Mornings Were Key For Ledge Hunters

By Todd Ceisner
BassFan Editor

After an unseasonably cool, overcast and windy practice period, the fishing during BASSFest at Kentucky Lake last week eventually lived up to the hype the lake has been accustomed to generating in recent years. Edwin Evers nearly eclipsed the 100-pound mark in winning the tournament while two others cracked 90 pounds.

Practice was all about finding the schools of fish that had started to gather on their summer hangouts and the competition was all about trying to get to them first and then looking for more after certain areas went cold.

Some of the Top-5 finishers couldn’t have enough spots while others were able to work over and manage the same areas each day of the event.

Here’s a summary of how those who finished in Edwin Evers’ wake caught ‘em at BASSFest:

2nd: Kevin VanDam

> Day 1: 5, 23-09
> Day 2: 5, 24-05
> Day 3: 5, 19-12
> Day 4: 5, 26-10
> Total = 20, 94-04

Not only did Kevin VanDam come to Kentucky Lake looking to build on his impeccable record on the TVA lake, he had his eyes on a bigger prize.

“My mind was on the Classic spot,” he said. “One of the times I won here, I went into the last day with 9-pound lead and won by ounces. I know there are 30-pound bags to be had out there. The pressure was not on me, the pressure was on Edwin and he came through so good for him.

While he didn’t get what he came for, VanDam’s runner-up finish moved him up to 6th place in the race for Angler of the Year with three events to go before the AOY Championship. Three of the remaining four tournaments are slated for northern smallmouth fisheries so he appears to be in good shape as far as 2016 Classic qualification goes.

At BASSFest, he followed the same routine that’s now carried him to five Top-3 finishes in five Elite Series outings at Kentucky Lake.

“I ran a lot of spots and fished hard,” he said. “I had some spots that were shallow (6 to 7 feet) and as deep as 25.”

When fishing offshore like he did the majority of the tournament, he said having some current was beneficial or at least a south wind to help position the fish better on the ledges. Aside from that, it was making cast after cast on a group of spots in hopes to trigger a flurry of bites from the schools that were there.

“Every day you do the same thing,” he said. “I don’t like to wait them out but with the crowds I have, when I do catch them I try to get everything I can off a spot.”

He caught his weight within a 30-minute window on day 1 and had a similar outcome the following day as he moved into 2nd with just over 47 pounds. Crankbaits, a hair jig and a big worm were all productive at different points of the event.

“I caught a lot on the silent (Strike King) 6XD because they get so conditioned to the ones with rattles,” he said. “All of my fish on day 3 came on the worm.”

> Worm gear: 7’6” heavy-action Quantum Exo Tour PT casting rod, Quantum Tour KVD PT casting reel (7.3:1 gear ratio), 12-pound Bass Pro Shops XPS fluorocarbon line, 3/4-oz. Mustad Fastach football weight, 6/0 Mustad Grip Pin worm hook, 10” Strike King Rage Tail Thumper worm (plum).

> Cranking gear: 7’10” medium-heavy Quantum Tour KVD PT cranking rod, same reel (5.3:1 gear ratio), same line, Strike King 6XD, 8XD, 10 XD crankbaits (green gizzard shad and sexy blueback herring).

> He upsized the hooks to 1/0 Mustad KVD Triple Grip trebles on the 6XD and 2/0 on the 8 and 10XDs.

> Main factor in his success – “It was absolutely my Humminbird electronics. To be able to have that Lakemaster mapping along with the sonar that the Onix units have for Side- and Down-Imaging, it’s astounding. I’ve fished there six times in June and I thought I knew a lot about that lake, but that mapping showed me places I didn’t know about.”

> Performance edge – “You try to do everything you can to get out there quick. I had to run the HydroWave to keep it gong. I know all the offshore guys will sing the praises of the HydroWave because they’ve seen the difference it makes. I ran mine on a 15-second delay. I normally do a 30 if I’m just fishing. I like the Power pattern and I run the volume pretty low. We didn’t have a ton of wind so I liked the Schooling Blitz setting, too, on a 30-second delay."

