Buddy Gross Wins FLW Lake Toho
Buddy Gross' Winning Pattern, Baits and Gear
It's happened before, but to say it's rare is an understatement. And it's even rarer in these circumstances. Plenty of major victories have been won on a single spot - be it a grass patch, ledge or tiny creek arm. Despite the inherent risk (and realistic odds of getting burned), some pros have been rewarded by going all-in on a single location. Buddy Gross did just that en route to his FLW Tour victory at Lake Toho, making cast after cast to the same grass channel no longer than his boat for four days. Yet, to find a tiny magic spot in Florida and have it told up to win is something few would believe, especially in this tournament. The derby was hyped for the potential of a bed-fishing smackdown, and while that never fully came to fruition, kickers of the 8, 9, and 10 pound variety were common. There was even a 31-09 bag brought it on day 1 by runner-up John Cox.
Yet, there was Gross, avoiding the temptation to go shallow and simply doing what he does best on what turned out to be a "special spot." "I absolutely would've never thought you could win a tournament in Florida from one tiny spot like that," Gross said. "I still can't believe it." Here is a look at how Gross found his winning spot and was able to pull more than 85 pounds of bass from it.
Practice:
If a lake has grass, rest assured, Gross is going to find a way to catch bass from it. Of his now 13 top-20 finishes in his career at the upper levels, 12 have come on what would be considered grass lakes (Guntersville, the Harris Chain, Seminole, etc.). Among those finishes are a handful of top 10s in Florida. Yet, Gross had never fished a tournament on the Kissimmee Chain prior to the Tour event. Thus, he took a day and a half during pre-practice to come down and see how it set up. With so much vegetation to comb through, Gross says he spent the entire pre-practice time graphing, looking for little irregularities in the forests of green. Sure enough, along the southeast side of Lake Toho he found a stretch of hydrilla that looked good.
"There was a solid line of hydrilla with some clumps just on the outside of it," Gross said. "I noticed a few small channels between the matted-up solid line and made a note it was definitely a place I wanted to check come practice." Sure enough, that stretch was one of the first places he hit on his first day of official practice, and when he came to one particular channel and caught four right away, he knew he didn't have to fish that spot anymore. The rest of his practice he kept sampling offshore grass area in Toho and Kissimmee. As the weather improved toward the end of practice, he also decided he'd better start looking up shallow, as well, in case some big females started rolling in with the forecasted good weather. He found a 10-pounder locked on a bed that heear-marked to run to the first morning of the tournament before going to the stretch of grass on the southeast side.
Competition:
When you lose a 10-pounder to start your tournament, it's usually a bad omen. Fortunately, it wasn't for Gross, because that's exactly what he did. To his surprise, that big girl he found on a bed on Tuesday was still there come Thursday morning, and even better, she was "ready." "It didn't take but a couple flips and I hooked her, but she come off in the reeds," Gross said. "That hurt."
After playing with a couple more small bed fish, Gross finally went to his good-looking stretch of grass. Unfortunately, there were a couple other pros who had also liked the spot, one of whom was working his way right to a particular channel that Gross really wanted to hit first. "I saw him coming and I kicked the trolling motor on high to get to that spot before him," Gross said. Yet, to his disappointment, he couldn't get bit and almost kept working his way down the line of hydrilla. However, being that the channel was only 25 feet long, Gross busted through the mat and decided to make a few casts on the front side. "Dude, it was on," Gross said. "I caught four fish in four casts. In practice, they were sitting on that backside because we had some wind, but it was calm that first day and they'd moved to the front."
The fish weren't giants, but there were plenty of 3s, 4s and 5s that apparently were sitting on the edges and then trapping bait that swam into the channel. How he knows this is from time to time throughout the tournament he actually watched one do it, waking up on the surface to trap a baitfish against the edge of the channel. No surprise, every time he saw that, he caught one. After that initial flurry and seeing a few other anglers in the area, Gross made the decision that he'd guard that channel for most the rest of the day. If he did leave, he only went so far as to still be able to run back and beat someone to it if he saw them coming. On day 2, he once again tried to locate that big female he'd lost the day before first thing. However, Jamie Horton found her just before Gross did, even commenting to Gross as he approached he had seen it (Horton didn't know Gross had lost it the prior day). Horton caught her (she went 10-14) and Gross immediately ran to his channel. Sure enough, they were still there, and he quickly sacked up another 20 pounds. Over the final two days it was pretty much rinse and repeat. Gross never left that spot, simply rotating around the channel trying to make casts from three different angles with either a swimjig or a swimbait.
