Top Dogs Went Deep, Rojas Mixed It Up

By Todd Ceisner
BassFan Editor

If the top finishers at the Douglas Lake Bassmaster Elite Series taught BassFans anything, it’s to never underestimate their resourcefulness and imagination on the water.

The post-script for this event will not only be about Jeremy Starks’ triumphant return to the Elites Series after a year away from competition, it’ll be the use of a tactic widely known as long-lining or strolling to achieve uber-depths with deep-diving cranks.

While 4th-place finisher Dean Rojas went with a three-pronged attack that didn’t include strolling, the other top finishers relied upon it in some fashion to mine their key bites.

Plenty of small fish were available along shoreline cover, but the consensus leading up to the event was that it would be won out deep. The predictions held true as fish holding as deep as 50 feet were pivotal to the top finishers' weights.

Here is how those who finished behind Starks went about their business:

2nd: Britt Myers

> Day 1: 5, 21-01
> Day 2: 5, 24-01
> Day 3: 5, 19-08
> Day 4: 5, 14-07
> Total = 20, 79-01

Britt Myers’ best practice for this event was fishing the Douglas Southern Open last June, when local anglers dominated the event by pulling fish out of deep water. He knew fishing shallow this year wasn’t going to put him near the top of the standings.

“I knew that’s where they live, but the key was finding a way to catch them,” he said. “Going into the tournament, I didn’t know what I’d catch, but I knew if I could catch five I could have a big bag every day. To average almost 20 pounds a day over 4 days is almost unheard of on this lake.”

He did have a 22-pound day in practice and essentially spent the rest of practice idling around marking spots and schools. He estimated he had about 25 spots he had confidence in by the time the tournament started.

“That’s a ton (of spots) and there were people on a bunch of them and I would just wait until they’d leave and then go catch them,” he said. “You could idle around and find where the current broke, either a depression or a little step in that point. That’s where the fish would be.”

He was convinced the winner would catch 70 pounds or so with a 20-pound bag mixed in along the way. But after he weighed 21-01 on day 1 and 24-01 on day 2, even Douglas veteran Ott Defoe was impressed.

“(He) told me after day 2 that he had no idea anyone could back it up with that kind of weight,” he said.

The fish on many of his spots were related to the bottom and were most active on the corners of the points. Long-lining was the technique he used to reach the bottom-dwellers. When they’d come up and suspend, it was very difficult to catch them, he noted.

“The key to this tournament, other than Jeremy finding one big spot, was dedicating your entire practice to off-shore fishing,” he said, “because a guy who spent half his practice fishing shallow and half his practice fishing deep, by the time the tournament started, five boats would be sitting on your spots if you only have five deep spots and you’d have no place else to go.”

> Crankbait gear: 7'11" medium-action Pinnacle cranking rod, Pinnacle casting reel (4.7:1 ratio), 10-pound Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon line, Strike King Series 6 XD crankbait (citrus shad) or 3 1/4” Luhr Jensen Hot Lips Express TA crankbait (Tennessee shad/crystal).

> He found the Hot Lips was good in low-light or windy conditions while the silent Series 6 XD seemed to produce better under sunny and slick conditions.

> He tried a flutter spoon and jig in practice, but found it to be, "a waste of time," he said.

> Main factor in his success – “Hard work and believing in yourself. Coming into this year, I had confidence this was going to be a great year. I started out with the worst tournament of my career – a dead-last at the St. Johns River. It was strange because once I left there, I told myself, ‘I’m fine. I’ll be okay.’ Somehow, I started catching them.’”

> Performance edge – “The key to tournament was having very good electronics and understanding them. I have Lowrance and I could actually pick out one bass and if I could get the bait down there behind him at the right depth, I could catch that one bass.”

3rd: Aaron Martens

> Day 1: 5, 23-14
> Day 2: 5, 17-06
> Day 3: 5, 16-08
> Day 4: 5, 16-09
> Total = 20, 74-05

Aaron Martens has fished in virtually every type of tournament setting under various conditions, good and bad. Nothing, however, compares to the toll Douglas Lake exacted from him.

“It was the most physically demanding tournament I’ve ever fished,” he said after notching his best finish since his runner-up showing at the Arkansas River a year ago.

