Maloney’s Post-Spawn Plan Paid Off

By Todd Ceisner
BassFan Editor

Military helicopters buzzing past 200 feet above the water, 21-gun salutes at a nearby Army base and the usual throngs of sightseers wandering around the nation’s capital. Not exactly the trappings of the average bass-fishing tournament.

The Potomac River BFL All-American was anything but the average tournament. It matched 49 of the best weekend anglers against each other for 3 days at one of the more diverse (and pressured) fisheries in the country. The winner was guaranteed at least a $100,000 payday and a berth in this year’s Forrest Wood Cup. There was plenty to think about and plenty of distractions along the way.

Through it all, Brian Maloney kept his cool and stuck to his game plan that targeted post-spawn fish. While his stringers weighed less each day of the event, his 43-04 total was enough to lead wire to wire and clinch a 6-ounce victory over Dick Shaffer. It’s a life-changing triumph that has him thinking about kicking the tires as a tour-level pro possibly down the road.

So how exactly did a guy from Missouri, who calls Lake of the Ozarks and Table Rock Lake home, come to the beltway and conquer the tidal waters of the Potomac?

“By not listening to anybody,” he said. “I’m tickled to death I went up there and even made something of an event like this. The last thing I was thinking about was the future. I was taking it one day at a time. The stars lined up just perfect.”

Here’s how he did it.

Practice

Maloney made a few calls to ranking members of Federation and TBF clubs in the Virginia and Maryland area before the tournament just to get a lay of the land and an idea of what to expect.

“Every person told me the exact same thing: ‘You have to fish the spoils (area), you have fish the Pentagon pool,’’’ he said. “That told me since we’re fishing a small body of water and there’s 49 of us and everybody’s complaining about it, I needed to find something different. There has to be fish up there somewhere that nobody knows about. I don’t think I found fish nobody knew about. I just did something different.”

During the 1 day of official practice, he pitched jigs and shaky-heads and threw a shallow crankbait, which fell in line with what others around him were doing. That’s when he decided to go in a new direction.

“I made a commitment to change it up,” he said, referring to throwing a paddle-tail worm rigged on a football-head jig to target bottom-huggers. “I figured I’d get a little more aggressive.”

He hadn’t fished tidal water before, but with water temperatures already in the 70s and recent tournament results indicating 20-pound bags were being caught, he surmised the spawn would be done by the time competition got underway. In practice, he decided to target post-spawn fish.

“They were beat up,” he said. “Their tales were beat up, their bellies were sucked up. They would’ve weighed a lot more had it been a pre-spawn bite, but it wasn’t. I heard about guys fishing down in the spoils and even around me catching spawning fish or bucks still on the beds, but I just never got that in my head. I never even went to the bank to look because I felt there would be a strong population of fish coming off the spawn.”

Competition

> Day 1: 5, 15-04
> Day 2: 5, 14-10
> Day 3: 5, 13-06
> Total = 15, 43-04

In practice, Maloney found a stretch of tree-lined seawall in the Washington Channel with a large storm culvert at one end. The area turned out to be his sweet spot as the post-spawn fish seemed to replenish. The spot was adjacent to a 20-foot long ditch on one side of a flat and there was a slight 2- to 3-foot contour change from the flat out to the edge of the main channel.

“I knew the fish were uncomfortable staying up in that shallow water, at least the ones I was targeting,” he said. “They were starting to migrate out. That’s where I parked it and tried to stay with them.”

As a tidal-water newbie, Maloney lucked out in the sense that by the time the field blasted off in the morning the tide was already on its way out and low tide was progressively later each day of competition.

He boxed an early limit on day 1 and then poked around the Pentagon pool for a while, but didn’t get any bites. On his way back to the ramp, he stopped under the Woodrow Wilson Bridge and was able to cull up a couple ounces with the paddle-tail worm. He did that all 3 days of competition and the same bridge piling produced fish each day.

“For some reason, every day I’d idle through and there’d be one bridge piling that had no one on it,” he said. “They were the same caliber of fish as I was getting in the Washington Channel. When I won by 6 ounces, I can’t say that last-minute decision to go down there didn’t do it for me.”

On day 2, he started to really dial in his program of stroking the paddle-tail worm off the bottom before throwing a silent crankbait up toward the wall and working it out to 16 feet to trigger reaction bites. He had his weight by 2 p.m. and then idled across the area some more using his Lowrance Structure Scan to get a better feel for day 3. He was also guarding the area from other nearby competitors.

