Greg Hackney Wins BASS Cayuga Lake

It was highly unlikely that the winner of the Cayuga Lake Bassmaster Elite Series would bring fewer than 20 fish to the scale over the 4 days of the event. Then again, it was doubtful that anybody would catch 19 that averaged nearly 4 1/2 pounds each from a northern venue with an abbreviated growing season. For Greg Hackney, the final regular-season event was all about opting for quality over quantity. He didn't get anywhere near the number of bites that some of his competitors racked up, but he also wasn't inconvenienced by the need to unhook short bass or pickerel numerous times a day. The 19 largemouths he brought to the scale combined to weigh a whopping 85 pounds. That was more than 9 pounds north of what anybody else managed on 20 fish. The Louisiana resident took command of the derby on day 2 with a 23-pound stringer and emphatically closed out the victory with a haul that was just shy of 24. His second tour-level triumph of the year (he also won the Pickwick Lake FLW Tour) stretched his lead in the Angler of the Year race from 1 point to 15. It was his first Elite victory since the circuit's inaugural campaign in 2006, when he topped the field at Sam Rayburn Reservoir in Texas.

Cayuga was a new venue for the majority of the 106-angler field, but it was known from the get-go that the lake's shallower northern end was where the majority of the competitors would congregate. Hackney's plan was to avoid the "community holes" if that was even remotely feasible. "I hadn't totally written it off, but it would've been a last-resort deal to fish up there," he said. "A big factor in all of that was talking with Stephen Browning - he'd been there for the (Bassmaster Northern) Open a couple years ago. "He talks freely with me and I quizzed him a bunch about how it set up and whether a guy had to fish up north to have a shot at winning, and he didn't think so." He began his exploration of the lake all the way at the southern end near Ithaca, N.Y. and worked his way back. He ventured onto the giant north-end flat that was getting the most attention on the afternoon of the second practice day. "Nothing made me want to stay there. It was getting so much pressure and there was even a lot of locals in there. Everybody seemed to be just sitting around looking at everybody else." He'd found the place that would become his key morning stop the previous day - he'd hooked a good specimen and watched half a dozen more come with it as he reeled it up. It was a narrow stretch - perhaps 50 yards long and 30 yards wide - between two grass flats where water that was as deep as 17 feet deep got relatively close to the bank. There were milfoil patches on both ends and a sparse line of a different type of vegetation (possibly American pondweed) on the outside edge. "I just started there the first morning of the tournament and I figured that with that many fish there, somebody else would've found it, too. The funny thing was that nobody ever tried to get on it the whole tournament. "Sometimes there'd be boats close by, but they were all on the docks. Everybody else was fishing a lot shallower."

Competition:

Hackney opened with a sack that left him just 5 ounces off Brandon Palaniuk's lead. In an assessment that might've been ominous for the rest of the field, he didn't feel like he'd had all that great of a day, mentioning how his fish seemed to "bite funny" under the rainy conditions. In reality, he hadn't known prior to that day the type of quality that was in his key area. His standard program is to fish very aggressively on the opening morning of an event and when that produced a high-teens stringer within the first couple hours, he stuck with his big jig for the duration of the derby and kept finding new backup places to throw it. He catapulted into the lead on day 2 with the second-best bag of the tournament, which was topped only by his own final-day haul. He landed every bite he got and weighed a sack of 4 3/4-pound clones to take a 3-plus-pound advantage over 2nd-place Todd Faircloth. Day 3 featured a strong wind out of the south that drove 3-foot rollers over his grass. He caught the four fish he weighed before the wind peaked and said he should have departed once it did, but hung around assuming he could entice one more. When that didn't happen, his lead over Faircloth was reduced to just 10 ounces with 1 day to fish. He settled matters early on the final morning, though, putting more than 20 pounds in his livewell before 8:30.

Winning Pattern:

Hackney is known primarily as a shallow-water stud, but he's well-versed in plying deep grass and relishes his opportunities to do it. He'd gone to Cayuga planning to pound the skinny water, but that notion was dispelled when he found the deep-grass fish on the initial practice day and then caught them on day 1 of competition. "I thought going in that I was going to catch most of my fish in 5 feet of water or less," he said. "I had no idea that I'd end up completely washing that deal and catching them all from 14 feet or deeper. "My secondary deal ended up being my primary deal and I just kept expanding on it. Every morning except the third day I caught enough to where I could go looking for new places and I found several. None were as good (as his primary area), but I caught key fish that I weighed in from all of them." The fish at his main locale were always were always within a 20-yard span, but he had to pinpoint them much more precisely in order to fully exploit them. "Every day they were kind of on a different place and those were basically breaks in the grass - it wasn't just a solid line of it out there. By the second day I figured out that I had to seine that stretch to determine where they were and then make that exact same flip over and over. "One morning I caught two fish on the inside of the grass that were in 12 or 13 feet, but most of the time they were right on the outside edge."