He estimates that he burned nearly 7,000 calories a day with the deep-cranking pattern he was dialed in on. He was making casts upwards of 200 feet and did some long-lining to get his baits deeper, but only on spots where he felt it was necessary and not to the distances that others did.

“Some guys were using their big motors and going 100 yards and then jumping up and reeling and going back the other way, which I can see was a huge advantage,” he said. “I felt weird about doing that because I know the bait’s moving forward and the line’s sinking and it’s swimming. I thought it was pushing it. I just didn’t have the (guts) to do it.

“It’s a huge advantage, and I’ve done it for years. I’ve never gone over 100 feet. A lot of times I’ll cast as far as I can and I’ll start to move forward and make sure the bait doesn’t move so I’m not pulling it all. Then I’ll free-spool it and get into position so I can kneel and reel, which I’ve done forever. I just use the boat as leverage, which most of the guys do.”

His pre-tournament winning weight guess of 20-pounds-per-day held up, but sharing spots hurt his chances at hitting that number.

“A lot of times, I didn’t get to fish a spot I wanted to fish for a day or a day and a half because three or four other guys would be there and I’d have to run somewhere else,” he said. “That’s just how it was. Britt got fortunate that I didn’t start where I wanted to on the second day because that’s where he ended up catching most of his big fish.

“At the beginning of the tournament, I talked about how decisions would lose it or win it for you and I think the only mistake I made was not going to where Britt was catching them in the morning. I could’ve gone there the 2nd day since I was leading, but I just didn’t do it.”

> Crankbait gear: 7’11” medium-action Megabass Destroyer Tomahawk GTA cranking rod or 7’6” Megabass White Python swimbait rod, Shimano Scorpion casting reel (7:1 ratio), 10-pound Sunline Shooter fluorocarbon line, Mann’s Depth Plus 30+ crankbait (variety of shad-pattern colors) or Luhr Jensen Hot Lips Express TA crankbait (variety of shad-pattern colors).

> He threw the Mann’s 30+ on the swimbait rod because the stout backbone allowed him to maintain leverage and tension on the fish. “They were fresh, hard-fighting fish. They were feisty,” he said.

> Spoon gear: 7’11” medium-action Megabass Destroyer Racing Condition flipping rod, same reel, 14-pound Sunline Shooter fluorocarbon line, 5 1/2” Strike King Sexy Spoon (sexy shad).

> Main factor in his success – “Pre-practicing. That was a huge advantage for me. It was the first time, literally, I can remember doing it. It’s been years. Not researching lakes at all has hurt me in the past.”

> Performance edge – “My electronics were my most important tool and most used. Obvously, my motor was being used the whole time to use them and my boat was definitely a big part of it, but my eyes and my focus was on my graph 100 percent of the time.”

4th: Dean Rojas

> Day 1: 5, 16-07
> Day 2: 5, 22-00
> Day 3: 5, 17-13
> Day 4: 5, 17-09
> Total = 20, 73-13

Dean Rojas proved long-lining wasn’t the only way to catch Top 5-worthy fish at Douglas. He had three productive patterns going that allowed him to attack all segments of the water column.

Not surprisingly, one of them was a frog pattern that helped him on days 1, 3 and 4.

“The frog played a pivotal part in the weight I caught,” he said.

For bottom-hugging fish, he threw a Spro Little John DD crankbait, but didn’t employ long-lining to reach the deeper fish which were holding near the bottom in 20-foot depths just off points. Keeping contact with the bottom on his retrieves was important. He also targeted mid-range depths with a jig.

Once he saw the mass of boats beating the bank during practice, he knew he’d need more than one pattern going in order to contend. His cranking and jig bite were better in the morning and then he went frogging with a Spro Bronzeye 65 in the afternoons.

“I had to do three different things to try to come in with big bags every day,” he said. “All three techniques played a pivotal part in weighing consistent bags all the way through. I didn’t think it was much of a pattern lake for what I was doing. I just tried to stay in areas and fish my strengths.”

He focused on certain stretches of bank that others may have overlooked.

“Everybody’s going to look for the obvious stuff, but I try to find the stuff that’s just a little different,” he added. “I left a lot of fish out there. There were still a lot of fish I never went to.”

