By Todd Ceisner
BassFan Editor


While several of his competitors boasted about the sheer numbers of fish they were catching each day during the Toyota Bassmaster Texas Fest, Brandon Palaniuk was more than happy to take quality over quantity.

His best fish were consistently stationed around deeper brush piles and suspended along standing timber. He also mixed in an area each morning where he caught some key fish on a topwater bait, but the majority of the fish that counted for him came out of 20-plus feet of water.

He was fortunate to find such areas because the fish were scattered from the bank out to 30 feet as they were transitioning through the post-spawn. Competitors could basically pick their poison and fill up their scoresheets doing just about anything they wanted to around the lake that has easily surpassed neighboring Toledo Bend in the minds of most as the premier bass fishing lake in east Texas and possibly anywhere in the United States.

To trigger the deeper fish, Palaniuk employed an old-fashioned technique named for the state he was competing in as well as an emerging finesse tactic on spinning gear.

It also helped that he had posted a 5th-place finish at the Toledo Bend Elite Series last month. Following that tournament, he parked his camper at Rayburn and did some pre-fishing as he had not competed there previously. Rayburn hosted the second-ever Elite Series event in March 2006, but this marked the first visit since for B.A.S.S.’ premier circuit.

“I came in with a little bit of confidence,” Palaniuk said. “I caught ‘em well doing the same thing I did at Toledo Bend. I caught 30 pounds throwing a (ChatterBait) so I was really excited to get back. I started there when I came back and I had bites, but I wasn’t catching the big ones.”

That put him back into search mode and he ultimately discovered the fish weren’t completely into their summer time pattern yet.

“I figured out the fish were in a transition zone,” he noted. “I think where a lot of guys missed the deep fish was they weren’t all the way out on their summer time places. They were not on the tips of points.

“My best stuff was little, off-the-wall and out-of-the-way brush piles on the steepest banks I could find close to a creek or river channel. It had to be close to the bank.”

He said that also applied to the shallow areas he fished.

“It had to have that edge,” he said. “The shallow fish related to places with a good, sharp edge to it, whether it was grass or an underwater bluff.”

Following are more details about how Palaniuk cracked 93-12 at Rayburn.

Practice

Generating bites in practice was not an issue for Palaniuk. The challenge came when trying to pare down his game plan and what he figured would work for the types of conditions he expected to face.

He had areas he felt would be resilient to wind from any directions. He tried to key in on deeper spots since that’s where he suspected the bigger fish could be, but he also had shallow options, too.

“It was a weird practice,” he said. “I got bit doing everything, but my big bites definitely came out deeper.”

Most of them came on a Neko Rig, a finesse tactic similar to a wacky rig that employs a small weight inserted into one end of the chosen soft-plastic bait being used. In Palaniuk’s case, it was a Zoom Magnum Trick Worm.

“I haven’t played around with it a ton or as much as other techniques, but I knew I’d be really comfortable with a spinning rod,” he said. “I got really excited when I started catching them on it.”

Competition

> Day 1: 5, 24-07
> Day 2: 5, 23-05
> Day 3: 5, 24-07
> Day 4: 5, 21-12
> Total = 20, 93-12

Palaniuk’s last Elite Series win came in August of 2013 at the St. Lawrence River, where he opted to make a treacherous run out to Lake Ontario each day, prompting B.A.S.S. to institute boundaries the next time the Elite Series visited the border waters in northern New York. At Rayburn, he didn’t need to venture all that far.

The Idaho native, who’s 5 1/2 months shy of his 30th birthday, fished most of the time north of the Highway 147 bridge.

He carded only six keepers on day 1, but the kingpin was an 8-04 that fell for the Neko Rig. He lost a number of fish around brush piles and thinks he had a chance to have a stellar day.

“I really thought I could only catch 10 or 13 or I could catch 30 or 35,” he said. “The challenge is capitalizing on those big bites. When you get them, you have to land them.”

He had most of his weight early and he was able to start charting a milk run of spots. Ultimately, he logged 24-07 and opened the event in 2nd place, about a pound behind Brent Ehrler.

“I didn’t know what I had until the tournament started,” he said. “I got it figured out in practice to the point I could look at map and if I could find a brush pile I could get bit.”

Even after racking up 23-07 on day 2, Palaniuk still didn’t have that vibe that he was on the winning spots despite saying he was fishing as relaxed and worry-free as he had in years.

