By Todd Ceisner
BassFan Editor
As time wound down on the official practice session prior to the first Bassmaster Team Championship last Tuesday, Brandon Gray sensed he needed to try something else.
He’d spent most of the day idling around on river channels, marking areas on his electronics that he’d later come back to during competition. He’d caught a few fish and built a little bit of confidence in a cranking pattern, but still something just wasn’t meshing in his mind as he surveyed DeGray Lake, a 13,000-plus acre Caddo River reservoir in west-central Arkansas.
“On the way in, I still wasn’t confident in what I’d found,” said Gray, a 42-year-old occupational hearing conservationist from Bullock, N.C. “I believe in faith and karma and all that and I really needed something to change my thinking and perspective. On the way back in, I realized that this lake was one of the cleanest lakes I’d ever been to. I’m used to the James River and the Potomac River and other places where there are bottles and tires and other things that have no earthly business being in the water everywhere.”
Rather than continue searching for areas holding potential tournament-quality bass, Gray decided to do his part to help preserve DeGray’s natural beauty.
“I spent the last hour Tuesday and found a few water bottles and other stuff and cleaned up what I found,” he said. “Something changed in me after that. I felt more relaxed. I wanted to do something right.”
His good deed set the tone for a memorable week as he and Angler’s Choice teammate Todd Massey, of Chapel Hill, N.C., finished 2nd out of 155 teams in the team portion of the event, earning both a berth in the six-man individual final where Gray thrived. He was the only competitor to weigh a limit both days and his 2-day total of 20-03 was more than 7 pounds better than runner-up Jon Griffith.
The win earned Gray the final spot in the 2015 Bassmaster Classic at Lake Hartwell.
“I remember the first boat I ever won,” he said. “That was a high. If there’s anything higher than this, I’m not aware of it. It’s unbelievable. It really is. I left home last Saturday and never thought I’d be sitting in this position. It’s funny how it all comes together.
“What the Bassmaster Classic has meant to me is it’s the ultimate highest-ranked fishermen in the world. That’s the elite, the best, and it’s a lot of hard work to get there. It’s unbelievable. I don’t have words for what the Classic means. I’ve always watched it since I was a kid. Now sitting here, the emotions you see these guys go through, you truly don’t understand and feel until you experience it yourself.”
Following are more details on how Gray picked apart DeGray for the final spot in the Classic.
Practice
After initially deciding to bring one boat to the event, Gray and Massey ultimately opted to each bring their own rigs as a way to cover more water during practice.
“We tried to make the best of this opportunity and maximize our time,” Gray said. “When you go to a strange lake, it’s important to cover a lot of water.”
On the first day, Gray, who says he’s most comfortable fishing offshore structure, tried a jigging spoon before moving into the shallows on the main lake. He had little success with either.
“Once I got down there, everybody was fishing the bank and I knew If I could find something offshore, knew I had chance to do well,” he said. “I never felt like I was in the right area.”
The following day, he opted to go up the Caddo River where the water had more tint to it and there was generally more activity.
“Eventually, I ran into what I found and when I saw it on the graph and caught one, I knew it could be good,” he said. “The first thing I saw were some birds along the river bank – herons and seagulls. That told me I was around bait. Once I got upriver and got into an area, the water color changed drastically and it was more to my liking. There were shad flitting and fish flopping around.”
There was also a river channel with a well-defined break that fell from 12 to 24 feet.
“Down in the channel, the bait was on the bottom and the fish were in the group of bait and were using that area,” he said. “I made my mind up to not leave fish to find fish.”
Competition
> Day 1: 5, 10-08
> Day 2: 5, 9-11
> Total = 10, 20-03
Gray and Massey teamed up to catch 23-00 over the 2-day team segment of the tournament. They focused mostly on the stretch of river Gray had uncovered in practice.
“That was nerve-wracking because we were leading after day 1 and the weather changed on us,” he said. “We only caught four on day 2 and we knew things were changing. We had some good sun on Wednesday and the water temperature was up and the fish were active.
“On Thursday, the water temperature in that area had dropped 3 degrees and the activity had turned off. Going into day 2, we felt like we didn’t have enough to win, but we knew it would be close.”
During the individual portion of the tournament, Gray decided to live or die on that same stretch.
“It was extremely hard to try to find fish and I wasn’t getting a lot of bites. I noticed how low the weights were and figured I’d found the migration route for the fish in the mouth of the last major bay up the river,” he said. “There was a lot of pressure inside the bay and I felt like that pressure was pushing fish to me.
"There were also fish coming out of the river into the bay. I had two places pinpointed and I had three sweet spots on them. The angle of the cast was everything and I never had company in there. The bait stayed in there all week long and we just flat wore that place out.”
He overcame some electrical issues on the B.A.S.S.-issued boat on the first day to crank up 10 1/2 pounds and take the lead.
“The whole first day I fished offshore with no electronics, no trolling motor, no livewell,” he said, “but I found a perfect line and the fish were biting. I caught what I had in the first hour and I was basically fishing on feel. It was pouring down rain and cold, but they bit better than they had all week.”
His boat issues fixed, Gray set out on day 2 hoping his key stretch of river would produce one more time.
“I get up there and it’s like the Dead Sea,” he said. “The water temp had dropped again to 50.4. It had been like 55. Some of the bait was gone and I went 2 hours before a bite, then the camera boat pulled up and I caught three in three casts. It took me all day to catch five out there.”
He caught 18 fish on the final day, but just five met or exceeded the 16-inch minimum for largemouths. Those five weighed 9-11 and gave him plenty of cushion to seal the win.
“I was catching a ton of 14- to 15 3/4-inch fish up there,” he said. “That 16-inch limit is tough, especially on a lake I’d never been to.”
Winning Pattern Notes
> While Gray said it was important to find the right casting angle on his primary area, the bites weren’t triggered by bumping the crankbait into any particular piece of cover.
“There were brush piles there and during practice and the tournament, I probably fished 100 piles, but never got bit out of one,” he said. “I did notice on the first day that if I brought the bait down next to the brush instead of down into it, they’d eat it. They didn’t want to leave it, but they didn’t want to be in it so if I got it within 3 or 4 feet of the brush, I’d get a bite.”
Winning Gear Notes
> Crankbait gear: 7’ G. Loomis Classic Saltwater Popping casting rod, Shimano Curado and Lew's Speed Spool casting reels, 10-pound P-Line XXX fluorocarbon line, Norman DD-22 crankbait (chartreuse white and lavender shad).
> Gray swapped the stock treble hooks on his cranks for No. 11 Gamakatsu round-bend hooks.
> He opted for the chartreuse and white color scheme due to the heavy cloud cover and falling water temperature. “It just seems like that color is always good in cold water,” he said. When the skies brightened, he threw the lavender shad.
The Bottom Line
> Main factor in his success – "Knowledge and the time I’ve spent on the water around home and the situations I’ve been in from North Carolina to Arkansas. Also, reading bottoms and bait and knowing when I’m in my comfort zone and knowing when the timing is right. Just reading water and other fishermen you can learn a lot from that. It’s a lot of hard work. My buddies call it luck, I call it homework.”
> Performance edge – "I put on fresh line and hooks every day and was constantly checking knots and looking for nicks in my line.”
Notable
> Gray doesn’t have long to squeeze in a trip to Hartwell to do a little scouting before the Classic venue goes off limits on Jan. 1. “I’ve fished it a couple times, but it’s always been a spring thing so I will have to definitely get down there and look around,” he said.
