Cranking, Punching Keys For Jordan, Crutcher

By Todd Ceisner
BassFan Editor

Clear Lake is widely considered the crown jewel destination of bass fishing on the West Coast and it lived up to its reputation last week during the final Western Rayovac Series tournament.

Despite unseasonably warm temperatures, the lake still produced several 20-plus pound stringers, including a 29-09 effort on day 1 by Mark Crutcher, who ultimately finished 3rd. Some felt if it had been cooler or more in line with historical averages that the weights might’ve been considerably better.

Even so, it took a 20-pound average to crack the Top 3. What follows is a rundown of how runner-up Jody Jordan and Crutcher planned their attack at Clear:

2nd: Jody Jordan

> Day 1: 5, 17-14
> Day 2: 5, 24-06
> Day 3: 5, 24-05
> Total = 15, 66-09

Jordan has been on the good size of narrow victories before, but it still didn’t blunt the sting of a 1-ounce loss to Uribe at his favorite lake on the planet. Despite weighing two 24-plus pound bags on each of the final 2 days, Jordan was crestfallen when Uribe’s final-day stringer wound up being enough to swing the outcome in his favor.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get over losing by as small a margin as I did,” Jordan said. “That will stick with me forever. The positive was I won by 2 ounces 2 years ago over Jason Borofka for my first big win. I was so on cloud 9 that I wasn’t able to empathize as much. Now, I look back and know how he feels.

“It was hard to take. I’d been thinking about this tournament for months and I wanted to win it. I love this time of year and I had played it out in my head don’t know how many times. The tournament, obviously, didn’t fish how I played it out in my head. I have stuff that if they start to eat on some deep cranking spots, you have a shot at 35 to 40 pounds. It was a grinder.”

Had Uribe and Jordan finished tied for first, Jordan would’ve won by virtue of having caught a bigger stringer.

Jordan said it was one of the most physically demanding tournaments he’s ever fished, simply because he threw a Strike King 10XD about 75 percent of the time, during the tournament and his weekly trips to the lake in the months leading up the event.

“Physically, it was not an enjoyable tournament to fish,” he said. “It was hard. I’m worn out.”

Jordan fished the lake once a week for 6 weeks leading up to the tournament in addition to 3 days prior to competition. He endured several lost fish on the crankbait during the event, but also had areas where he caught fish punching and on a jig.

“Pretty much every ledge on the lake is holding fish,” he said. “I picked areas that are community holes and everybody knows about, but nobody was on them. If you threw a jig on the ledges, you couldn’t get bit. It seemed the only way to get bit was to force-feed them the cranks. There were areas where a jig worked and I caught some that way, but there’s a reason why they’re community holes, because the big ones live there year in, year out.”

Jordan pointed to day 1 as the day he’d like to have back.

“My timing was off on my flipping fish,” he said. “I went to them too soon and then didn’t go back. I didn’t hit all of the mats I had GPS’d – I only hit three, then left them. If I’d have kept at it, I think I could’ve punched a good one. I wound up weighing a 12-incher.”

After losing a 6-pound caliber fish on his second cast with the crankbait, he was determined to make the deep-diving plugs work. It was hardly a cast-after-cast catch fest. He had to make repetitive casts, sometimes dozens, to the same spot in order to trigger reaction bites.

“They weren’t in their feeding mode,” he said. “You had to make them react to it.”

He said red-hued cranks are usually the go-to baits this time of year, but he found a shad pattern to be most productive.

He wound up with 17-14 on day 1 and that had him thinking he’d need 22-plus on day 2 in order to snag a paycheck.

Day 2 was a mixed bag as far as how he caught his fish, but there was no shortage of quality.

He hit one ledge with a crankbait under what he called “the worst possible cranking conditions,” but making the same cast more than two dozen times, he finally coaxed a 6-pounder to eat. That gave him three fish for 12 pounds. Shortly after, a random cloud got in front of the sun and within 10 minutes, he caught two more 3-pounders to finish off an 18-pound limit.

“At that point, I was feeling good about getting a check,” he added.

He was tempted at that point to go back to his key cranking area and target bigger fish, but he opted to check some grass since the area he was in was flat calm.

He punched a 4 3/4-pounder and was able to cull before another competitor in the area voluntarily left the nearby grass bed he’d been fishing after briefly chatting with Jordan.

“Where he was fishing was the next weed bed I was going to fish and I wound up flipping a 7-pounder out of there,” he said. “It was one of those little things that happened that made things work. That fish took me to 24 pounds.”

He wound up weighing in two fish caught flipping, two on a crankbait and one jig fish on day 2 as he came in with 24-06.

The final day brought with it some dark and cloudy weather and a northwest wind.

“I didn’t know where to start,” Jordan said. “The wind was blowing perfectly into Henderson where I’d caught them on a crankbait, but the fish hadn’t had wave action and a front like this in a month and I figured they’d be snapping, but I never got bit there on a crankbait.”

He moved to a main-lake point with some current coming across it and made repeated casts into the wind, but lost the only fish he connected with there. He moved to another ledge and cranked up a 6-pounder for his first fish. He ran back to the point and lost another good one. After making a boat positioning adjustment, he put a 5-pounder and a 3 3/4 in the boat before losing several more fish.

“I went back to some rock piles and hit three or four good ones, but didn’t catch anything,” he said. “I went back to the point. Nothing. I went back to the ledge and caught a couple good ones.