“Every single fish could be a 4-pounder or a 10,” he said. “That’s what we’re targeting.”

He recycled some water from day 1 and caught fish out of the same areas, but also discovered a couple new brush piles where fish were starting to congregate.

“It was definitely a good feeling to feel like I know what to look for a little more,” he added.



B.A.S.S./Seigo Saito
Photo: B.A.S.S./Seigo Saito

Once Palaniuk discovered that the fish weren't all the way out on their summer haunts, he was able to pinpoint certain areas that were productive.

The brush pile fish ranged from 18 to 30 feet deep and he would utilize his Humminbrid 360 Imaging to locate them either around the piles or suspending close to standing timber.

“There were a few places where there was a hard bottom transition change,” he said. “Even though those fish weren’t on the bottom – they were suspended on the trees, they were still related to hard bottom.”

When he’d see on his electronics, he’d pitch his Texas-rigged worm or the Neko Rig to the trees and hope it would fall in the fish’s line of sight.

“They may have been around one tree because it was bigger than the rest,” he said. “If you didn’t cast on top of it, I didn’t get bit nearly as well. They wanted it dropping down right in front of them.”

When fishing the big worm, he’s slowly slide it through the brush pile while the Neko Rig was his top choice for the suspended fish and when probing around the brush.

He lost another 8-pound caliber fish on day 3 right at the boat, but his 24-07 was enough to overtake Ehrler by two ounces.

“If I’d have caught that one on day 3, I would’ve felt way more confident on the final day,” he said. “I’d have six more pounds on my total weight.”

On Sunday, his big bass spot didn’t produce again after coughing up a 4-pounder early in the day. He ran to a nearby bank where he’d gotten consistent bites on a walking bait. That didn’t pan out.

At one point, he went back to one of his best brush piles and found a local angler trying to retrieve a crankbait he’d snagged there. Palaniuk said the man told him he’d only caught three bass there before getting hung up.

“It started running through my mind, ‘Am I going to have to change and go run my stuff down south,’” he said.

Instead, he kept rotating through the spots that had gotten him to that point and with less than 30 minutes to go he idled over a brush pile he hadn’t fished before. He got lined up and caught a few smaller fish before leaning into a 5-14 that changed his mood and the outcome in his favor.

“Every time this week I’ve got them going this week, there’s been a big one in there,” he said on stage after clinching the win. “Without that fish, there’d be a different dude up here right now.”

Winning Gear Notes

> Worm gear: 7’3” medium-heavy Alpha Angler Rods Zilla casting rod, Abu Garcia MGXtreme (ZPI-tuned) casting reel, 15- and 17-pound Seaguar InvizX fluorocarbon line, 1/2-oz. VMC tungsten worm weight (pegged), 5/0 VMC heavy duty wide gap worm hook, Zoom Ole Monster worm (plum).

> He fished mostly with 15-pound line, but upped it to 17 on the final day.

> Neko Rig gear: 7’ medium-action Alpha Angler Rods Wrench spinning rod, Abu Garcia MGXtreme spinning reel, 15-pound Seaguar Smackdown braided line, 10-pound Seaguar Tatsu fluorocarbon line (leader), VMC 1/0 weedless Neko Rig hook, Zoom Magnum Trick Worm (green-pumpkin), 3/32-oz. VMC half moon wacky weight.

> The Neko Rig was his big fish producer all week, even in practice. “When they wouldn’t bite anything else, they’d bite that,” he said. “Several times on days 1 and 2 and on Sunday, I’d make 30 casts with the big worm and not get a bite, but I’d get bit on my first cast with this every time.”

> He also fished the Storm Arashi Top Walker in the mornings and caught several fish in the 4- to 5-pound range on it. “The best place for that was I’d found a unique underwater bluff that started as a bluff on the bank and rock had fallen off of it so it made some riprap,” he said. “There was a shelf out to 9 or 10 feet and then it dumped into the channel. The fish would be on top of the shelf in the morning and get up against those boulders.”

The Bottom Line

> Main factor in his success – “That decision on day 4 to stick with what I had.”

> Performance edge – “The Lakemaster chart and Humminbird 360 and Mega Imaging. It got to the point where I could drive around and tell exactly where I could catch fish. That’s where my confidence came from. I was able to be more efficient by looking at my map and saying, ‘This is where they should live.’ It was very precise where the fish would be.”

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