In the week leading up to the Potomac FLW Tour Open at National Harbor in Maryland, the talk was all about post-spawn fish. More specifically, how the big fish weren't yet set up just right.
Good thing for Luke Clausen that he didn't listen to the talk, because apparently the Potomac mirrored much of the rest of the country. A crazy, abnormally cold spring pushed back the spawn in nearly every region, and Clausen targeted fish in emergent coontail that had what he described as spawning spots. That clued him in to the theory that the spawn wasn't over.
He banked on that one coontail area in the back of a creek and milked it all 4 days for a 69-14, 4-day total. He beat
Mike Iaconelli, who ran around and fished a mix of cover depending on tide stage, as well Bobby Lane, who focused exclusively on post-spawn milfoil fish.
What follows is more detail about Clausen's winning pattern.
Practice
The official practice was characterized by record-setting heat and near-still conditions. The post-spawn bite, as noted, was a little off, and many pros predicted that 16 pounds a day or even less could win.
Clausen unearthed several productive areas in practice where he could catch numbers and an occasional big fish, but he chose the eventual winning area based on his feeling that it had the best chance to produce a 5-pound bite. The group of fish was within emergent coontail located to both sides of a ridge, and the condition of the fish – spawn spots and red tails – pointed to an active spawn.
Competition
> Day 1: 5, 15-03
> Day 2: 5, 17-00
> Day 3: 5, 18-07
> Day 4: 5, 19-04
> Total = 20, 69-14
Clausen's intuition about the area was right, and it was the 5-pound bites that won him the event. He said he weighed four or five 5-pounders over the course of competition, and although his filler fish weren't spectacular, the big bites pushed him over the edge.
Equally important, a brutal west wind pounded the river the first day, then a strong north wind blew through on day 2. Conditions settled out for days 3 and 4, but Clausen's creek was fairly well protected those first 2 days.
The area also produced the fish for Bryan Schmitt's 4th-place finish. Schmitt and Clausen fished nearly side-by-side, but Clausen was farther into the creek and perhaps had better access to the spawners, Clausen noted.
Winning Pattern Notes
About his winning area, Clausen said: "It was a ridge out in the middle of the back of a bay. There was a little ditch on both sides. A lot of fish were coming and going – spawning in the back, and leaving. I caught a lot of spawn and pre-spawn fish. I was fishing sparse coontail for the most part. The fish had spawn spots, red tails, and with several fish that I missed, I could waypoint them, come back later and end up catching them. That was a big deal for me, because I realized those fish were still spawning in the grass.
"A lot of times you'd just feel a little peck, and you'd throw back three, four or five times and catch a 3- or 4-pounder. They weren't all like that – I caught some fish on a Z-Man ChatterBait, and some on a swimjig and a bunch of different creatures and craws – but for the majority I was definitely using Z-Man ElaZtech plastics. Those plastics fan up off the bottom, and that was the biggest factor. Bed-fish really respond to a bait that stands up off bottom."
He noted too that, in regard to tide, his fish wouldn't bite "unless there was a fair amount of water above them." He thus fished deeper as the tide dropped, and as the current increased, he stepped up the weight on his Texas-rigs in order to maintain bottom contact.
Over the first 2 days, Clausen caught the majority of his weigh-fish on a prototype Z-Man ElaZtech Flappin' CrawZ. The bait, shown above, has not reached the final design stage and a release date has not been determined.
Winning Gear Notes
Clausen does not have a rod, reel or line sponsor and opted not to detail that gear, except to note he threw his Texas-rigs with a 7'4" heavy-action rod and 20-pound line. He used a 5/0 offset hook, and as noted, threw various weights from 1/8- ounce through 3/4.
Most of his plastics were Z-Man ElaZtech builds, and included a Finesse worm, ZinkerZ, prototype Flappin' CrawZ and CreatureZ. Each of the plastics, except the ZinkerZ, sat tail-up on bottom.
He noted that he used the Flappin' CrawZ "almost exclusively" the first 2 days. After that, he had about 20 rods on the deck and used every one, including various creature and craw plastics from other manufacturers too.
Color choice was green-pumpkin, except some black/blue on day 1 due to dirtier, wind-roiled water.
His Z-Man ChatterBait was 3/8-ounce in chartreuse/white, thrown on 17-pound mono.
He said he didn't know the brand of his swimjig, but it was 3/8-ounce in brown, and he tipped it with the prototype Flappin' CrawZ.
The Bottom Line