“Running in, I stopped on one of the biggest community holes on the lake and pitched a jig to the side of a point and caught a 5 to get rid of a 12-incher. The last day was all about fishing the conditions and the wind and current. I’d been waiting for that all tournament, thinking the crank bite would’ve been so much better, especially for deep cranking.”

> Crankbait gear: 7’11” medium-heavy Phenix Recon 2 casting rod, Shimano Curado casting reel (5.4:1 gear ratio), Abu Garcia Revo Winch casting reel, 12- or 15-pound Seaguar Tatsu fluorocarbon line, Strike King 10XD (gizzard shad).

> Jordan said he used a stop-and-go retrieve with his 10XD, especially on spots that he has fished numerous times before. “I like to grind it down and then walk it,” he said. “I’ve fished these areas so long, I know every little corner where you can’t throw it.”

> Punch gear: 7’11” heavy-moderate action Kistler Helium 3 casting rod, same reel (Curado), 50-pound unnamed braided line, 1-oz. unnamed tungsten punch weight, unnamed punch skirt (sprayed grass), 4/0 unnamed flipping hook, Reaction Innovations Sweet Beaver (sprayed grass).

> Jordan pitched a 1/2- and 3/4-oz. jig (peanut butter and jelly) on 20-pound Seaguar Tatsu with a Berkley HAVOC Pit Boss trailer (electric blue).

> Main factor in his success – “My intimate knowledge of every spot I fished. I know how they set up. As far as the cranking goes, just the determination to not put it down and having full faith in it. I’d picture the bait down there and go into each cast thinking, ‘This is the cast I’m going to get bit.’ I never let up even though my shoulders and hands and elbow … everything hurts, but I didn’t give up.

> Performance edge – “Everything worked great, from my Ranger z521 to my Mercury Pro XS 250. My Lowrance electronics – I have the HDS-9s – I couldn’t do it without them. Also, Hi’s Tackle Shop made sure I had the color bait I needed. I only had one, but they brought me two more for peace of mind.”

3rd: Mark Crutcher

> Day 1: 5, 29-09
> Day 2: 5, 14-09
> Day 3: 5, 18-07
> Total = 15, 62-09

Mark Crutcher has had some epic days at Clear Lake before and his day-1 stringer last week certainly ranked among them. While it didn’t come close to the 40-pound day he had in a team tournament several years ago, back after the Huddleston swimbait hit the market, the 29-09 he caught to start the tournament last week had him thinking big again.

“It was a dream day,” he said. “I left them biting with an hour to go.”

He started the tournament heaving a custom-painted SPRO Little John DD crankbait.

“I hadn’t been catching a lot on it in practice, but I caught enough big ones that I felt like if they kept biting, I could blow it out,” he said. “I also told some friends I could bomb, too.”

He caught two good fish to start, then headed north to a spot near a swim beach where he’d caught a mix of big and small fish in practice.

“Between 10 and 11:30, I caught two 7s and a 6,” he said. “I was like, ‘Oh my God. I can’t believe this.’ I had one other nice one and a 1-pounder to get rid of.”

He stuck around the north end and did some punching, but came up empty. He ran around a little bit more before going back to the same stretch near Lucerne to do more punching and came out with another 6-pounder. His smallest at that point was a 4 3/4-pounder. The 29-09 total gave him a comfortable cushion going into day 2.

He back to his cranking area down south and caught a 3 1/2-pounder on his second cast, which had him thinking that program was going to work all day. It wound up being his only crankbait fish of the day.

“I punched the rest of the day toward north end, but the best I could do was a 14-pound limit fishing that way,” he added. “
I knew I left the door open for Joe and Jody. I wasn’t mad, but I was not happy about it.”

His 14-09 bag on day 2 dropped him to 2nd, 6 ounces behind Uribe.

Like Jordan, who stayed with Crutcher during the tournament, Crutcher felt that the weather change on day 3 would trigger a better crankbait bite overall.

“My money was on Jody that morning because I knew what he was doing,” he said.

He opted to stay north, but couldn’t generate much with various topwaters and a ChatterBait.

“At about 2, I had 9 pounds, but the sun broke through to where I could see the tops of the weeds in 7 to 9 feet of water,” he said. “I started punching and flipping the holes and got up to 19 pounds in the last hour.”

> Cranking gear: 8’ medium-action Powell Max 3D crankbait rod, Shimano Curado casting reel (6.1:1 gear ratio), 12-pound Seaguar InvizX fluorocarbon line, SPRO Little John DD (custom red color).

> Crutcher said the bait was custom-painted by Reckless Baits.

> Punching gear: 7’10” medium-heavy Powell Max casting rod, same reel, 65-pound PowerPro braided line, 3/4-oz. unnamed tungsten worm weigh, Reckless Baits punch shirt (green-pumpkin or purple), Reaction Innovations Sweet Beaver (sprayed grass or 420).

> Crutcher said it was key, when punching, to target the thickest parts and holes in the grass. He focused on 5 1/2 out to 9 feet of water.

> Main factor in his success – “Being persistent. I have a lot of years of experience and I knew it would be won by one or the other or a combination of both cranking and punching.”

> Performance edge – “I have a new Legend boat and absolutely love it. The guys at Nixon Marine in Walla Walla, Wash., did a lot to get the boat out to me for this tournament.”

Much of the tackle referenced above is available at the BassFan Store. To browse the selection, click here.