Jeremy Lawyer's Pattern, Baits & Gear
Looking back, there's nothing different Jeremy Lawyer would've done at the Cup. Other than losing one decent fish in three days, he was happy with how things turned out in light of the adjustments he had to make. "Everything went my way and I think the deciding factor was the schooling fish Thrift had on day 3 because the brush pile deal was worn out," Lawyer said. He got on a strong topwater pattern in the morning in practice and figured that could produce a couple fish to set the tone each day before shifting his focus to deep brush piles. By the time the tournament started, he could tell the offshore game was fading.
"I really thought the way practice was with a topwater, I thought that would be strong and a way to do well," he said. " I could tell after day 1 and 2 it got worse and by the morning of day 3 it was terrible. I saw it going downhill. My first plan was to throw topwater for three good fish and then the dropshot would save me to have five, just not to catch a good one. It wound up being the total opposite." Ultimately, a dropshot rigged with a variety of finesse worms dobbed around brush piles off docks in 12 to 18 feet of water wound up catching all but two of the fish he weighed in. When he wasn't on the main lake, he'd probe stretch of docks about halfway back into all the major creek arms on the lower end. "The larger fish were on the lower end, from the first bridge down to the dam," he said. "I felt like you could catch numbers were up the river, but I didn't focus on that much. Driving home, I got to thinking about some of the places I fished late in the day and it seemed the best docks where I was able to cull in the last hour or two the sun got angled over far enough where the brush was on the same side as the shade. I caught them in the same direction to where the shade covered the brush."
Gear:
Dropshot gear: 7' medium-action Team Lew's Custom Pro Speed Stick Series All-Purpose spinning rod, Team Lew's Custom Pro Speed Spin Series 3000 spinning reel, 16-pound Sunline SX1 braided line, 10-pound Sunline Super FC Sniper fluorocarbon line (leader), 1/0 Gamakatsu Aaron Martens TGW dropshot hook, Zoom Swamp Crawler, Zoom Finesse Worm (morning dawn), unnamed hand-poured worm, 3/8-oz. Bullet Weights tungsten finesse dropshot weight.
His topwater arsenal consisted of a Freedom Tackle buzzbait with a Zoom Horny Toad (white) trailer, a 3" LIVETARGET Glass Minnow Baitball Popper (pearl natural) and a Fall Creek Lures custom-painted River2Sea Whopper Plopper 130 (midnight shad).
FLW Cup Lake Hamilton 2-5 Patterns BassFan 8/14/19 (Todd Ceisner)
