Monday, January 30, 2012

A-RIGGIN J. Percy Priest with Dr. G

I had some sponsor business to tend to in Nashville today and while I was sitting in bumper to bumper traffic, having my memory refreshed on one of the reasons why I quit fishing the "city" lakes and moved to KY lake out in the country, I decided to make a few phone calls.  I hadn't talked to my good buddy Dr. David Gnewikow in a while so I gave him buzz.  He informed me that he was on his way to his office for a solid 2 hr work day and then he was headed to the lake.  We decided to meet up at noon and try our luck on one of the other reasons I moved to KY lake, J. Percy Preist.  Dr. G hadn't been on Priest since June and I havn't been on Priest since......weeeeell, sometime in 2007.  But hey, with the amazing, magical, myrical, it needs to be banned because we're gonna catch and/or kill all the fish Alabama rig in our hands, the Preist bass population didn't stand a chance!  After 3 hours of A rigging some of the best wintering holes on the lake and believe me, Dr. G knows the best, we had one bite on the A rig.  The one bite did happen to be a 4lb 14oz smallmouth which was enough to get me pretty fired up because I don't catch a ton of smallmouth and I never was much of a threat to any species on Priest!  It does go to show though, that as deadly of a technique the A rig has become, it still isn't guaranteed to put fish in the boat.  It was still an awesome day to be on the water and to get to catch up with the good Dr.  We did finally break down and go catch a few largemouth on the infamous #5 shad rap that Preist bass just can't seem to resist for some reason.  Now that I think about it, maybe we should've had our Arigs loaded with #5's! Oh well, maybe we'll give it a try in a few years when I venture back to Preist.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

FIRST KY LAKE TRIP OF 2012

Fished Kentucky Lake today with my good friend Zach Parker.  Beautiful day to fish with light winds, clear skies and a high of 55 degrees. The lake was 46-48 degrees and a foot above winter pool. The water was a little stained with about 1ft of visibility.  I havn't been on the lake since early December but have heard good reports about Alabama Rig fishing.  The A-rig wasn't as impressive as I was hoping but we did catch over 75 fish with 50+ keepers mostly on jerkbaits and football jigs.  We never caught any giants but our best 5 weighed 4.38, 4.71, 4.92, 5.0 and 5.02 for a total of 24.03lbs.  We had a blast and caught a lot of fish but 3 of our biggest fish and 43 of our total fish came off of one place, so if it hadn't been for that school, we wouldn't have had nearly as good of weight or numbers.  My new Mercury 250 Pro XS came in yesterday so I should be rigged and ready to head to Guntersville next week!
Zach 4.38 smallmouth

Thursday, January 19, 2012

FALCON BASS CHAMPS 1/14/2012


Well, our short practice came back to haunt us and our Faclon train derailed in the Bass Champs opener  last Saturday.  We made a bee line that morning to a place in Salinillas creek where I've caught several 40lb stringers in a matter of minutes in the past.  We hit this place twice in practice and never had a bite but I just couldn't make myself count it out.  When we arrived, there was a guide boat sitting on it and one of the clients had a fish on.  We ran further back to one of the two schools we actually found in our 3/4 day of practice and after an hour and a half, we had two fish for maybe 5lbs.  The guide boat finally left so we ran to my honey hole and wasted over an hour there without a bite.  The only other place we'd found in practice was 15 miles back up the river so at 11am we headed that way.  I caught a 4 and a 5lber pretty quickly but it wasn't every cast like we were expecting.  Not really knowing what to do struggling so badly on the best lake in the world, I talked my partner into sitting there for another two hours and during that time we only caught one more 5lber which FINALLY gave us our limit.  Finally Lani talked me into checking some of the stuff I found in 2010 that I'd been skeptical about fishing because it was fishless in November but at that point we had nothing to lose.  The first place we pulled up on was loaded with 4lbers and we managed to cull a few times before we ran out of time.  When we checked in it was taking 27lbs to get a check and we had about 23lbs at the most so we pitched em back.  It ended up taking 45lbs to win and over 30lbs to make the top 30!  We figured out that if we would've weighed in, we would've fallen somewhere in the 90's!  Now that's an awesome lake!  We got on the lake just after daylight Sunday to try and at least regain a little bit of our pride.  We ran straight to the school we left biting on Saturday and caught a couple of 4lbers pretty quickly and Lani popped a 7lb. 7ozer on a crankbait.  We fished more of the same type of stuff the rest of the day and caught several 4-7lb fish and I did lose something huge when I accidentally reeled my hoodie string up into my reel handle while fighting the beast!  Now that takes some skillz!  We finished up the day on the place we started and Lani caught several nice ones including an 8lb. 6oz. egg laden toad that ended up being our best fish of the trip.  Our best five on Sunday weighed between 34 and 35lbs which was a little easier to stomach than our measley 23lb showing on Saturday.  Unfortunately, there was no money on the line on Sunday but it was nice to know that we figured 'em out a little bit even if it was too little too late.  I'm back in TN now getting my boat rigged and ready for the BFL's on Gville in a few weeks. 

