By David A. Brown
Special to BassFan


It’s one of the slyest, most provocative advertising/marketing angles: “Because you can.”

Generally withheld for the luxury-level stuff, this notion also applies to the scenario that Del Rio, Texas angler Ray Hanselman leveraged in a big way during this year's Rayovac FLW Series Texas Division tournament on Lake Texoma. Hanselman’s Texoma win was the final of a divisional trifecta that also included victories at Lake Amistad and Sam Rayburn Reservoir.

Hanselman admits he entertained thoughts of a possible sweep going into the Texoma event, but wonderment turned to serious consideration when he found the lake’s conditions setting up like a dream for him.

Torrential rains had pushed the lake a couple feet above normal and flooded shoreline brush. May generally finds Texoma’s largemouth in various stages of their spawning cycle and the flooded areas were a gift to Hanselman.

“At the Lake Texoma event, it was about 60/40, with 60 percent of the fish done and 40 percent on beds,” Hanselman said. “Typically, your postspawn fish are going to go out to the points of the coves to feed up and get healthy again. But fish instinctively know to follow water in.

“They’re going to get on that inside edge because there are bugs and a whole food chain going on in there. Shad, bluegill – everything goes up. The bass go where the food is.”

As Hanselman explained, the spawning fish were probably on the outside edge of the old brush line and when the lake rose a couple of feet in a couple of days, they simply repositioned. Essentially, what were common bedding positions became too deep for proper solar warmth when the flood waters overtook the coves.

“They got to where they could get sunlight back on their beds and get back into spawning mode,” He said. “It was like the best of both worlds – you had feeding fish and spawning fish.”

Hanselman’s specific tournament strategy involved targeting secondary coves within Platter Flats on the Oklahoma side. This area remained muddy during practice, so it got little attention during completion days.

He suspected these covers would clear in time for the tournament, but he said locating fish was just a matter of diligent searching – something with which he’s deeply familiar on Amistad.

“I live on a lake that fluctuates quite a bit, where we get big, drastic rises and big, drastic falls,” he said. “You might be catching them flipping grass one day and the next day, you get a 3-foot rise and you’re half a mile away in the back of a creek catching the same fish.

“They’ll pack their bags and go. They know it’s time to eat. It’s like a gift from God and they’re going to hit the buffet line.”

And not to sell Texoma short, Hanselman said this Red River Impoundment actually offers a great classroom for learning flood-water lessons.

“There are lots of places to catch them and different habitats,” he said. “You have the backs of the creeks, brush, grass, flowing rivers – you have a little bit of everything here.”

The Mindset

We hear this a lot, but Hanselman clarified and crystallized a cliché with relevance to the topic.

“A bass is a bass and he’s a predator, so you have to think like one,” he said. “He’s not sitting under a tree or doing this or that because he’s hot – his eyes are pointed forward and he’s looking for a meal.

“It’s just an instinct to follow that water in when it comes up. They get on the inside edge, head to the back and just start cruising.”

Bait Choice

Hanselman caught the majority of his fish on a Strike King Sexy Frog. He used two different frogs – one with brown legs, one with chartreuse/green legs. Both had a yellow belly. This, Hanselman said, was a key detail.

“I don’t know if it was the baby turtles, or if the local frogs had yellow bellies, or if it was the bluegill that have yellow bellies that time of year; I just go back to basic natural colors (for this scenario),” he said. “When I’m practicing, I don’t try to get to crazy. I just fall back on natural stuff.”

Hanselman said he did find the chartreuse/green legs a little more productive in the early going when the water had more of a stained look. When the coves started clearing and his visibility was greater, the brown legs did well.

Complementing his amphibian replication, Hanselmen kept a few different plastics handy for follow-ups or that perfect-scenario bed fish. Standard Texas-rigged worms and creature baits, along with a Strike King Slither Rig (weight/skirt combo) kept him in business.

“If I saw an isolated bush, or the thickest bush in the middle of (the brush), or if I missed a bite on the frog, or if I saw something moving in the bushes, I’d pitch back in there,” Hanselman said. “Sometimes, it’s carp or gar, but if it’s something that’s not coming to the surface to hit, I’ll pitch in there to check.”

Now, one particular bed fish – a male that let the lady of the house bite first – gave Hanselman fits, but demonstrated the adjustments often needed in these newly-flooded areas.

“Man, that thing was fast – took me forever to hook,” Hanselman chuckled. “He’d pop that bait and suck it in and blow it out.

“I tried several different colors, but it didn’t want to touch anything on the bottom – it was more mid-water column over that bed.”

The solution: Cutting the soft stick bait in half so the fish would be more likely to get the hook. The little buck did, indeed, get his extreme close-up with Hanselman, who showed him why he uses a 7'11" Power Tackle swimbait rod with 50-pound braid around the heavy stuff.

“When you’re fishing in cover that thick, you’re just trying to keep them up,” Hanselman said. “Anytime you give a fish (slack), he’s going to go look for something to put his head in.”