Brandon Hunter's Pattern, Baits & Gear
Practice involved a lot of idling and analyzing how fish were position on certain pieces of structure. His key depth range was 17 to 18 feet. "A couple places I fished were spots they'd get on when they first moved out," he said. "That was a key place." He came out of practice with little feel for what he could catch since he didn't do much casting, especially on areas where he marked numbers and quality fish. He had a milk run of spots that he hit the first two days on secondary and in-between areas as he totaled 41-14 to qualify for the weekend in fourth place. Included was an area where he finished his limit both days that he knew nobody else had fished. He wound up not fishing it on day 3 as he focused on a spot that he'd found Friday afternoon. He caught his two biggest fish Saturday on a 6-inch swimbait and the rest on deep crankbaits en route to a 24-12 stringer that pulled him to within 1 1/2 pounds of the lead. On the final day, he caught all of fish off main river channels with a giant spoon and the swimbait. "The only thing was, the spot I saved I never caught one there (Sunday)," he said. "I wish I would've fished there Saturday and tried to catch a big one there. I needed some 6- and 7-pound bites. It's hard to win these things, especially when a guy cracks almost 30. My performance, I felt like it was as good as I could've done." Where knowing too much about a lake has tripped up other anglers, Hunter felt like he used it to his advantage. "The reason I say that is if I see three boats on a school I want to fish, I can keep going," he said, "where somebody else without much history has no choice to pull in. I can go get away from the crowds. It's not that I know many more places because with GPS, guys find the same stuff, but I can get away from the crowds."
Spoon gear: 7'5" medium-heavy 13 Fishing Muse (prototype) casting rod, 13 Fishing Inception casting reel (8.0:1 ratio), 20-pound Sunline Super FC Sniper fluorocarbon line, Nichols Lures Ben Parker Magnum Spoon.
Jig gear: (hair or football): 7'1" 13 Fishing Envy Black casting rod, 13 Fishing Concept C casting reel (7.1:1 casting reel), same line (14-pound).
Swimbait gear: 7'6" medium-heavy 13 Fishing Muse (prototype) casting rod, same reel at jig (6.3:1 ratio), same line as spoon, 3/4-oz. Nichols Lures swimbait head, 6" Basstrix paddletail swimbait (various shad patterns).
Cranking gear: 7'11" 13 Fishing Envy Black Crankenstein casting rod, same reel as swimbait (5.3:1 ratio), same line (10- and 14-pound), Lucky Craft 3.5XD and 6.5XD (chartreuse blue and aurora citrus). He swapped out the stock hooks on his crankbaits to Mustad KVD short shank trebles (2/0 on 6.5XD and 1/0 on 3.5XD).
Dropshot gear: 13 Fishing Envy Black Spinning rod, unnamed spinning reel, 12-pound Sunline SX-1 braided line, 8-pound Sunline Super FC Sniper fluorocarbon line (leader), wacky-rigged 5" Gary Yamamoto Custom Baits Senko.
Main factor: "Knowing a few key areas where some big fish were getting and where they were moving to before getting out on main river. That was key."
Performance edge: "That HydroWave. That's one of those things when you're fishing deep, it does what it's supposed do. I had it on the ultra finesse setting with the volume way up."
