Whitney Stephens Wins BASS Lake Erie Northern Open
Stephens' original plan was to practice from Sunday through Wednesday (the day before the start of the event), but the weather forecast threw a monkey wrench into that. "It was calling for really rough water from Saturday through Monday, so I talked a friend into going out with me the prior Wednesday and Thursday," he said. "The lake was flat and we got to run a lot of water, and those were really important days. "When I got back out on Tuesday, I found the area where I started on day 1, and I spent the rest of that day expanding on what I'd found on the 2 previous days. The fishing was better than it had been the prior week. here was a lot more bait present - a lot of shad balls and schools of perch - and the smallmouth were just gorging on them." He focused on the always-fertile waters in the vicinity of Pelee Island, focusing on the 23- to 28-foot depth range. "I was just running contour lines, looking for anything that broke the current. That could be a seam of rocks or just a 2-foot rise off the bottom. I'd locate them with the Side Imaging on my Lowrance and if they had bait, they had fish." He ended up with a series of nine locales, but he never got to fish one that he considered among the best during the tournament. "Jason Root sat on that one for all 3 days, and he ended up finishing 3rd."
Competition:
Stephens, who employed dropshot rigs utilizing three different baits throughout the derby, had the vast majority of his weight by 11 o'clock on day 1. "I caught them really good, and by about noon I started to lay off," he said. "It got to the point where I felt like I was burning some fish (that he might need later). "I tried some stuff that was out of the ordinary, trying to catch a 5-pounder, but that never happened." He was surprised by the 25 1/2-pound sack caught by day-1 leader David Reault and the 24 1/4 that Remitz took to the scale, so he leaned on his fish a bit harder on day 2. "I had a long day - I wasn't due in until 4:45, and by 1 or 2 o'clock I had over 22 pounds on my Rapala scale. After that I basically went practicing and I found an area that was crucial for day 3. "It was a place I hadn't checked (during practice) and they were biting good there. I caught a 4 1/4 there that gave me an extra quarter-pound." He was in 3rd place when the final day got under way. He opted to start on the place that he rated as the least-promising and work his way toward the place he'd discovered late on day 2. He didn't catch anything at his first stop and didn't mark any fish on his graph, either. He picked up one at his second locale, and then proceeded to boat about 30 more over the next 5 hours. "We'd had a northeast wind for the first 2 days, but on day 3 it was blowing 15 to 20 knots out of the east. That changed the current, and once I figured out how they were setting up, I could pull up and catch as many as I wanted. It was really good. "I was scratching and clawing for every bass I could catch because I felt like I was behind all day. I just kept fishing for the next bite and I stayed for 5 minutes longer than I'd given myself (the run back to the launch took about an hour). The last one I caught was a nice one and my leader was pretty much gone, so I just said, 'I'm done.'''
Winning Gear:
Dropshot gear: 6'9" medium-heavy Kistler All Purpose spinning rod, Shimano Stradic 3000 spinning reel, 8-pound Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon line (main line and 12- to 15-inch leader), size 12 Owner Micro Hyper barrel swivel, size 1 Gamakatsu Split Shot/Drop Shot hook, 1/2-ounce VMC tungsten dropshot weight, Z-Man Jerk ShadZ (smoky shad), Jackall Cross Tail Shad (black weenie) or Yamamoto Shad Shape Worm (green-pumpkin).
He used a 1/2-ounce homemade lead cylindrical weight on days 1 and 2. "I was running low on them, so I asked Jacob Wheeler if he had any and he gave me some of the VMCs. I really liked that tungsten - it's a lot more dense and I could see it a lot better on the graph."
Main factor: "Knowing when to leave one school and go to another. I never sat in one place for too long."
Performance edge: "I run the 2015 Skeeter FXi with a Yamaha SHO and it's the ultimate rough-water ride. Also, my Lowrance units were real crucial for knowing right where I needed to be and being able to get right back on those places."
Lake Erie Open Winning Pattern BassFan 9/28/15 (John Johnson)