"Any time they stopped biting I'd try and switch the angle and get them going again," Gross said. "The cast was always the same, right in the middle of the channel, just from different angles. I never got bit closer to the edges for some reason." While he worried he might've fished out the spot after three days, he knew he hadn't when he caught his first fish on his third cast on day 4. And he really knew he hadn't when he caught one on this fourth, and another on his sixth cast. He figures he had the majority of his weight by 9 a.m.
All told, 19 of the 20 fish he weighed in throughout the tournament came from that tiny channel. "It truly was an awesome spot I'll never forget," he said.Winning Gear:
Swimjig gear: 7'3" Fitzgerald Rods All Purpose Series casting rod, Daiwa Tatula SV casting reel (7.3:1 ratio), 50-pound unnamed braided line, homemade 1/2-ounce swimjigs (white or black/blue), 4" Scottsboro Tackle Co. swimbait (natural shad) or Zoom Z-Craw (green-pumpkin) trailer.
Swimbait gear: Same rod, reel and line, 3/8-ounce 8/0 Owner Beast Flashy Swimmer hook, 5-inch Scottsboro Tackle Co. swimbait (natural shad).
Main factor: "Coming down in pre-practice and doing all that graphing. There was just too much hydrilla to go through in a few days. I probably would've looked at that spot in practice because it did look so good, but I might not have gotten as dialed in on it."
FLW Tour Lake Toho Winning Pattern BassFan 2/12/19 (Sean Ostruszka)
John Cox's Pattern, Baits and Gear
No angler may have had a more up-and-down week than John Cox. One of the best sight-fishermen in the sport, Cox was well familiar with the chain's best spawning spots, having won a BFL there as a teenager. Sure enough, he sampled all four lakes throughout the event looking for bedding fish, while tossing around a Berkley PowerBait Wind Up during his search. The plan worked the first day to perfection, as he plucked an 8 pounder first thing off a bed, and cracked a 10 pounder on the Wind Up in the afternoon for his mega-bag.
Yet, the allure of sight-fishing ended up being his downfall. He never found any big ones on day 2 and day 3 was "just awful." The final day he scrapped sight-fishing and fished shell beds in Kissimmee and Cypress before heading shallow in Toho to do some flipping and winding. "I didn't miss any fish," said Cox, who battled a nasty cold throughout the event. "I just made the wrong call on day 3, and it cost me."
Winning Gear:
Sight-Fishing gear: 7'3" heavy-action Abu Garcia Fantasista Premier casting rod, Abu Garcia Revo Premier casting reel (7.3:1 ratio), 40-pound braided line, Berkley PowerBait MaxScent The General (green-pumpkin).
Shallow worm gear: 7'6" heavy-action Abu Garcia Fantasista Premier casting rod, same reel and line as sight-fishing, Berkley Fusion19 Superline EWG hook (rigged weightless or with a 1/16-ounce bullet sinker), Berkley PowerBait Wind Up (watermelon).
Deep worm gear: same as shallow rod, Abu Garcia Revo Premier casting reel (6.4:1 ratio), 15-pound Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon line, 1/2-unce Dirty Jigs Pivot Point Football Head, Berkley PowerBait Wind Up (junebug).
Main factor: "Just covering water and getting lucky with those big bites."
Darrell Davis' Pattern, Baits and Gear
Darrell Davis had waited a long time for conditions to set up right for him to "make some real money" out of Tiger Lake. Unfortunately, he just didn't fully capitalize. As soon as Davis saw the conditions begin to improve, he knew he was going to target spawning fish he couldn't see in Tiger. "I'd been waiting and waiting for (Tiger) to have just enough water," says Davis of Tiger. "It can be really hard to get into when it's low. I checked it the first day of practice and had 35 bites. I knew I wasn't leaving after that."
Tiger is stained like Kissimmee, and thus he simply put himself on whichever side was the calmest and went to work tossing around a soft-plastic topwater and flipping into open patches he thought might hold a spawning female. The plan worked perfectly, but he lost an 8 on Saturday before losing two 5s and another 8 on Sunday. "I was on the fish to win, no doubt about that," Davis said. "I just didn't capitalize. You have to fish clean to win, and Buddy (Gross) did."
