Kevin VanDam he practiced for what he figured the conditions would be during the Guntersville BASSMASTER, not what the conditions were in practice. That was the key to his 2nd-place finish, he said.

When he got to Guntersville, he flipped on the Weather Channel and saw that "we would have a couple of windy days in practice, but then by the end of the week it would stabilize and be warm."

Also, "the lake was dropped down to winter pool because (TVA) thought we would be getting a big rain," VanDam said. "The water was dropping all of practice and I figured it would be coming up in the tournament. With the warming and coming up, I figured a bunch of fish would move in to spawn."

With that in mind, he went looking for specific structure. "I'd fished there before and knew of a couple of areas where fish spawned around stumps in the backs of pockets," he said. Because the water was low in practice, he looked specifically for areas with stumps just barely underwater: He counted on an additional 2 feet of water because that's the difference between winter and summer pools.

In practice, even with the low water, he caught a few bass around the stumps. But he didn't necessarily see them, which was also true during the tournament. "You couldn't see any fish around (the stumps), but every now and then you could see them rubbing against the stumps," he said. "They were thinking about spawning."

New Bait

In practice VanDam pitched a tube and lizard to the stumps. He found that the lizard was better so he stuck with that in the tournament.

The bait he used is "a new lizard Strike King is coming out with, called a 3X Lizard," he said. Apparently 3X means it's three times softer and three times stronger. "You can take it and stretch it out 2 feet and it won't break," VanDam said, "and it's way softer than any lizard on the market."

He used a 6-inch lizard in green pumpkin, and picked that color because "the water had about 2 feet of visibility and a green color to it. Watermelon or green pumpkin were the right colors" for that situation.

The rest of his tackle consisted of a 3/16-ounce Lake Fork Tackle Mega-Weight and a Mustad Denny Brauer 3/0 flipping hook.

Other gear:

> 7-foot Quantum Kevin VanDam Tour edition rod -- this is a Carolina-rig rod, but VanDam uses it for pitching

> A Quantum 600 PT reel with 20-pound Bass Pro Shops XPS fluorocarbon line

Jig for Big Bass

He added that he caught a "handful of fish," including his biggest bass (he had big bass the first two days), with a Strike King Premier Elite jig tipped with a Strike King craw tube. "If you cut the head off the tube, it slips over the rattle and locks on well," he noted.

The jig was pumpkin/black and the trailer was green-pumpkin, though he sprayed the tail of the tube with chartreuse (he also did this with the lizards). "Anytime around the spawn I like to put a little chartreuse on the tail unless the water's clear," he said. "Chartreuse adds a little flash to the bait, and hopefully it imitates something like a bluegill getting around the nest. It makes the bait a little more visible to the fish, especially if you're dragging it in mud."

Day 4 Note

On day 4 VanDam caught his smallest limit -- 12-11 -- but not because he changed what he was doing. "I fished the same pattern and baits," he said. "I knew it was the only chance I had to find some big fish.

"Obviously the area I'd been catching them in played out for me. That morning I only caught one fish there, so I tried the same thing elsewhere. I kept moving to other areas and caught a lot of short fish. I just never had a decent bite."