“I was worried about the crowds and I wanted to preserve the area for the final day,” he added.

By day 3, he’d exhausted his supply of Zoom Speed Worms and with tackle stores few and far between in the metro D.C. area, he gladly accepted the help of competitor Tommy Robinson (49th-place finish), who gave him a few bags of Garneau Baits Slam Sticks, a hand-poured paddle-tail worm.

“That got me through the rest of the tournament,” he said. “He didn’t know what I was doing with them, but he was more than willing to throw a couple packages over and they definitely worked.”

He took off on the final day with a 1-pound lead over Shaffer, but that was the least of his worries. He just wanted to catch a limit and see where the chips fell at the end of the day. His bite began to slow and his 13-06 stringer, while enough to clinch the win, didn’t feature the 4-pound class fish that anchored his bags on days 1 and 2.

“I knew the caliber of fish I was around would make it a competition,” he said. “I had a fear that the guys like Dick Shaffer, with their status and reputation, that any one of them would catch me in a heartbeat if I messed up. I had to do my job. I knew it was going to be tougher on the third day because it had been picked over pretty darn good. It was a little more of a grind.”

With his wife and two children looking on from the railing atop the seawall he was fishing, he executed flawlessly before picking up a couple more ounces by the bridge.

“It made it real comfortable,” he said. "“That venue in itself is so strange that I don’t know how you can get hyped up. There’s so much going on that it almost made you focus more on what you were doing.

“It was an unbelievable event. I’ll never experience anything like that ever again just because of the environment and all that was going on. … It didn’t let your attitude get down even when you’d think you were losing the bite because you’d look around and realize it’d already been a fantastic week.”

Pattern Notes

The trees that canopied the walkway atop the seawall worked to Maloney’s advantage, as he was able to work the shade line as the day wore on. They cast a shade line about 40 feet out onto the water and when the sun came up, it pushed the fish closer to the wall. When the tide began moving out, they used the wall to migrate out to deeper water.

He’d pull up to within two or three boat lengths of the wall depending on the shade line. As the line moved closer to the wall, he’d move in with it.

“They’d be feeding from the shade line to the wall and in the afternoon when the sun got on the sea wall, I knew it would warm it up and they’d be away from it,” he said.

He threw the paddle-tail mostly in the mornings and then switched to his silent cedar deep-diving crankbaits to dredge the ditch line.

The key element in the mornings was the large storm culvert.

“When the water would drop, it would suck water out of the city sewers and there was my current,” he added. “It created current where they went down the wall. It created a nice, dark hole for the bass to use as cover. I was after aggressive fish or at least trying to go after a reaction bite versus teasing them or finessing them and waiting for them to bite.”

Winning Gear Notes

> Jig gear: 6’8” medium-heavy Team Lew’s Speed Stick casting rod, Lew’s Tournament Pro Speed Spool casting reel (7.1:1 ratio), 10-pound Vicious Elite fluorocarbon line, unnamed 1/2-oz. football-head jig, unnamed 5/16-oz. roundhead jig, 5 1/2” Zoom Speed Worm (black sapphire), 5 1/4” Garneau Baits Slam Stick (black and blue).

> He eventually ran out of football-heads and switched to round-heads, which didn’t impact his catch rate. “It was close enough that the action of stroking it or ripping it off the bottom was more important than the weight,” he said. “We never got out deeper than 16 feet.”

> He preferred the blue and black combinations for his plastics because he felt the darker profile is what triggered the reaction bites. “Sitting in the shade, they’d see something dark and vibrating coming off the bottom and it just shocked them,” he added. “With these fish being as beat up as they were coming out of the spawn, I had to really be shocking them to get those reaction bites.”

> Crankbait gear: Same rod, reel and line, Poe’s 400 silent crankbait (chartreuse pattern) or Rick Clunn Thundershad crankbait (chartreuse).

> After losing a Poe’s crankbait early on, he switched to the old flat-sided cedar Thundershads, which he felt was pivotal because of the silent presentation. “I wanted to surprise the fish and bump them in the head and shock them,” he noted. “That was the most important part. I think if I’d been throwing something with rattles, I wouldn’t have gotten bit.”

