By Todd Ceisner
BassFan Editor
When Cliff Pace broke into the pro fishing ranks, he knew he’d have to expand his horizons in terms of the types of lakes he fished and times of year he fished them. He hails from Petal, Miss., in the southern half of the state where he says, “deep is about 5 feet.”
“When I first came out here, all of the tournaments were early in the year between January and March,” he said. “We’d work our way from the South to the North so just about every tournament was a pre-spawn tournament. I’d never been faced with that and I did so bad. I’d go down the bank with a spinnerbait thinking I’d catch them like I do at home.”
After his first season, he dedicated himself to learning how to fish cold-water conditions when fish tend to inhabit deeper water. He spent the next two offseasons fishing deeper lakes and gained a better understanding of how fish behave during the winter months.
“I’d go over to Lake Lanier and fish until I got comfortable fishing deep and fishing cold water,” he added. “All of that over the years played into what happened this week.”
While he didn’t necessarily win the Bassmaster Classic out of deep water last week, there was no doubt his ability to accurately read how the cold water at Grand Lake affected the fish was one of the key elements to his triumph. Catching nearly identical 21-plus pound stringers on days 1 and 2 put him in the driver’s seat entering the final day and he capped off the victory with a four-fish, 11-08 effort to fend off Brandon Palaniuk for the sport’s top prize.
“What it means to me, I can’t put into words personally,” Pace said of the win Sunday evening. “What it’ll do for me, I really can’t tell you that either. Everybody says it’ll change your life and I’m sure it’ll affect me. Something like this is an unbelievable experience.”
Here’s how he did it.
Practice
Pace spent 3 days at Grand Lake in late November last year and came away with the impression that it was one of the best pattern-fishing lakes he’d been on. Like many, his concern leading up to the Classic was the weather, but when the lake opened for unofficial practice the weekend before the Classic, he discovered a way to entice the lake’s better fish to bite.
While many of his competitors talked about the amply supply of keeper-quality fish swimming in Grand Lake, he began to concern himself more with the larger, difference-making specimens he was catching in the afternoons.
“In practice, I wasn’t catching them really great,” he said. “I’m sure other people found them better than I did. I was able to get on a little pattern in the afternoon and every now and then I’d catch a big one. I caught them every day like that expect for day 3. I think the change in wind direction affected those fish on Sunday.”
He said the transition from big rock to gravel was critical to finding the bigger fish around the first channel swing inside a creek, “where it would start to flatten out on the end,” he said. “The fish would slide up out of deep water and get on the ends of the channel swing banks.”
“I didn’t really have any schools, but I could run enough of them that I could get a big bite off of every third or fourth one,” he added.
Competition
> Day 1: 5, 21-08
> Day 2: 5, 21-12
> Day 3: 4, 11-08
> Total = 14, 54-12
Many of the 53 competitors in the Classic field reported a steady, if not strong bite during their 3 days of practice the week before competition got underway. But that was under cloudy, rainy conditions with water temperatures in the mid and upper 40s. A winter storm system pushed through the Tulsa area 2 days prior to the event, dumping snow and sleet and driving temperatures down into the 20s. The full effect wasn’t seen or felt until Friday when the tournament began.
Air temperatures were in the teens at takeoff and the clouds had moved out, clearing the way for frigid, post-front conditions to settle in. More importantly, at least in the minds of the anglers, the water temps in most portions of the lake had dropped 5 or more degrees, a significant dip for wintering bass. There were still plenty of fish available to catch and Pace spent day 1 concentrating on dragging a jig across rock transitions in the morning and throwing a Jackall Squad Minnow jerkbait to windblown channel breaks in the afternoon.
The formula resulted in just seven bites, but the five best weighed 21-08, which put him in a dead heat for the lead with Mike Iaconelli. Afterward, he talked about the commitment it required to fish the way he was. While others admitted they gave up on patterns too soon, he stayed with it, thinking it gave him the best chance to win.
“All through this event, I was fishing for key bites – big, quality bites because I knew a guy could go catch 10 or 11 pounds easy, but I wasn’t going to accomplish what I was here to accomplish,” he said. “Had this been any other tournament, I wouldn’t have fished the way I did. The first 2 days, it worked out and I got a couple of those bites, but during the course of the day, I was only getting six or seven bites and I had to fish very, very slowly to get those six or seven bites.”
Those who monitored the new BASSTrakk feature that allowed fans to view real-time locations of the anglers saw the field was pretty spread out across Grand with the numerous creeks, pockets, rocky points and bluff walls garnering the most attention. To catch his fish, Pace moved around mid-lake and south toward the Pensacola Dam.
