The Wired Angler - Bass Fishing Blog, Tackle Tips and Bait Making Advice

Jeremy Anderson: Back from Bassmaster Classic 2010

 

The Zen Master and I.

Jeremy Anderson reports from the Bassmaster Classic for us. Jeremy is co-owner of Black Dog Baits.

Well, what can I say? The Bassmaster Classic is the most amazing show/tournament I have ever seen.

It is literally awe-striking to see all the professional anglers in one place. Opportunities to meet Hank Parker, Bill Dance, Ray Scott, Rick Clunn and so on abound. These guys are absolutely pleasant to speak with. I felt like a little kid. I got in line for a hot dog and stood next to Paul Elias. I pinched myself several times to make sure I wasn't dreaming.

Meeting other lure manufacturers is always a huge pleasure as well. Grant Koppers from Live Target lures has a beautiful line up of baits and his attention to every aspect of the business is incredible. I picked up some of the crawdad rattle baits, a big 5 inch perch crankbait that runs 12 feet, and a little shad crankbait. The baits scream of quality with a strong Japanese-like inspiration. The finishes are very detailed and executed perfectly. No detail is overlooked from the gill detail all the way to little hairs on the craw rattler. I cant wait to toss these around the river!

Andre Moore of Reaction Innovations has some interesting new designs in the works along with a few colorful stories that put me in tears. He currently is fishing saltwater tournaments for reds and kingfish. Sounds like a fun way to fish that presents a whole new challenge. As usual, his plastic sales were excellent at the show. His following back East is as big or bigger than the West.

Lonnie Stanley and his crew are some of my boyhood heroes. My first jigs were all Stanley jigs I bought from K-Mart. Anybody ever heard of "Hales Craworm"? John Hale is a plastics pioneer from way back. He showed me some new ringed plastic baits with special air pockets to create extra balance and action. The capabilities of these baits are endless. Ken Cheaumont showed me some new jigs and spinnerbaits with some wicked colors. They also had an awesome double frog hook for the ribbits.

I'm not quite sure in 3 days I saw everything there. The new boats were awesome along with the new outboards. The Sho from Yamaha was massive but the 3.2L 300xs stroker from Mercury was love at first sight! WOW!!!!

 

Baddest motor ever!!!!!!!!!!  3.2 LITER!!!!!!! Yamawhat??????????? Evincrude???????? FAIL

 

This motor is missing a crown for its regal status.
 

 

The Gambler Sterling..... Words cant describe this boat.   

 

Cockpit not console.

New Jaguar. Giant badass cat! Beautiful boat and great people!

 

 

 

Bandit coon. This just made me laugh.

 

The city was beautiful and oozed old southern charm. I could easily move to Alabama.
 

The real wow was Kevin VanDam. We are lucky to be able to witness such an unbelievable dominant angler in our lifetime. I'm not sure there will ever be an equal of his. His third classic win along with the angler of the year title. What a stick!

My HBC Story In A Nutshell

As all of you may already know, the HBC 4 at Don Pedro did not quite have the results everyone may have been expecting.

I had never fished the lake myself but I did not plan to pre-fish for the event, thinking that since it's a tournament where one bite would win, I did not really see a huge advantage to do so (boy was I right for once).

I showed up the night before and stayed in a houseboat with some friends I had made plans with. We all got up at the butt-crack of dawn; if there is on complaint I have about this event it is that for Christ's sake how many fucking hours before we go fishing do we have to get up? I am used to arriving with just enough time to check in, get my boat in the water, and drink my coffee on my way the first spot. I am not a morning person at all.

After hooking up with my VTO (Volunter Tournament Official), twiddling my thumbs for an hour, and trying to avoid falling asleep on the deck of my boat I was ready to go.

I was 5th boat out, so that was nice. I went straight to my first spot only a couple minutes away and started throwing a TOP SECRET 10” topwater bait I had made the week prior. I stayed in one cove for about 2 hours without any sign of life. I threw an 8” Punker a little bit as well, but soon realized this spot was not going to pan out.

I made a couple moves throwing a Hudd, then tied on a Wake Jr. I had hit a spot full of trees and the water seemed to have been warming on the bank. But once again, no sign of life.

I then motored up and starting running around, throwing mostly the Hudd for the next few hours.
I ran about halfway up the lake and fished a deep cove with steep banks and a lot of really fishy looking stuff. . . still nothing.