3rd: Brett Hite

> Day 1: 5, 23-05
> Day 2: 5, 23-06
> Day 3: 5, 22-00
> Day 4: 5, 22-14
> Total = 20, 91-09

While many of his competitors hadn’t competed at Kentucky Lake in several years, he had the benefit of having been there late last June for the FLW Tour event in which he finished 7th. Armed with knowing what worked then and knowing the intense fishing pressure the fish had been subjected to, he figured the standard crankbait-worm-jig-swimbait strategy wasn’t going to get him far.

“Last year, I caught them on a jig, but I also caught some on a power finesse technique,” he said. “You see all the pressure the fish are getting out there. They had a 400-boat tournament the weekend before we got here and with everybody’s electronics being so good, everybody’s on the same spots. You have to come up with something different.”

His idea of different was wacky-rigging a nearly 8-inch Yamamoto Kut Tail worm with a nail weight inserted into the head of the worm.

“In practice, I’d catch one on it, hit a waypoint and leave,” he said. “I figured that’s how I’d start things and see how it went.”

On day 1, he was part of a group of anglers that stopped on a known community hole and Hite was able to pull 23-05 off of it in short order.

“When you’re catching them 10-to-1 over a guy next to you, you know you’re doing something right – and they’re not little ones,” he said.

He started there on day 2 and moved on eventually, but he still weighed in 23-06 to stake his to a Top-5 position.

“I was catching 15 to 20 keepers a day and most of them were 3 pounds or better,” he said. “I had three significant spots where there was a point on a ledge or where a creek channel met the main river channel. Everything was point related in 13 to 18 feet.”

He said boat placement was crucial depending on the wind direction and current and after catching a few fish out of a school, he’d have to reposition and take a different angle.

“When you had them fired up, a lot would get it on the fall,” he said.

> Wacky-worm gear: 7’ medium-action Ever Green spinning rod, Daiwa Exist 2500 spinning reel, 16-pound Sunline SX-1 braided line (main), 8-pound Sunline Super FC Sniper fluorocarbon line (leader), 1/0 Gamakatsu Aaron Martens TGW drop shot hook, 7.75” Gary Yamamoto Custom Baits Kut Tail Worm (plum).

> The Exist spinning reel features Daiwa's latest technology and will be unveiled at ICAST next month. The model Hite used weighs just 6.8 ounces.

> Hite inserted a 1/8- or 3/16-oz. Reins Tungsten nail weight in the head of the worm depending on how quickly he wanted it to fall.

> Main factor in his success – “This is how I grew up fishing. I structure fished before it caught on and everybody can look at their map and go to the juice.”

> Performance edge – “My Lakemaster mapping. The job they’ve done on the Tennessee River is phenomenal. It makes it almost too easy to find spots. You can see the good spots very easily and it helps when looking for those out of the way spots.”

4th: Tim Horton

> Day 1: 5, 20-03
> Day 2: 5, 27-01
> Day 3: 5, 18-09
> Day 4: 5, 22-11
> Total = 20, 88-08

While Tim Horton doesn’t have a vast amount of history at Kentucky Lake, he says it sets up and fishes very much like Pickwick Lake, another TVA impoundment that he knows quite well.

“All of the places I caught them on last week, I’d never caught them there before,” he said. “It helped knowing how they’re set up and in they’re catchable based on how they set up.”

He spent the entire practice session idling and trying to find as many spots with schools on them as he could. When he did fish, it was almost always with a deep-diving crankbait.

“I don’t like to talk them into biting,” he said. “I know others caught them on different stuff, but that’s how I like to go about it. (Cranking is) just so much fun.”

He had about a dozen schools fired up on day 1 and came in with 20-03 to get a good foundation. The two high points were his 27-01 stringer on day 2, anchored by a 7-pounder, and his final-day 22-11 bag, the majority of which was caught in the last hour of competition.

After his first few spots were unproductive, he opted to shift back to practice mode and idle until he found some new areas with fish on them. His search took him until about 2 p.m.

“I looked at BASSTrakk once, but it was no surprised I was in 12th around 10 a.m.,” he said. “At about 1, I started thinking, ‘This is crazy – I’m going to fall all the way down to 12th.”

Then he came upon the mother lode. He’d never seen such a big school of fish, anywhere on the Tennessee River and he proceeded to catch fish on virtually every cast for 45 minutes.

“Had it not had so many 3- and 3 1/2-pounders in it, I might’ve finished higher,” he said. “Every time I cranked down I’d catch another one.”

