass fishing,” a reference to the popular book about the Oakland Athletics’ use of statistical analysis to build a winning baseball team. Author Josh Alwine, an engineer and statistician, sifted through tens of thousands of data points on predatory fish catches, most of them centered on bass fishing, and tied them to location-specific weather data to determine which variables had the greatest effect on catch rates. Some of Alwine’s findings include: Only the most extreme changes in barometric pressure have much of an effect on catch rates; moon phases have…

Toledo Bend Reservoir on the Texas-Louisiana border has been receiving a lot of attention for producing big bass the past couple of years (and justifiably was named the top lake in Bassmaster’s annual rankings last year), but another east Texas lake also has been making a name for itself lately. Lake Palestine, a 25,560-acre impoundment of the Neches River located about 15 miles southwest of Tyler, has been producing eye-popping stringers. In a Fishers of Men tournament this past spring, the top three teams had stringers of 30.1, 29.49 and 27.68 pounds, respectively. The same tournament saw three double-digit largemouth bass, including a 12.11-pound fish that was just more than a pound short of the lake’s two-year-old largemouth record. In an interview with outdoor writer Steve Knight in the Tyler…

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources reported this spring that both smallmouth and largemouth bass fishing on Lake Erie would continue to prosper this year. The state’s natural resources agency says small-mouth fishing is expected to be fair but improving this year. Although smallmouth catch rates declined in 2015 compared to the previous year, they’re still the highest observed since the mid-1990s. “Smallmouth bass should be an excellent size [14 to 22 inches and weighing up to 6 pounds],” the Ohio DNR reported in April. “The best fishing for small-mouth bass will continue to be in areas with good bottom structure, which is the available habitat across much of the Ohio nearshore and islands.” Erie’s largemouth fishing also is on the upswing, with the Ohio DNR predicting “excellent” fishing this…

Feel The Spinner s Vibes “If you can’t feel a spinnerbait’s blades’ vibrations, it isn’t working properly, so maintain a tight line even as you allow the lure to drop. Since largemouth bass will often grab a falling spinnerbait instead of smashing [it], set the hook whenever you feel the vibration stop or halt.” Ray Scott, B.A.S.S. founder Bump The Stump “That’s my motto for fishing this wonderful chunk of metal and lead called the spinnerbait. Whether it’s a boat dock, a patch of lilies, a stickup or a stump — bump it! Head the lure past so close to the cover that the blades are interrupted in their normal rotation and momentarily flutter and pause before the spinners quickly resume the rotation. Big bass will slash into a spinner-bait…

NATIVE AMERICANS CALLED sycamore trees “ghost trees” because they glowed eerily at night along the banks of mid-America’s creeks and rivers. In the moonlight, their limbs looked like arms outstretched to seize unsuspecting passersby. And in a roundabout way, that’s what Chad Miles and I are experiencing, except in our case, it’s daytime, and the sycamores are poking up out of the water instead of growing on the banks. We’re trying to weave our crankbaits and swim jigs through their submerged limbs, but this morning the ghost trees have added several new lures to their collection. Suffice to say, my boat partner and I are frustrated in our efforts to target the bass this standing timber shelters. “I told you, it’s a jungle down there,” Miles grumbles at one point.…

Joining two pieces of line can be done in myriad ways. One of the strongest methods to create this connection, however, is the use of a blood knot. The problem, though, is that a blood knot is notoriously hard to tie — unless you have three hands. That said, fly fishing guides use a little trick to make tying this knot a cinch (pun intended). Give this a try and the blood knot may well become your go-to connector. 1 Tie the tag ends of line together with an overhand knot (try to leave very short tags on terminal ends). 2 With the overhand knot facing downward, form a loop with the two lines crossing each other. Position one line slightly above the other. 3 While pinching both sides of…

Brent Chapman Hometown: Quivira, Kan. Birthday: July 6, 1972 How do you explain your strong start to the season this year? Something that’s really important to me is to go out before the season kicks off and go catching. Not fishing — catching. My parents bought a place down in Florida, and we decided it was too cold in Kansas in January and February, so we went down there. I thought I’d spend some time catching fish on Okeechobee, but I got sucked into saltwater fishing. It was great. Just going and catching something is the thing I’m looking for. You’re a pretty reserved guy. Do you ever get riled up about anything? I’m pretty quiet and laid back, not easily riled up. It takes a lot to get me…