“I bounced around a lot,” he said. “I don’t know the names of a lot of them. I know I was in Drowning and Horse (creeks) and some of the smaller creeks and coves between Drowning and the dam and some between Horse and Shangri-La – some of the little, no-name coves. I bounced around a great deal. I was fishing a pattern more than a specific spot.”
The pattern held true again on day 2 as he put the hammer down with a 21-12 stringer that gave him more than 43 pounds and put immense pressure on the other contenders. Two brutes anchored his bag – a 6-12 and a 7-02, the latter of which took him a bit by surprise.
“I’m definitely going to remember that 7-pounder I caught on the jerkbait on day 2,” he said. “I never felt it take the bait. I thought I was hung up and when I lifted up, I felt some weight. Then it started shaking its head and I knew it was a good one. That’s the fish I’ll never forget catching.”
The final day of the tournament was the third straight day of high skies and while the air temperatures climbed into the 50s, the fish were still getting used to the much cooler water and therefore were reluctant feeders. Pace managed four bites all day, two in the morning and two in the afternoon on his jig. He had a 7-pound lead to open the day, but on the way back to the ramp and for much of the 90-minute ride back to Tulsa, he was fairly sure he’d lost the Classic.
“I knew it was going to be a lot closer than what I wanted it to be,” he said. “I didn’t know if I’d won or not. I wasn’t sure. I knew the potential and the chance was still there, but I had left the door open.”
Winning Pattern Notes
Some came to Grand thinking the fish would be further along in the seasonal pattern and more toward their pre-spawn mode. If the water had remained where it was during practice and continued upward, that may have been the case. However, the drastic swing in weather scattered the fish and made them a bit harder to target. That’s why Pace seemed to focus on certain areas where he thought he could catch a single fish.
The Shimano Chronarch was responsible for helping Pace get the winning fish back to the boat.
“I was fishing the very first thing that I thought would be a staging area inside of any pocket that in a major creek or off the main lake itself,” he said. “I was fishing the inside sections of it where the fish are migrating off the main lake coming in there and staging.
“Those fish don’t like to be out there in that current. The main lake was actually a little colder than what the pockets were this week water temperature-wise. They’ve migrated inside the edges of that stuff just to get away, but they don’t really want to be way back yet where they’re going to spawn so I was fishing what you would call the in-between part.”
Winning Gear Notes
> Jig gear: 7’2” medium-heavy Shimano Crucial jig and worm rod, Shimano Chronarch casting reel (6.4:1 ratio), 12-pound Hi-Seas 100% fluorocarbon line, 1/2-oz. V&M football jig (green-pumpkin), 4” V&M Twin Tail trailer (green-pumpkin).
> Pace trimmed the weed guard on the jig to improve his hook-up ratio. “When the fish are biting like they were, I didn’t want many strands of fiber there,” he said. “I cut a few out of the front of the weed guard and I cut it so if you lay your scissors over the top of the hook, I’d go up about a 1/16th of a inch and cut it on that angle. When these fish are deep, especially when they bite the jig and you set the hook, you really don’t need much weed guard there or you won’t hook them.”
> He also dyed the tails of the trailer orange and says it got him more bites. “I don’t what it is about this lake and orange, but they seemed to like it,” he said. “If the water color had been clearer, I probably would’ve left it alone, but I think in the stained water, the orange on that tail really did get a few more bites over 3 days’ time.”
> Jerkbait gear: 7’ medium-action Shimano Crucial crankbait rod, Shimano Chronarch casting reel (5.5:1 ratio), 8-pound Hi-Seas 100% fluorocarbon line, Jackall Squad Minnow 115SP (SG threadfin shad).
> The only modification he made to his jerkbait was putting a heavier split ring on the line tie to help it dive a little better.
The Bottom Line
> Main factor in his success – “Patience and commitment.”
> Performance edge – “My HydroWave helped me a bunch. I think those fish were in a negative mood and lethargic and I think it got me a few extra bites.”
Notable
> A 90-minute truck ride with the Classic outcome hanging the balance could’ve been a stressful experience, but Pace said he owed a lot of his success to his father-in-law, who drove him to and from the ramp each morning and afternoon. He said he took a nap during the ride Sunday afternoon back to the BOK Center. “I slept for about 50 minutes of it,” Pace said. “Thankfully, I had my father-in-law here with me this week. I really need to thank him for all he’s done and the sacrifices he’s made. He was up every morning at 3:30, or probably earlier knowing him, to drive me. I’ve been early every morning to meet him and he’s already been there. He’s really been there for me a lot and taken a lot of weight off my shoulders this week. I really think he helped me win this tournament.”