Gear:
Flipping gear: 7'4" heavy-action Denali KOVERT Lite Series casting rod, Ardent casting reel (7.1:1 ratio), 50-pound Sunline FX braided line, 3/8-ounce tungsten weight, Reaction Innovations Sweet Beaver (junebug).
Topwater gear: 7'4" Denali AttaX Series casting rod, Ardent casting reel (6.3:1 ratio), 50-pound Sunline FX braided line, 5/0 Gamakatsu EWG hook, Reaction Innovations Screwed Up Bullet, Reaction Innovations Trixie Shark (shiner).
Main factor: "My experience on the fishery and my knowledge on how to fish for those bedding fish you can't see. A lot of guys just don't know how to do it right."
Tommy Dickerson's Pattern, Baits and Gear
Tour rookie Tommy Dickerson signed up for the season for one reason: The first three venues all were lush with hydrilla. "I understand fishing and cranking hydrilla," said the Texas native. Having never been to the Kissimmee Chain, Dickerson started off idling around in Toho looking for irregularities or open patches. Sure enough, he came across what he eventually realized was a random shell bed roughly the size of his boat flanked by a pair of large hydrilla clumps that happened to be just around the point from where Buddy Gross won the tournament. Unfortunately, the first two mornings he stopped on it and never got bit on a lipless crankbait. So he had to scrape and grind just enough to make the top-30 cut flipping the bank. However, the weekend brought wind, and once he had that Dickerson knew his spot would fire. "I pulled up Saturday morning and it was 6-pounder, 6-pounder, 6-pounder," Dickerson said. "They,d only bite for 45 minutes every morning, but they really bit when they did."
Flipping gear: 7,6" heavy-action iRod Genesis II Andy's Light Flip/Junk casting rod, Shimano Curado DC casting reel (7.2:1 ratio), 80-pound braided line, 3/4-ounce tungsten weight, Reaction Innovations Kinky Beaver (black and blue).
Lipless crankbait gear: Same rod as flipping gear, same reel (6.2:1, 7.2:1 and 8.2:1 ratios), 12-, 15-, and 20-pound Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon line, Spro Aruku Shad 75 (gold with black back).
Main factor: "Being able to adapt and learn as I went. I knew I could catch plenty of bucks up shallow flipping if my crankbait bite didn,t go, and that,s what got me into the weekend."
Josh Douglas' Pattern, Baits and Gear
He may hail from Minnesota, but Josh Douglas considers himself a "Kissimmee rat." "I've fished tournaments on the chain a few other times, and something about Kissimmee always fit with me and how I like to fish," he said. Knowing that, he didn't spend any time in practice in a lake other than Kissimmee, eventually settling in on the very southern side of the lake due to it having all the right ingredients to hold spawning females. Unfortunately, he wasn't the only one in his area, as he shared it with fellow top-10 angler Tyler Wolcott and top-30 finisher Casey Scanlon.
Douglas was able to finish the highest among them by dragging a stickbait through clumps of lily pads the first two days when the sun was out. He said usually the smaller clumps were better, as they were easier to pick apart with the stickbait, but he caught some of his bigger fish out of a larger pad field. Unfortunately, when the sun disappeared over the weekend, so did much of his bite. Instead, he had to adjust, tossing a vibrating jig and swimming worm around the area to amass the rest of his weight.
Worm gear: 7"5" heavy-action G. Loomis GLX 894C JWR casting rod, Shimano Metanium MGL or Shimano Curado DC casting reel, 50-pound PowerPro Super 8 Slick V2 braided line to a 25-pound Seaguar InvizX fluorocarbon leader, 1/4-ounce WOO! Tungsten weight, 4/0 Owner Jungle Flippin" Hook, BioSpawn ExoStick (black/blue) or Zoom Speed Worm (junebug).
Vibrating-jig gear: 7"2" medium-heavy Shimano Expride glass casting rod, Shimano Curado DC casting reel, 17-pound Seaguar InvizX fluorocarbon, Z-Man/Evergreen ChatterBait Jack Hammer (white), Gambler Little EZ swimbait trailer (shad colors).
Main factor: "Staying focused and not letting the pressure or conditions get to me. We had some really good guys in there with Tyler, Casey and even the McMillan brothers. We were all catching big fish, so you just had to stay focused."