At this point, I was just trying to hit water that I had not tried yet in terms of depth, structure etc. I picked a steep rocky bank and fished the hudd from 10 to 50 feet without anything.

With two hours left I decided to go back to the area I had started in, and fished the opposite bank that I felt should have warmed up by then. I was slightly right, in that I saw my first fish of the day. I was able to get that bass to follow a cranked-down Wake Jr. after throwing towards a jumping trout. It was about 5 pounds and was not interested enough to bite. I then switched up to a 3 joint sinking Snack Size Trout, and I spent the rest of the day switching between the two baits. I called up one more fish about two pounds and one no bigger than the Snack Size “looking for a date”.

My last desperate attempt for a bite was to throw a frog at some floating debris in the back of an arm in the final cove I fished.

After going back and watching boat after boat come in with nothing to show for the day, I was in no hurry to go watch the weigh in.

When I finally went up I was surprised to see Kent Brown up there smiling in a surprised manner with the HBC belt on his shoulder.

What a day. I guess that’s swimbait fishing for you. Some days you get them, some days you don’t.
I finished the day by chatting in the parking lot and doing a quick interview with Kent Brown for his radio show Ultimate Bass.

Above is a photo of all the baits I used during the day.

Congratulations, Kent!

Here's the official HBC site

HBC 3- Lake Amistad Postponed

“In light of the recent and very serious financial crisis facing our country, several of our major sponsors and investors have been forced to cut back on their support of HBC-3, thus creating a tremendous financial hardship for our tournament operations.

We are very well aware that this current crisis is affecting nearly everyone and it will undoubtedly force some of our HBC anglers to withdraw from HBC-3. Because of this, we would no longer have a full field or a sufficient waiting list to allow us to guarantee $50,000 to the winner.

Rather than proceed with an event that would pay back less than $50,000 to the winner, or present a tournament that is anything less than a first class event for which we are known, the Board of Directors of Heavyweight Bass Classic, LLC have voted to postpone HBC-3 to a later date, when this current financial crisis has subsided and our economy rebounds and stabilizes”

This was a recent post written by Ron Cervenka & Ken Huddleston on the HBC website forum

Read more

Belittling BassMaster Magazine Article – Co-Anglers are just “Fans” who Get in the Way of Pros

So, I got my new copy of BassMaster Magazine the other day and flipped through it. One of the first articles I came across was titled "From Co-Angler to Caddie"

It was an article written by James Hall, an editor for the magazine, and I feel it comes across in poor taste.

It was written in a very disrespectful way and I have to say I was surprised it made it to print.The premise of the article was that the BassMaster organization is planning on eliminating the Co-Angler positions in all Elite Series tourneys in 2009; kind of a surprise to me.
Here is how the article starts

"Imagine this: Tiger woods on the 18th green, lining up for a 20-foot putt that would give him a tour victory by one stroke. His backswing is steady, contact is solid,follow –through true. As the ball slowly breaks left, and then right (just as he had expected), the shot appears to be the stuff perfection is made of. Then just before clattering into the cup, the ball is accidently kicked into a sand trap by a fan happening by."

According to James almost all the elite series pros he has talked with say this scenario happens pretty often.

This got me roped into the article (good job there, James)
He went on to give reasons why elite series anglers were irritated by the ($750 paying) co-anglers. (I just figured I would throw that out there; Not chump change for most. In fact it cost more to fish as a co-angler in the elite series than it cost me to fish as a pro out west).
Beside the point - or is it?

Some of the reasons the anglers were unhappy

1.      Sometimes co-anglers want to prove themselves to the pros and try and out fish them.

2.      When fishing off shore the co-angler might have a chance to catch a fish that could have been caught by the pro.

3.       Some pros learned from their co- anglers.

4.      Oh the money they’ve spent (as if the co-anglers had nothing to lose).
 
This is where I felt it got ugly. It went on to describe these co-anglers as “fans”, "sporting tattoos of leaping bass, naming their children after past BassMaster Anglers of the year and asking the BASS brass if they can propose to their girlfriend on stage of the Bass Master Classic"
 
Wow. Way to publicly belittle your fans/readers/clientele/whole-basis-for-the-sport-making-money.
 
The tattoo one really cracks me up. The first thing to pop into my head is mike "Ike" -
Last time I checked he was "sporting" a tattoo of a jumping bass during his Classic win!
And as for the other comments – Dude, I know some people out west in particular that fish as Co-anglers who could out fish some of the Pros on the Elite series. Plain and simple, some of these (I don't know whether to call them fans or co-angler now) are not just a bunch of yahoos off the street.
 
