What The Bass Pros Catch For Fun

By John Neporadny Jr.
Special to BassFan

Even though the touring pros spend countless hours on the water pursuing bass either in practice or during competition, when they get a break in their hectic schedules they often still go fishing despite having a chance to get away from it all.

Because fishing is in their blood and they still need to get that thrill of the catch, some of the pros do take a break from bass fishing and spend their leisure time pursuing other species. Ever wonder what other fish the pros target whey they fish for fun?

> Jeff Kriet – The Oklahoma pro says he loves “to go to the blue water” for trophy marlin and tuna.

“In July I fish three back-to-back marlin tournaments, and then when the season is over I go every opportunity I can for tuna,” said Kriet, whose personal-best marlin weighed 450 pounds.

Kriet has a 100-ton master captain’s license and keeps his offshore saltwater boat at a house he and some buddies built at Port O’Connor, Texas. When fishing for marlin, he and his five- or six-man crew troll with five to seven lines and four trolling teasers.

Last year Kriet and his crew won the tuna division of the Poco Bueno Fishing Tournament.

“It’s kind of like the Bassmaster Classic of offshore stuff," he said. “Those entry fees are worse than the (Bassmaster Elites). We'll be in that tournament for about $25,000 to $30,000 (with a chance to win $100,000 to $500,000).”

> Todd Faircloth – When the crappie move into the brush piles from May through July at Sam Rayburn Reservoir, Faircloth takes wife Angie and their kids Hudson, Harrison and Helen-Claire out on his bass boat for a family day on the water.

“We usually just fish minnows in the brush piles and sometimes we use jigs,” he said. “With the kids, it's just a lot easier to slip on a minnow.”

They usually fish for 3 or 4 hours until the kids start getting bored and Faircloth finds something else for them to do.

> Bill Lowen – His dad took him crappie fishing when he was young and now Lowen takes his wife Jennifer and their kids, Nevaeh and Fischer. The family outings give Lowen a chance to relive his childhood days of fishing.

“I know a lot of people like to jig-fish for crappie, but my favorite is probably just a cork and a minnow,” he said. “There's just something about watching that cork go under. It’s like being a kid again.”

His favorite place to dunk minnows is the Ohio River, which he rates as a “phenomenal crappie fishery” loaded with 10- to 13-inch specimens.

> Dave Lefebre – The Pennsylvania pro says he fishes for bass to support his crappie-fishing habit. When the ice thickens to about 2 inches on Presque Isle Bay of Lake Erie or Pymatuning or Chautauqua lakes, Lefebre ventures out on the hard water to catch crappie.

“I'm usually the first one out there and everybody is looking for me to make sure the ice is safe,” he said. “So I am the Guinea pig.”

Lefebre is a pro staff member of the Ice Force team and former Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame world-record holder for a 3.8-pound black crappie he caught through the ice.

> Mark Menendez – Weeks before fishing his first Bassmaster Classic in 1997, Menendez started to feel the pressure. So while driving over a creek one day, he decided to get some small lures and wade the creek to see what he could catch.

“I spent a couple of hours a day for 4 days a within 2 weeks of the Classic and just enjoyed getting back to the basic roots of fishing again,” he recalled. “It really cooled those Classic jitters.”

Now when Menendez wants to relax from the stresses of competitive fishing, he wades Massac Creek with 11-year-old daughter Caroline and 10-year-old son Max. They use Strike King Bitsy Minnow crankbaits and shortened versions of Strike King 4-inch finesse worms to catch green sunfish, longear sunfish, pumpkinseeds and an occasional bass.

> Kevin VanDam – While visiting his parents for Sunday dinner, the Michigan pro also gets a chance to catch bull bluegill.

“My dad lives on a really good bluegill lake and we have a handful of techniques to catch big ones,” he said. “We have a real cool dropshot technique (with live wax worms or red worms) for late summer and fall. From the spawn until they get out on the deep flats, we catch them suspended with tiny tube jigs (tipped with wax worms) and in the spring before they spawn we catch them suspended with a fly below a bobber.”

The biggest bluegill VanDam has caught in his home state measured 11 5/8 inches in length.

> Jason Christie – A relaxing day on the water for Christie is when he can spend time with his dad drift-fishing with shad for catfish on Lake Tenkiller.

“We just get out in the middle of the lake off some flats and just drift around,” he said. “It's actually pretty fun. What makes it the most fun is that Dad knows more about it than I do. He tells me what to do and where to go and all I am is the boat driver. The cool thing about it is that you get to eat what you catch.”

They mostly catch blue and channel cats and a few flatheads.

> Marty Robinson – Because he grew up close to Murray, Hartwell, Clarks Hill and Russell – all lakes with good populations of striped bass – Robinson and his buddies would chase stripers in the winter when the bass fishing was slow.

“The stripers would start running up the rivers,” Robinson says. “The seagulls that time of year would be flying around working the balls of bait and the stripers would be schooling there.”

Now Robinson and his sons, Marshall and Mitchell, follow the birds and cast white hair jigs to the schooling stripers. Robinson says they have their best days when the weather is nastiest (30-degree temperatures with rain or snow and wind).

“We don’t catch some of those great big stripers doing that,” Robinson says. “Most of those we catch are from 5 to 7 pounds, but my kids love them that size because those fish put up a good fight for them.”

> Andy Montgomery – Montgomery does some bird-watching while hunting stripers at Lake Murray in his home state of South Carolina.

"It’s just a big thing to do around here in the winter,” said Montgomery, who throws a bucktai jig for schooling stripers. “I really like the way they hit that bucktail.”

> Shaw Grigsby – The late Doug Hannon, “The Bass Professor," knew how much Grigsby enjoyed sight-fishing, so he showed him fly-rod tactics for catching tarpon in the clear-water flats. Grigsby got hooked on chasing the saltwater trophy fish and now spends his free time fly-fishing for tarpon in the 100-pound class near Homosassa, Fla.

“It's a time-frame deal of May, June and July when I get that opportunity,” Grigsby said. “When you see a fish 7-foot long swimming up to you, that's pretty intense.”