With the wind picking up, every time he’d catch one and take a minute to cull, he’d have to fire up his big motor and get lined back on the area. He closed the event with a 4 1/2-pounder on his last cast.

The Top-5 finish moved him up to 26th place in the AOY standings.

“The year is going good, although I’d like to have Havasu back,” he said. “I’m pleased with how the year is going so far.”

> Cranking gear: 7’3” medium-heavy Duckett Fishing White Ice Tim Horton Signature Series casting rod, Lew's BB1 Pro Speed Spool casting reel (6.4:1 gear ratio), 12-pound Sunline Shooter fluorocarbon line, Profound Outdoors ZBoss 20 (blue moon) and ZBoss 25 (Tennessee River and Two Timer).

> The ZBoss 20 is designed to dive to 16 feet while the 25 model will exceeded 25 feet. Horton said this was the first tournament he had the ZBoss 25 to fish with. FLW Tour pro Randy Haynes used prototype models for the Lake Eufaula FLW Tour a few weeks ago.

> Horton also weighed a fish on day 2 that was caught a 1-oz. Swampers football jig.

> Main factor in his success – “Just knowing how those fish set up in the current on the Tennessee River. I wouldn’t have had the confidence to do that anywhere else on day 4 if I didn’t think it would pan out. It was so rewarding even though I didn’t win. To go do that was pretty cool.”

> Performance edge – “My Raymarine electronics. On day 2, at noon I had about 25 pounds and I went through five or six schools, but I couldn’t find any big fish. I went to another one and I could see one fish was clearly bigger than the others. That’s where I caught that 7-03. To be able to tell the size of fish by looking at the screen is just awesome.”

5th: Fred Roumbanis

> Day 1: 5, 21-079
> Day 2: 5, 20-10
> Day 3: 5, 26-15
> Day 4: 5, 18-0
> Total = 20, 87-09

Fred Roumbanis was dumbfounded that the area he uncovered in practice went largely overlooked by everyone else in the tournament and by the local anglers.

“It was 5 minutes from the ramp and to have an area that had fish on it that weren’t being fished for,” he said, “it just shows you don’t have to go fish other people’s water.”

He found it right away in practice, but didn’t realize the potential it held until the tournament began.

“I caught a couple there and two bites off a spot usually means there’s more,” he said. “I didn’t go back. I just started (day 1) there and it surprised me what lived there.”

He described it as a deep ditch with an S-turn in it and a tiny funnel coming off of one side. The depth ranged from 13 to 24 feet.

“It was hard to notice, but there was a 1-foot difference and that’s where they’d stop to have their gizzard shad lunch,” he added.

He believes the area was a stopping point for the fish who were on their way to the main river channel ledges.

“I just didn’t think they wouldn’t pass that areas up,” he said. “They’d stop for an hour or so and then I’d wait for another wave to come through. I counted about six waves that went through during the week.

“It was structure fishing but it wasn’t conventional structure fishing. I never picked up a crankbait once this week.”

> Swimbait gear: 7’5” heavy-action iRod Genesis II Fred’s Magic Stick casting rod, Ardent Apex Elite casting reel (6.5:1 and 7.3:1 ratios), 40-pound Gliss braided line, 20-pound unnamed fluorocarbon leader, 3/4- to 1-oz. vibrating jigs, 3/4-oz. hair jig (white), 7” Optimum Baits Victory Tail swimbait (pearl white and sexy shad).

> He went to the lower gear ratio reel on Sunday because he felt like he was fishing too fast.

> He also fished the fluke-style bait on a scrounger head, but didn’t catch any significant fish. The Nichols Lures spoon was also in his rotation.

> Rigged on the hair jig, Roumbanis said the bait looked like a gizzard shad and allowed him give the fish a slower presentation.
Scrouger head a little

> Main factor in his success – “Having that spot to myself. It blew my mind. Even after catching big bag Saturday, when I turned off (Sunday) and nobody was following, I was like, ‘Cool.’ I never had to give it up.”

> Performance edge – “Garmin was a big part with their LakeVü HD mapping. That was the number one thing to find these fish. It’s just incredible mapping that helped me find this area. I couldn’t relate to this area on the Navionics chip.”

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