He was the only Top 6 finisher who didn't catch the majority of his fish for the tournament on a rattlebait. He said that 9 or 10 were enticed by a Berkley Powerbait Ripple Shad grub. Among those was a 6-11 brute.
"I was swimming it real slow, then let it sink to the bottom, and then start swimming it real slow again," he said. "When it contacted something, I'd give it a snap with my wrist." He also worked his rattlebait in a similar fashion. "There was no kind of burning going on or anything like that."
"it's a composite glass rod and it really keeps them hooked good. I only lost a couple of fish all week. When you're using moving baits with treble hooks, it for sure makes a big difference."
Casts on which the bait traveled directly down the ridge were ineffective, it had to go across at an angle. "I had about three lines where I made the exact same cast and caught about 90 percent of my fish," he said. He said he fished the bait slowly, almost like a jig. He'd let it get hung up in the grass and then ease it out. "I was really dialed in on how to catch those fish," he said. "Almost every one that bit my bait swallowed it and I usually had to use the pliers to get it out."
He said he caught the vast majority of his weighin fish on a 1/2-ounce Yo Zuri lipless crank that had been hand-painted Rayburn red. He caught a few on the final day on a 1/2-ounce white Sebile Flatt Shad. "By the end of the last day they'd started to hit that white Sebile a little better."
With the Beeswax fish so pressured, his thought process was to first use a loud rattelbait, then a bait with a more subdued rattle, then a bait with no rattle at all. "The fish had so many rattling things going by them I wanted something more subtle," he said. "I caught all my fish the last day on that DT6."
He said his boat was generally over 5 to 8 feet of water and he was working his bait parallel to the grass edge in 4 to 6 feet. "Ticking the grass was important," he noted. "You wanted to stay in contact with the grass. The first day, it didn't seem like it mattered as much, but the last 2 days it really changed and it seemed like you had to work harder to get bites."
Everything he weighed on the first 2 days came out of Beeswax, but he shifted his focus to Spring Creek for day 3. Spring had been dead during practice, but his experience on the lake told him it wouldn't stay that way if the water continued to warm, and his hunch was correct. "It's a flat creek and it's a little clearer in there," he said. "Around here, the clear water doesn't warm up as quick as the dirty water does."
"The thicker the grass was, the better," he said. "And coontail was definitely the best grass." Most of his fish came on a Sebile Flatt Shad, but he also caught a couple on a Senko. "I was pumping the Flatt Shad, fishing it almost like a worm. That was critical."
"A lipless bait is great in cold water. The water (this year) was in the low 40s to start, but (on day 3) it got to about 50 in there, a benefit of the grass in the area. There's lots of gizzard shad in there, but the shad kill wasn't as bad in Beeswax as it was everywhere else. So the fish were a little more active, and each day that it warmed, more fish wanted to move back. The creek has a lot of fish in it. It's the only major creek that has real good grass, and trust me, I searched the back of every break and pocket. There's only two other creeks with coontail, and I'm sure there's fish in those places too."
About bait choice, he said: "The key is to rip the bait out of the rocks and stumps, when it hits something, let that bait flutter down. The Red Eye Shad, what it does is what no other bait on the market that I've seen (does), and it was designed that way. It has a shimmy to it. When it drops in the water, it's perfectly balanced and it shimmies as it falls to bottom. That's the one thing (the bass) can't stand.
"I got 99% of my bites after it hit something, then I'd rip the bait and let it flutter down. I've won a lot of money with that bait. I have a ton of confidence in it. It's a great coldwater bait. It's the main reason for the win that I had here, without a doubt."
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