The Bottom Line

> Main factor in his success – “Believing in what my strength was and what I found and rolling the dice and staying with it. I didn’t chase rumors and didn’t get upset or outthinking myself when we got into those slow periods. This is the most relaxed I’ve ever been in a tournament. I don’t know why. It’s probably because my family was there and because of the scenery and venue.”

> Performance edge – “My Lowrance Structure Scan helped me understand what I was doing and helped me each day learn a little more so when I got to the last day I was comfortable and knew exactly where I wanted to pitch and how to fish my crank baits.”

Notable

> Maloney is sponsored by Lew’s, Vicious Fishing and Walker Custom Jigs.

> Asked what he came to mind when he heard the words, “Forrest Wood Cup,” he replied: “History, legends, the ultimate tournament. It hasn’t sunk in. My wife and I were talking and I said to her, ‘Do you realize that this is the ultimate goal of not only the weekend fishermen and no-names like me, but this is what every one of the pros tries to get to, and I just pulled it off?’ I’m sure it’ll hit me upside the head in a little bit, but I’m just starting to realize that I’m going to go play with the big boys and we’ll see what I have.”

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Final Standings

1. Brian Maloney -- Osage Beach, Mo -- 15-04 (5) -- 14-10 (5) -- 13-06 (5) -- 43-04 (15) -- $100,000 + $20,000

2. Dick Shaffer -- Rockford, Oh -- 14-07 (5) -- 14-07 (5) -- 14-00 (5) -- 42-14 (15) -- $20,000 + $9,000

3. David Williams -- Maiden, NC -- 11-11 (5) -- 15-03 (5) -- 15-05 (5) -- 42-03 (15) -- $15,000 + $8,000

4. Dicky Newberry -- Houston, Tx -- 12-09 (5) -- 14-11 (5) -- 13-09 (5) -- 40-13 (15) -- $14,000 + $7,000

5. Conrad Bolt -- Seneca, SC -- 14-06 (5) -- 11-11 (5) -- 12-00 (5) -- 38-01 (15) -- $13,000

6. Roger Fitzpatrick -- Eldon, Mo -- 12-11 (5) -- 11-07 (5) -- 13-01 (5) -- 37-03 (15) -- $12,000 + $5,000

7. Christopher Jones -- Bokoshe, Ok -- 12-10 (5) -- 15-11 (5) -- 7-12 (3) -- 36-01 (13) -- $11,000

8. Corey Saint -- Lexington, Al -- 12-11 (5) -- 12-14 (5) -- 9-09 (4) -- 35-02 (14) -- $10,000

9. Scott Hamrick -- Denver, NC -- 12-05 (5) -- 15-06 (4) -- 5-00 (2) -- 32-11 (11) -- $9,000 + $3,500

10. Marc Snyder -- St Johns, Mi -- 15-00 (5) -- 9-07 (4) -- 4-07 (2) -- 28-14 (11) -- $8,000

The following anglers did not make the cut and did not fish on day 3.