Winning Gear:

Flipping gear: 7'11" heavy-action Quantum Tour Hackney flipping stick, Quantum EXO PT 100 casting reel (6.6:1 ratio), 50-pound Gamma braided line, 1- or 1 1/4-ounce Strike King Hack Attack jig (blue craw), Strike King Rage Craw trailer (blue sapphire). The lone weigh-in fish that he didn't catch flipping the jig was a 5-pounder enticed by a Strike King Shim E Stick.

Main factor: "It'd have to be keeping and open mind because I really thought I was going to fish shallow."

Performance edge: "Without a doubt by Lowrance electronics or allowing me to follow that deep outside (grass) edge. Most of the time I couldn't see the grass visually."

Cayuga Lake Winning Pattern Bassfan 8/26/14 (John Johnson)

Faircloth, who's also playing second fiddle to Hackney in the Angler of the Year race, was right in the mix for his fifth career Elite victory until the final day, when he caught by far his lightest bag and Hackney erupted for the tournament's biggest. When viewed through the naked eye, the place he and Zaldain divvied up had no distinguishing features. Below the surface, however, was a healthy line of grass growing from a hard, clean bottom. "I actually caught a few (during practice) just south of there and I was just following the edge of the grass line and casting a crankbait when I found it," he said. "I caught about a 3 1/2-pounder and he had three or four more with him. After that I started throwing a worm around and getting bites and I milled around and figured out what was holding them there. "It was deep - the bottom was about 19 feet. The grass came up to 12 to 15 feet, but that bottom was really the key. Most of the lake just has scattered grass and it's hard to find a bottom that's real clean like that." The area was on the east side of the lake in the northern end, but a ways south of where most of the field gathered. "There was a mixture (of vegetation), but milfoil and coontail were the biggest deal. The bright green grass that was crisp, that's where the fish were at." Could he have won the event from that locale if he hadn't had to share it? "It's hard to say and we'll never know now. We definitely caught a lot of fish off that one spot but it seemed like Hackney was catching a little bit better grade." He had a backup stretch about a mile and a half away that surrendered several weigh-in fish, including three on the final day. Everything he caught came on either the crank or the worm.

Cranking gear: 7'2" medium-action Castaway Todd Faircloth Signature Series cranking rod, Shimano Core casting reel (6:1 ratio), 12-pound Sunline Super FC Sniper fluorocarbon line, Strike King 5XD (green gizzard shad).

Worm gear: 7' heavy-action Castaway Mag rod, Shimano Chronarch casting reel (7:1 ratio), 14-pound Sunline Shooter fluorocarbon line, unnamed 3/0 round-bend offset hook, 3/8-ounce Strike King tungsten weight, 6" Strike King Cut-R Worm (green-pumpkin).

Main factor: "I love fishing grass - that's my comfort zone - and that lake has a lot of it."

Performance edge: "Everything was real important, but my Lowrance unit was a big key for fishing grass that I couldn't see."

Cayuga Lake 2-5 Patterns Bassfan 8/26/14 (John Johnson)

Zaldain didn't arrive at the area he and Faircloth fished until the afternoon of day 1 - about an hour after Faircloth had departed with 20 pounds in his box. Faircloth got there first on the morning of day 2 and when Zaldain arrived a few minutes later, both were surprised at the other's presence. Zaldain had a witness to him having fished there the previous day, as his day-1 marshal had drawn out with Faircloth for day 2. Zaldain admitted that he stumbled upon the place in practice. He was idling along and talking on his cell phone when he looked at his graph and saw the wad of fish below. "I knew it was a winning-type area and I didn't think there was any way somebody else would find it," he said. "It was basically a big cove, but right in the middle was this big flat where the water was 20 to 22 feet deep. "The milfoil and the coontail were thick down there, but not tall. When I found where they met up with this other type of grass that was taller, that was the winning combo. They were like high spots on the flat where the weed clumps topped out at about 14 feet." The duo fished within a cast of each other for much of the event. Zaldain said he gave Faircloth some space because Faircloth had caught the larger day-1 stringer and was also battling for the AOY. He did his work there with a dropshot rig. His backup program consisted of flipping a jig and throwing a frog in extremely shallow water farther north.

