By Todd Ceisner
BassFan Editor


As foreign a place as Lake Ray Roberts was to Matt Herren before he started practice for the Toyota Texas Bass Classic last Tuesday, it turned out be everything he could want in a tournament venue.

Despite inconsistent conditions that included a sudden drop in water level, he was able to settle into a strategy that accentuated what he does best – fish visible, shallow cover – and it resulted in the defining win of his career.

The 53-year-old Alabama pro, who’s qualified for five Forrest Wood Cups and six Bassmaster Classic, averaged a little more than 17 pounds per day at the lake locals call “Ray Bob” to capture the TTBC title, fending off 37 of the top anglers from the FLW Tour and Elite Series.

“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “You work so hard and come so close. I’ve accomplished about everything. I’ve had a good career. I just never had that signature win. What’s crazy is that I’m kind of disappointed because it caught me by surprise.

“My strength is if you can see it, whether it’s rock, wood or grass and I can duplicate it and pattern fish it, that’s my wheelhouse,” he said. “That’s what happened. It was all shallow, visible targets. It’s how I grew up fishing and it finally all hit this week.”

Here’s how he did it.

Practice

A week prior to the TTBC, Herren finished 24th at the Toledo Bend Elite Series, where winner Kevin VanDam pounded offshore schools with a crankbait. There were some who thought the same strategy could produce at Ray Roberts.

When the two-day practice session started, he didn’t focus much time offshore as the lake is loaded with standing timber and gobs of willow bushes along the shoreline, a result of sustained low water from several years back.

With the water level at or above full pool for several months, Herren and others were certain the best fishing would be up shallow, where the post-spawners could find refuge and feast on bluegills that had started their spawning rituals. Anglers fishing shallow cover dominated the Texas Team Trail championship, held the weekend before at Ray Roberts.

“I probably had as good of a practice as I could’ve had,” Herren said. “The conditions forced me to constantly change and after the first day, I picked up on how the water was drastically dropping.”

Not knowing just how far the water would come down, he began scouting visible cover in intermediate depths out in front of the shallowest areas. He figured the fish that would move off the bank would likely stop there.

“I went out further than anybody else and that’s what got me through days 1 and 2 (of the tournament),” he added.

Most of his bites in practice came off salt cedars while most everyone else concentrated on willow bushes.

“They were in 6 to 10 feet of water in the heads of drains leading out from those willows and buck brush,” he said. “I’d just come out further.”

While running between areas, he would graph offshore spots, but never saw anything worth fishing for.

Competition

> Day 1: 5, 19-08
> Day 2: 5, 15-00
> Day 3: 5, 17-04
> Total = 15, 51-12

Herren got off to a strong start with 19-08 on Friday. That had him in 2nd, behind Chris Zaldain, who’d caught a 7-12 giant as part of his 21-04 stringer.

He committed to the northern half of the lake, but targeted a different area each day, focusing on distinct spawning flats that had drains running through them. He fished around Wolf Creek, Indian Creek, Buck Creek and Isle DuBois.

“There wound up being like four of them that I considered optimal spawning flats,” he said. “I looked for a certain kind of drain that ran through those flats and if I could see those on the Lakemaster mapping and physically go there and see that it had the right combination of trees, it was magic. It was that specific.”

He followed that up with 15-00 on Saturday to move into the lead. Despite being out front of one of the strongest tournament fields ever, he was troubled by his inability to generate much momentum in the early morning while others were getting bites around shad spawns and other patterns.

His best times were in the afternoon under high skies. That’s when he caught his better fish, until the final day.

“I fished a good tournament,” he said. “I had to adjust every day. I went into every day with no preconceived notion of what I was going to do. I knew baits I’d throw. I had two confidence baits and I knew how to catch bigger fish.

“I figured it out as I went along. You couldn’t backtrack areas. You couldn’t live on memories there.”

He got a few fish cranking in an area Sunday morning where fellow competitor Bill Lowen told him some shad had been spawning. That got him the foundation he needed on the final day.



“I caught several shad on the bait,” he said. “The shad were so thick on the bridge corner, the trebles were snagging them.”

Once the cranking bite tailed off, he searched some deeper areas thinking he could finally stumble on a group of untouched fish. That didn’t pan out and he went back to flipping shallow wood with a 5/8-ounce signature series jig. He had to adjust yet again due to a southeast wind.

“The cloud cover hurt me, but the wind pounded the other guys who were on the western side,” he noted.

He caught a 3-pounder and a 2-pounder around 1:45 and those two fish clinched the win on a challenging fishery that was in a state of flux.

“It’s a better fishery than what we saw,” he said. “The Corps of Engineers dictated this tournament with their decision to drain the lake. You had post-spawn fish with surface temperatures around 68 degrees so they wanted to be shallow. Then their water started to leave and that made it hard to get in an area that had a big population of fish. It forced us to move around and fly by seat of our pants.”

Winning Gear Notes

> Jig gear: 7’6” heavy-action Kistler KLX Stump Grinder casting rod, Ardent Apex Elite casting reel (7.3:1 ratio), 20-pound Gamma Edge fluorocarbon line, 5/8-ounce Santone M Series jig (watermelon red), unnamed trailer (watermelon red).

> He caught two weigh-in fish apiece on Sunday on a black neon tube and a square-bill crankbait. All of the other fish that counted were on the jig.

The Bottom Line

> Main factor in his success – “Understanding that the water was falling and that we were dealing with rapidly changing conditions. I knew I had to adjust to the changing conditions. A lot of guys tried to go back to the same areas and it bit them. I fished different stuff every day.”

> Performance edge – “The main reason for that pattern was the Lakemaster mapping on that (Humminbird) Onix unit. I could see those drains and it was just a matter of going to see if it had the right kind of trees in it.”

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