Bass Pro Shops Central Open No. 1 Arkansas River, Muskogee, Okla. June 2-4 Carhartt College Midwestern Regional Clinton Lake, Forsyth/Clinton, Ill. June 2-4 Costa Bassmaster High School Midwestern Open Clinton Lake, Forsyth/Clinton, Ill., June 5 Carhartt College Wild Card presented by Bass Pro Shops Murray Lake, Durant, Okla., June 8-10 GEICO Bassmaster BASSfest presented by Choctaw Casino Lake Texoma, Durant, Okla. June 8-12 Busch Bassmaster Elite Cayuga Lake, Union Springs, N.Y. June 23-26 Bass Pro Shops Northern Open No. 1 Oneida Lake, Syracuse, N.Y., June 30-July 2…

Former B.A.S.S. angler Dave Mansue took to social media this past spring to warn Toledo Bend anglers about a troubling report from the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. Mansue posted in April on his Facebook page that he’s worried about high harvest rates of largemouth bass on “The Bend,” a lake that has been producing a parade of double-digit bass in recent years. According to an excerpt of the LDWF report that Mansue posted, a recent study suggests Toledo Bend largemouth bass have a total mortality that is more heavily influenced by fishing mortality than natural mortality (41 and 24 percent a year, respectively). LDWF creel surveys suggest that Toledo Bend bass anglers harvest 61 percent of the legal-size fish that they catch.…

BASSMASTER’S REALITY SERIES puts the top names in competitive bass fishing on small lakes they’ve never seen before, then gives them seven hours to formulate a successful pattern. This month, one of the sport’s most renowned and colorful pros, Harold Allen, takes our challenge. The 70-year-old Shelbyville, Texas, angler fished B.A.S.S. events from 1974 to 2010, during which time he qualified for 15 Classics and earned the nickname “The Legend” due to his formidable offshore structure fishing skills and uncanny prowess with a plastic worm. A member of the mythical “Hemphill Gang” of guides and pro anglers based on Toledo Bend Reservoir in Texas, Allen was inducted into the Bass Fishing Hall of Fame in 2015. Here’s what happened June 9, 2015, when Allen took on Lake P,…

CHRIS ZALDAIN’S 2015 Toyota Bassmaster Angler of the Year Championship win on Sturgeon Bay revealed a little known trick with swimbaits that many anglers previously played close to the vest. Zaldain used a dainty, 3-inch MegaBass Spark Shad on a 1/4-ounce jighead to catch most of his 53 pounds of smallmouth on a windy Lake Michigan in late September. It proved that baby swimbaits of 4 inches or less can be big players around quality fish when conditions are right. Finesse swimbaits use small boot-tail swimbaits on light jigheads and spinning tackle. These scaled-down versions were used successfully in other 2015 Bassmaster Elite Series events, but Zaldain’s pattern showed how effective they can be under fairly tough conditions. “I own a lot of swimbaits from 3 to 12 inches long,…

Don’t get stuck I just bought a used set of Power-Poles and worry about them getting stuck in the down position. Is there a way to manually raise them if I get in that situation? Matthew Lewis, Atlanta, Ga. Curt Hill of Power-Pole says that if there is an issue, the pole may be manually raised by grabbing the arm with your hands and applying enough pressure to bypass the release protector valve. If the shallow-water anchor is beyond reach or stuck on bottom, you can force it up by driving the boat slowly into shallower water, where pressure from the lake bottom will release it. Depressing the up button on the Power-Pole anchor control simultaneously may offer assistance. Avoid touching the spike when trying to release the anchor. Trailer…

The spotted bass is, inch for inch and pound for pound, the gamest bass that swims. WHEN WE LAUNCHED the Bassmaster Lunker Club in January 1998, it was limited to black bass weighing 10 pounds or more — the universal definition of a “lunker.” B.A.S.S. members loved the new magazine department and we soon received a steady stream of application forms and photos of prize largemouth. Some members, however, felt left out. Odds of catching a 10-pound bass anywhere north of Mason’s and Dixon’s line were miniscule. Heck, if you were fishing anywhere outside of Florida, Texas or California, your chances of hitting on a lottery ticket were nearly as good as those of boating a double-digit bass. Many wanted to make “lunker” a relative term, perhaps setting a 6-…