Dropshot gear: 7' medium-action Megabass Orochi XX shaky-head rod, unnamed 2500 Series spinning reel, 20-pound Seaguar SmackDown braided line (high-vis yellow), 10-pound Seaguar Tatsu fluorocarbon leader (10'), unnamed 1/4-ounce cylindrical dropshot weight, unnamed 1/0 hook, Texas-rigged Strike King Super Finesse Worm (candy craw with tail dyed chartreuse). He opted for the stiffer shaky-head rod over the Orochi XX dropshot model in order to better maneuver the bait in the thick vegetation. He caught two weigh-in fish flipping a 1-ounce Strike King Slither Rig with a Strike King Rage Craw trailer and one throwing a Strike King KVD Sexy Frog.

Main factor: "Staying on the outside of that main grass line in the deep water."

Performance edge: "My Raymarine DownVision was the whole key to establishing that spot."

Cayuga Lake 2-5 Patterns Bassfan 8/26/14 (John Johnson)

Evers wasn't tied to any specific locations. He remained on the move almost constantly and fished new water each day. He flipped milfoil in the 8- to 12-foot depth range. "I found a lot of fish in practice throwing a Megabass Spark Shad (swimbait)," he said. "They'd come up and roll on it and wouldn't eat it, but they'd let me know they were there. "I fished both sides of the lake and there were plenty of other boats around, but I just kept covering water." His bags exceeded 19 pounds on 3 of the 4 days. The lone exception was day 3, when a strong south wind caused a lot of competitors to struggle. He caught all 20 of his weigh-in fish on the long rod.

Flipping gear: 7'6" heavy action CarbonLite rod, BPS Johnny Morris Signature Series casting reel (7:1 ratio), 50-pound BPS XPS braided line, 3/4- or 1-ounce BPS XPS weight, 4/0 Mustad straight-shank hook, Zoom Z-Hog (black/blue or green-pumpkin).

He flipped the black/blue bait under gray skies and opted for green-pumpkin when the sun emerged.

Main factor: "Just putting my head down and covering water, not knowing where my next bite was coming from but knowing I was going to get some. I had my trolling motor on 80 or 90 percent almost the whole time."

Performance edge: "My Optima batteries were huge, that 7 1/2-foot rod is perfect for flipping the grass and Wiley X got me a new pair of yellow lenses that there critical in those clouds for seeing the clumps and grass heads when I was going so fast."

Cayuga Lake 2-5 Patterns Bassfan 8/26/14 (John Johnson)

Unlike most competitors, Lintner turned south each day when he left the takeoff in Union Springs, N.Y. and traveled at least 8 miles in that direction. His areas were all between that point and the bottom end of the lake. He also fished shallower than most, keeping his bait in the 6- to 9-foot range. "In practice I located some of the specific thicker clumps of grass," he said. "I wouldn't catch fish off every one (during the tournament), but maybe every other one I'd get a good one." He picked up some quality fish skipping a jig under docks while moving between grass areas. He also caught a few on a Senko. "I hardly ever fish Senkos because you have to fish them too slow and it makes me crazy. The way they bite it there, though, you can throw it a long way and fish it a lot quicker. I was throwing it at isolated grass clumps."

Grass-flipping gear: 7'11" heavy-action G. Loomis IMX 954 rod, Shimano Curado casting reel (7.2:1 ratio), 60-pound Sunline FX2 braided line, 3/4-ounce Eco Pro Tungsten weight, 4/0 Lazer TroKar straight-shank flipping hook, Paycheck Baits punch skirt (black/blue), Jackall Chunk Craw (green-pumpkin). The Chunk Craw is a bait that Jackall markets only in Japan. "I bought some when I visited over there and I'm trying to get the company to bring it here," he said. "It's got a nice action to it."

Dock-skipping gear: 7'5" medium-heavy G. Loomis GLX 893 rod, same reel, 20-pound Sunline Shooter fluorocarbon line, 1/2-ounce Eco Pro Tungsten jig (green-pumpkin/orange), Jackall Chunk Craw or Zoom Super Chunk Jr. trailer (various colors).

Worm gear: 7'5" medium-heavy G. Loomis NRX 894 rod, Shimano Chronarch Ci4+ casting reel (7.6:1 ratio), 18-pound Sunline Super FC Sniper fluorocarbon line, 1/4-ounce Eco Pro Tungsten weight, 5/0 Lazer TroKar hook, Gary Yamamoto Custom Baits Senko (black/blue or green-pumpkin).

Main factor: "Covering water and staying focused."

Performance edge: "I saw some crazy stuff with the HydroWave, like when I was fishing through a place and not seeing any activity, then I fire it up and yellow perch are coming right to my trolling motor and I start catching bass and pike. And my Amphibia sunglasses, the new lens is the clearest I've ever put on my head. I got them Monday night and basically threw my other sunglasses in the trash. I could just see the grass so much better."

Cayuga Lake 2-5 Patterns Bassfan 8/26/14 (John Johnson)