> Crankbait gear: 7’ medium Quantum Tour Rojas casting rod, Quantum Tour KVD casting reel (5.3:1 ratio), 14-pound Sunline FC Sniper fluorocarbon line, Spro Little John DD crankbait (nasty shad).

> Jig gear: 7’ medium-heavy Quantum Tour Edition PT casting rod, Quantum EXO PT casting reel (6.6:1 ratio), 5/8-ounce Spro K-Finesse jig (green-pumpkin), 3 1/2” Big Bite Baits Fighting Frog (watermelon red).

> Frog grear: 7’ medium-heavy Quantum Tour Rojas frogging rod, Quantum EXO PT casting reel (7.3:1 ratio), 80-pound Sunline FX2 braided line, Spro Bronzeye 65 Frog (killer gill).

> Main factor in his success – “Being versatile and keeping and open mind and using three patterns this week to finish in the Top 5. It helps to have different options. So many times you don’t have the luxury of having three. You’re usually on one or two patterns. I was fortunate to have three and it helped out a lot.”

> Performance edge – “My Power-Poles worked great this week. The first day, I caught three key bed-fish, which were huge for me. That and my Skeeter/Yamaha were trouble-free all week.”

5th: Randy Howell

> Day 1: 5, 16-01
> Day 2: 5, 13-09
> Day 3: 5, 19-15
> Day 4: 5, 23-03
> Total = 20, 72-12

Douglas Lake took Randy Howell out of his comfort zone, but he followed a gut feeling that the best fish would be out deep and he stuck with it to register his best finish since the 2010 Clear Lake Elite Series.

Like Martens, Howell did a recon trip in early March and saw the lake when it was still in its drawdown phase, some 35 feet below the tournament water level. It allowed him to get a true feel for where the fish would be holding once the event rolled around.

“I saw everything dry land where I caught my fish,” he said. “That helped my confidence of knowing what was there. My whole iPhone was full of pictures of places and I’d pull up on the waypoint and pull the picture up in practice and know how it laid out. That was really cool and unique to be able to do it that way. That was one of the things that helped me a lot – coming to pre-fish during a drawdown time so I could see everything.”

When he found that fish weren’t holding on obvious pieces of off-shore structure like house foundations and boulders, he searched for schools.

“It was weird when I realized these fish school up and lay on slick, nothing bottoms along the drops,” he said. “I stopped wasting time on structure and just went looking for fish and that made it easier.”

He spent the first half of the tournament focused solely on deep water, playing the merry-go-round game of running spot to spot and hoping no one else was sitting on it. He made the 50-cut in 13th place with 29-10.

He finished his limit on days 1 and 2 on the same spot around 1 o’clock and after seeing the potential that was there he opted to start there on days 3 and 4. It turned out to be the key to a monster weekend as he caught 43-02 over the final 2 days to catapult himself into the Top 5.

“It made it easier to have that limit early because it helps me fish better,” he added. “It made it harder on the first 2 days choking on that off-shore thing and worrying if they wouldn’t bite and only having three fish at noon. You have to fight off all of those thoughts.”

> Crankbait gear: 8’ heavy Daiwa Steez flipping rod, Daiwa Zillion casting reel (6.3:1 ratio), 12-pound Molix Enki fluorocarbon line, Mann’s Depth Plus 30+ crankbait (citrus shad) or 3 1/4” Luhr Jensen Hot Lips Express TA crankbait (lemonade).

> He also caught some key fish vertically jigging a 1.5-ounce Sebile Vibrato jigging spoon (natural shiner) as well as the Lake Fork Flutter Spoon.

> His morning topwater bite was keyed by Paycheck Baits’ The One, a 5 3/4” rattling walking bait. Bone Saw was his preferred color.

> Main factor in his success – “Knowing 100-percent in my gut that it was going to won out deep and to not sell out and go shallow. I’ve tried to stretch myself every year and it’s the evolution of trying to improve and get better every year. I’ve been doing it for a long time now and that’s the goal -- to never be satisfied with making a living out here. You have to strive every year to learn and I’m a student of the game and I love to get better. This was just a whole new realm of fishing off-shore that I never really had the opportunity to do a lot of.”

> Performance edge – “The Lowrance HDS SideScan and StructureScan. That gave me condifence to know where the bass were and I spent a lot less time idling and finding where the schools were at.”