11. Richard Szczerbala -- Apex, NC -- 11-05 (4) -- 11-09 (5) -- 22-14 (9) -- $3,000

12. Kevin Snider -- Elizabethtown, Ky -- 9-14 (4) -- 12-07 (5) -- 22-05 (9) -- $3,000 + $2,000

13. John Wright -- Shelbyville, Il -- 10-10 (5) -- 11-07 (5) -- 22-01 (10) -- $3,000 + $2,000

14. Shane Lineberger -- Lincolnton, NC -- 8-11 (4) -- 13-05 (5) -- 22-00 (9) -- $3,000

15. Brian Tidwell -- Seneca, SC -- 9-00 (4) -- 12-12 (5) -- 21-12 (9) -- $3,000

16. Tim Fleetwood -- Forsyth, Mo -- 11-14 (5) -- 9-09 (4) -- 21-07 (9) -- $3,000 + $2,000

17. Randy Childers -- Anderson, SC -- 11-00 (4) -- 9-06 (4) -- 20-06 (8) -- $3,000 + $2,000

18. Kerry Milner -- Bono, Ar -- 9-05 (4) -- 9-15 (5) -- 19-04 (9) -- $3,000 + $2,000

19. Grayson Mathis -- Aiken, SC -- 12-00 (5) -- 6-15 (3) -- 18-15 (8) -- $3,000

20. Brent P. Sain -- Manchester, Tn -- 11-01 (5) -- 7-10 (3) -- 18-11 (8) -- $3,000 + $2,000

21. Patrick Bone -- Cleveland, Ga -- 11-05 (5) -- 7-02 (3) -- 18-07 (8) -- $2,000 + $1,500

22. Chris Martinkovic -- Liberty Township, Oh -- 9-11 (4) -- 8-00 (4) -- 17-11 (8) -- $2,000 + $1,500

23. Eric Snow -- Clarksville, In -- 9-10 (3) -- 8-01 (4) -- 17-11 (7) -- $2,000 + $1,500

24. Derek Jenkel -- Pinckneyville, Il -- 8-06 (4) -- 7-15 (3) -- 16-05 (7) -- $2,000 + $1,500

25. Tim Staley -- Dowelltown, Tn -- 10-13 (5) -- 5-01 (2) -- 15-14 (7) -- $2,000

26. Marty Johnson -- Benton, Ky -- 3-12 (2) -- 11-15 (4) -- 15-11 (6) -- $2,000 + $1,500

27. Rob Digh -- Denver, NC -- 13-02 (5) -- 2-00 (1) -- 15-02 (6) -- $2,000 + $1,500

28. Chad Aaron -- Lawrenceburg, Tn -- 7-08 (3) -- 7-03 (3) -- 14-11 (6) -- $2,000

29. Ryan Horton -- Palmetto, Ga -- 12-02 (5) -- 2-07 (1) -- 14-09 (6) -- $2,000

30. Perry Neathery -- Albany, Ky -- 11-11 (5) -- 2-14 (1) -- 14-09 (6) -- $2,000

31. Larry Jenkins -- Memphis, Tn -- 6-04 (3) -- 7-10 (3) -- 13-14 (6) -- $1,500 + $1,000

32. Jayme Rampey -- Liberty, SC -- 9-01 (4) -- 4-05 (2) -- 13-06 (6) -- $1,500

33. Eddie Bussard -- Sanford, Fl -- 6-07 (3) -- 6-10 (3) -- 13-01 (6) -- $1,500

34. Duane Snyder -- Hanson, Ky -- 10-01 (4) -- 2-12 (1) -- 12-13 (5) -- $1,500 + $1,000

35. Michael Neal -- Dayton, Tn -- 7-10 (3) -- 4-12 (2) -- 12-06 (5) -- $1,500 + $1,000

36. Terry Steele -- Sparta, Tn -- 7-13 (3) -- 4-08 (2) -- 12-05 (5) -- $1,500

37. David Martin -- Check, Va -- 12-04 (5) -- 0-00 (0) -- 12-04 (5) -- $1,500 + $1,000

38. John Wynn -- Bentonville, Ar -- 7-10 (4) -- 4-05 (1) -- 11-15 (5) -- $1,500

39. Miles Burghoff -- Orlando, Fl -- 6-14 (3) -- 5-01 (2) -- 11-15 (5) -- $1,500

40. Scott Brummett -- Brentwood, Tn -- 4-13 (2) -- 5-02 (2) -- 9-15 (4) -- $1,500 + $1,000

41. Jeff Erickson -- Phoenix, Az -- 2-13 (1) -- 6-00 (3) -- 8-13 (4) -- $1,500 + $1,000

42. David Wootton -- Collierville, Tn -- 0-00 (0) -- 8-03 (3) -- 8-03 (3) -- $1,500 + $1,000

43. Steve Ruff -- Wentzville, Mo -- 7-13 (4) -- 0-00 (0) -- 7-13 (4) -- $1,500 + $1,000

44. Gilbert Gagner -- Highgate Springs, Vt -- 5-04 (2) -- 2-09 (1) -- 7-13 (3) -- $1,500

45. Steve Hughes -- Rimersburg, Pa -- 1-15 (1) -- 5-11 (2) -- 7-10 (3) -- $1,500

46. Chris Baxter -- Winder, Ga -- 7-07 (3) -- 0-00 (0) -- 7-07 (3) -- $1,500

47. Brandon Glass -- Resaca, Ga -- 2-12 (1) -- 2-07 (1) -- 5-03 (2) -- $1,500 + $1,000

48. Jeff Ritter -- Prairie Du Chien, Wi -- 2-13 (1) -- 0-00 (0) -- 2-13 (1) -- $1,500 + $1,000

49. Tommy Robinson -- Westland, Mi -- 1-15 (1) -- 0-00 (0) -- 1-15 (1) -- $1,500 + $1,000