How many of the Pros on the Elite series started in the back seat? I would have to say a lot.
 
I just expected a little better writing form a magazine such as this.
 
As far as the decision to eliminate co-anglers on this particular tournament goes, I can see both sides. However, I do not think it is good form to poke fun at the expense of your readers, or co-anglers, or both.

Here are a couple links for more info. Greg Hackney

B.A.S.S Forum

Looks like B.A.S.S will have to change the name of there Tournaments from the Elte Series to the Elitist Series.

Return from the HBC Clear Lake CA

I just got back from the HBC last night up in clear lake. I would like to start by saying Ron and his entire list of sponsors put on a really cool event.

I did not sign up in time to fish this event so I signed up as a camera boat. They ended up being short VTO’s so I did not get the opportunity to shuttle around the camera crew, but had a great day anyway.
We ended up going to different parts of the lake in case there were any surrendered fish that needed to be turned over. This is a rule that is specific to the HBC. Link

I was assigned to the rattlesnake arm of Clear Lake. Ron said it was ok for us to fish so I got a couple hours in. I ended up changing out hooks on my crank baits.  I then messed around with my new Hummingbird 997 for a good portion of the morning.

I had not been down to that end of the lake in while so it was kind of nice. I got bored after a while and came to the conclusion that no fish were going to be surrendered.  And if they needed me -Hell , my boat does 70mph. No big deal.

I headed north where I met up with Matt Allen, who I had just met that morning.
Matt is no stranger to fishing big baits and fished the HBC 1 down south.

He was fishing an area I told him about and had apparently killed them there that morning. I guess we should have both been fishing this tournament because each of us had a couple Bass in the 5 pound range just messing around with 3:16 JR and the Snack Size Chartreuse Shad.

As boats started heading back towards the north end, we did not want to get in the way of anyone participating in the event so we headed back to Konocti Vista where the event was being held.

Matt had volunteered to be the check in boat so we both grabbed all we needed and headed out in my boat.
We missed most of the weigh in but had fun talking to everyone as they came in.

Shaun Bailey took the HBC belt and a check for $10,000 with the big fish weighing 9.01. Robert Cepek came in third with 8.21. Jerry Ballesteros came in third with 7.52 and worm-chuckin’ Scott Green came in fourth with 7.20. If Scott had not just caught a 14 pounder on a worm a couple months back I would be making a lot more fun of him right now. They say size does not matter, Scott so don’t feel bad.

Here is a Link to the Full list of results.

I met a lot of great people at this event and would love to fish the next one if it wer at freakin’ Amistad. They are however raising the bar to a $1,000 entry fee and a $50,000 winner-take-all prize pot, so we will see what happens.

I will leave you with a picture of the swag bag all the competitors and camera boat guys got just to make you jealous.

I do have to say though it made it extra worthwhile.

Snack Size Trout Takes 3rd at Won Bass Clear Lake Swimbait Tourney

Our biggest of the day, just under six pounds

I fished the Won Bass swimbait only tourney with Steve Reed (the admin on Swimbaitnation) on Saturday and we took 3rd place.

We fished the Chartreuse shad Snack Size Trout wake bait all day and came in with 19.80 total. We must have had at least 20 fish come up and attack our baits. The bite was on fire.

The fish are hanging out on vertical offshore weed growth right now and are spreading out more and more each day. There was no real key spot so we had to just cover a ton of water in one huge cove on the north end.

HBC 2 Clear Lake Tournament

I have signed up to be a camera boat for the 2nd Heavy Weight Bass Classic on Clear Lake on the 11th of July.

This should be a fun day. It is always fun to see how other people fish my favorite bodies of water, so this will be a great opportunity.

I will do a write up after I return from the event.

Heavyweight Bass Classic

Exploring the Department of Fish & Game’s Website

I took a look at the DFG’s website and found a lot of good info. My favorite was the list of approved tournaments for the year. It was nice to have it all in one place you can also sort it by lake. Take a look: Homepage: http://www.dfg.ca.gov/

Listing of all pending & approved California Tournaments
http://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FishingContests/default.aspx

Filter by date, by lake, by sponsoring organization or by type of fish.

Black Bass Info Page
http://www.dfg.ca.gov/fish/Resources/BlackBass/index.asp

Species history in California, official angling regulations, tournament listings and guidelines