Todd Auten's Pattern, Baits & Gear

After a stellar day-best bag on Saturday that pulled him within a mere 9 ounces of the leader, Todd Auten suffered a disappointing three-fish day in the final round, dropping him to 3rd. Like Cox, he likes to seek out secluded backwaters wherever he can, trying to find unmolested fish in shallow water. He found that, and more. He was one of the few anglers who found reliable, quality fish upstream from the Ditto Landing launch site. They were big, strong river-current smallmouths, schooling in an eddy along the shoreline about midway between Ditto and the Guntersville Dam. Unfortunately they were the opposite direction from the creeks he found that were also producing good bites (of the largemouth variety), a long run away from the lower lake. He had to choose which way to run every morning. "I usually like to hit my closest spots first and work my way to the farthest ones, and I wish I'd done that (on the morning of day 4)," he said. He had caught a crucial 5-pounder on a jig in the creeks each of the 2 previous days, and with that in his mind he returned to the creeks.

Late on day 4, when he couldn't come close to his day-3 bag, he returned to the eddy and caught two nice smallmouths, but ran out of time and couldn't finish his limit. "All my history (on Wheeler) has been down the lake," he said. "I spent 1 day upriver in practice and the rest downriver. I didn't get as much time on the water the first 2 days of practice as I'd have liked due to a back problem. I went to a chiropractor each morning before I got on the water." Those medical time-outs limited the number of small out-of-the-way creeks he could explore. Over the 4 tournament days he did his damage in four different creeks, all sporting cooler water and targets like logs and grass in shallow water. "I'd cast past the target and reel slowly up to it, sometimes scattering the bait holding close to the cover," he noted. "Then I'd turn around and fish it all again with a different lure. The frog probably got me the most weigh-in fish, but I got some on a buzzbait, a ChatterBait, and a jig. They'd sometimes hit the jig on the bottom and sometimes when I was swimming it." The smallmouths he found were schooling on a main-channel point with current hitting it to form an eddy. "I'd throw a Super Fluke upstream of the eddy and let the current bring it to them," he said. "I caught good smallmouths there at the start of the first day and the end of the last day."

Jig gear: 7' medium-heavy rod, Daiwa Tatula Type R casting reel (6.3:1 ratio), 17-pound monofilament line (clear), 5/16-ounce Zorro Baits Booza jig (black/blue), Zoom Ultra Vibe Speed Craw trailer (sapphire blue).

Vibrating jig gear: Same rod, reel and line, 1/2-ounce Z-Man ChatterBait (black/blue), same trailer.

Buzzbait gear: Same rod and reel, 55-pound Daiwa Samurai braid, 1/2-ounce Zorro Baits Head Knocker (no skirt), Zoom Horny Toad trailer (white).

Frog gear: Same rod, reel and line as jig, LiveTarget Frog Hollow Body (albino white)

Fluke gear: 7' medium-action spinning rod, unnamed spinning reel, 20-pound Daiwa Samurai braid, 15-pound fluorocarbon (leader), 4/0 offset round-bend hook, Zoom Super Fluke (white)

Main factor: "I keyed on shorter creeks that got less attention than the four or five we all knew we could all get way back in, and I knew they'd get beat up. The main thing was fishing real thorough and going through over and over and showing them different baits."

Performance edge: "I'd have to say it was the Garmin (electronics). I used the satellite photo overlay on top of the lake map, and it showed places where the water looked a little deeper in the back of some creeks. I found less obvious places in shorter creeks that most guys weren't looking at."

Forrest Wood Cup Patterns 2-5 BassFan 8/9/16 (Jonathan Manteuffel)