Everything Fell Into Place Once Wirth Went Shallow

(Editor's note: The BassFan staff is taking the 4th of July holiday off and the top story will not be updated until Monday. We wish all BassFans a happy, relaxing and safe Independence Day.)

Kevin Wirth always assumed that his first Bassmaster Tour-level victory would come during the summer months. His strength is plying offshore structure, and the hottest time of the year is when that style plays best.

His initial triumph indeed occurred in the summer. But he achieved it by fishing near the banks.

"I've done pretty well flipping throughout the years," he said, "but after this long of a period, did I think I would win a tournament that way? No."

The veteran from Kentucky caught 55-10 over 4 days to win the recent Old Hickory Bassmaster Elite Series (a tournament that had been relocated from Iowa to Tennessee due to flooding on the Mississippi River) by more than 5 pounds over runner-up Bill Lowen. It easily trumped a victory at a 1994 Invitational at South Carolina's Santee Cooper as the most significant of his career.

He took the lead on day 1 and never relinquished it, becoming the second straight wire-to-wire winner on the Elite Series (Kevin VanDam had turned the trick two weeks earlier at Kentucky Lake). His big payday ($113,000, including weight bonuses) pushed his combined career earnings from BASS and the FLW Tour past the $1 million mark, and the points he garnered pushed him up 21 places to 30th in the Angler of the Year (AOY) race – well within the Bassmaster Classic cutoff.

Here's how he did it.

Practice

Wirth checked out the ledges on the first of his 3 practice days and wasn't impressed with what he found. The few decent-looking shelves covered by boats.

That evening, he checked the current generation schedule and learned that no water would be pulled all week.

"If you don't have current on the ledges, then you need to be able to run a rotation," he said. "You need six to eight places and you have to get a timing thing going. That wasn't going to be possible with so many boats and so few ledges."

So the next day he started exploring the backwaters, traveling 50 to 60 miles from the launch in each direction. He fished the mouths of creeks, and then worked his way up into the channels.

He found shallow fish downriver, but he lost valuable time in the lock – both coming and going. He found them upriver, too, and opted to focus on those and eliminate the lock issue altogether.

"I started generating (flipping) bites and began to piece things together a little bit. I got eight or nine keeper bites that day and probably shook off seven or eight more."

He spent a little bit of time on the ledges on the final practice day, and then went looking for more shallow stuff. He ended up with three areas that each had several pieces of cover.

"I thought if I did a good job of managing them, I could come out of this with a pretty decent finish."

Competition

> Day 1: 5, 17-02
> Day 2: 5, 15-10
> Day 3: 5, 12-01
> Day 4: 5, 10-13
> Total = 20, 55-10

Wirth opened the tournament in a place that he though was his best numbers-area, but managed just one keeper. He picked up a 2-pounder and a 3 1/2 at his next stop, and then another 3 1/2 and one that was barely of minimum length at stop No. 3.

"It was about 1:20, and I was thinking that if I could get one to cull that 14-incher, I'd have a pretty decent bag," he said. "Then I caught a 6-04 off a piece I'd hit 40 minutes earlier.

"I still had an hour left to fish, but I didn't want to take any chances with that huge sack, so I headed in early."

He started day 2 in the place he'd finished up the previous day and had an 11-pound limit by 8:30 – and that was in addition to two he lost and two more that broke off.

"Then I'm sitting there eating one of my energy bars and drinking a bottle of water, wondering if I should hang around or leave and go looking for more stuff. Well, while I'm doing that, my partner flips out there and catches a 3 1/2, so I decided to try to expand on that area a little bit.

"We fished around there a bit and happened to come back by the main stuff, and I flipped to one piece and caught a 5-05. Then I said, 'Now, we are totally done in this area for today.'''

He did some looking on the way back and culled his smallest fish with a 2 1/4-pounder. He was back at the launch 40 minutes early and his lead had grown to more than 3 pounds.

He had a 10-pound sack by 9:00 on the third day and might've been able to top his day-1 weight if he hadn't lost four good fish in the afternoon. Still, his 12-03 bag cost him only a couple ounces off his lead, and he went into the final day up by 3-03 over 2nd-place Rick Clunn and more than 7 1/2 pounds clear of the rest of the field.

"We had a lot of rain that night and the next morning was dark with a lot of cloud cover. I was just sitting around (before launch) trying to think of ways that I could fish a little bit differently and still stay with my same flipping deal.

"I got the idea to try a buzzbait and a square-billed crankbait. I actually had visions of catching good ones on the square-bill, but I never did."

The buzzbait idea paid off, though. After he'd flipped up a 14 1/4-incher right off the bat, he saw a couple of fish crack the surface. Shortly thereafter, the egg-beater had produced a 2-pounder and a 3 1/2.

He lost a flipping fish a while later that pushed 4 pounds, and that shook him up a bit.

"It took me some time to get my wits about me again. I wasn't generating the bites like I needed to – it was dark and the fish were roaming around, and without the sun they weren't getting where I needed needed to be."

He went to an area he'd saved since day 1 at about 11:00 and caught a 2 1/4, and that settled him down. Then he returned to his primary area, which had gotten a good rest, and popped a small keeper to complete his limit.

He swapped out one of his two minimum-length keepers for a 2-pounder a little later and headed back to the launch with a 10-13 bag.

"I pretty much thought I was going to be 2nd because I thought Clunn would catch at least 13 pounds, and maybe 15. Then he went to the scale with that light bag (7-00), and I looked at the board and saw that (Lowen) had 50 pounds total.

"I knew I had enough to beat that."

Pattern Notes

"I was flipping anything that was isolated in a foot or less of water in the backs of the creeks," Wirth said. "I had key stretches of banks with wood, overhanging trees, little clumps of grass – anything.

"I had one good little stretch that had a bunch of bluegill on it, but I couldn't tell if they were bedding or what."

Because the fish were so shallow, it was critical for him to stay as far away as possible.

"I'd try to make a long pitch-cast and get the bait to land on the target as softly as possible. And I'd check the wind and figure out which side I could just coast up to the cover from. I'd (kill the trolling motor) 50 yards short and just coast up there. The more I could stay off the motor in that mud, the better off I was."

Winning Gear Notes

> Flipping gear: Unnamed 7'6" medium-heavy rod, Abu Garcia Revo STX casting reel (6.4:1 ratio), 20-pound Berkley Trilene 100% fluorocarbon line, unnamed 1/4- or 3/8-ounce bullet weight, 4/0 Mustad Mega-Bite hook, 5" Berkley Power Hawg or unnamed creature-type bait (green-pumpkin).

> He said the reel was a major factor. "A lot of times by the time I felt the bite, they might only be 6 or 8 feet away and I had to use the speed of that reel to collect the line and catch up with them."

> Buzzbait gear: Unnamed 7' medium-heavy rod, same reel and line, 1/2-ounce Lunker Lure buzzbait (chartreuse).

The Bottom Line

Main factor in his success – "Just deciding to put that flipping stick in my hand and stay with it, and revisiting a lot of stuff. Sometimes I'd have to hit a piece of cover six times to get one bite."

Peformance edge – "My Triton TR 21 and Mercury 250 Pro XS Optimax motor. It got me out there and back every day."

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