Lani 7lb 7oz
Lani 8lb 6oz



Friday, January 13, 2012

The A-RIG and my $0.02

Man, I'm tired of reading about this thing! I thought maybe if I wrote about it, it would get it off of my mind! I just read an article on PAA's site and guys are talking about to ban or not to ban, mortality rates, ethics and all kinds of craziness.

The first argument I'd like to discuss is the mortality rate. How is a jerkbait with one treble in a fish's eye, one in it's gill and one in it's stomach o.k. but one big hook inside one fishes mouth is a problem? So what if the said fish had five hooks to choose from?  I've caught hundreds of fish on this rig and have yet to deep hook or foul hook one of them so I'm struggling to see where the mortality rate argument stems from.

Guys are also saying that it's going to win every tournament this year! I've thrown it on KY Lake, Lake Fork, Falcon and Amistad. I set on a school of 6-10lbers at Falcon and caught 93 fish on a jig and crankbait and only had one bite on the Arig and it was the smallest fish of the bunch. The small fish ate it good at Fork but I caught bigger fish on a spoon. I never had a bite on it at Amistad but did catch them on a single shadalicious.  So in my opinion to think its going to win every event in the country is pretty far fetched.  For whatever reason, the bass on certain lakes just don't seem to get as bent out of shape over the rig as others. The TN river system fish seem to be the most susceptible to the rig and it only seems to have a magical effect on them in colder water. It's like anything else, once the fish are conditioned to it, it won't be nearly as effective. I've already seen on several occasions, once you catch a few out of the school, they start slapping at the baits and eventually totally ignore it.

The next argument is how the bait manufacturers are going to suffer because all anybody will buy is an Arig.  Guess what, an Arig is useless without the hardware to go with it.  And now, we can't just buy one of everything, we have to buy five of everything just to get the party started!  When I go Arig fishing on Kentucky Lake, I have a rig with five baits and hooks, a rig with three baits and hooks and a rig with four hookless baits and a bait with a hook!  That's more swimbaits and heads than I used to use in a year just for one day of fishing.  Not to mention the extra rods and reels I had to buy to handle the rigs. I've bought more braided line since the thing came out than I've bought in three years as well.  And let's not pretend like every single one of us isn't constantly thinking of ways to tweak the rig which means with every experiment, we have to have THREE to FIVE of everything plus spares just in case it works. How can the Arig craze have a negative impact on the tackle industry, I mean just think about it, Arig rods, Arig reels, Arig line, Arig everything.Apparently most companies make their own version of an Arig now which all retail from between $15 and $30 and cost about $2 to make or probably about ten cents in China, that's a pretty good profit. If I was in the tackle business I'd be foaming at the mouth right now with the Arig craze and introducing every Arig compatible component I could think of. The Arig craze opens up all kinds of avenues for the manufacturers to take advantage of.....and I bet they will.

Is it ethical?  Come on now. I don't even want to get into this but I will just say that in my opinion if bed fishing and/or live bait fishing is ethical, then catching a fish that I can't see, in the mouth, on a piece or multiple pieces of plastic would definitely have to fall into the ethical category.

 All of this being said, and this may come as a surprise, but I still hope they ban it in tournament competition. My reason for this is because I've seen how easy it is on lakes where the fish really like it and I think it will take a lot of "fish finding skills" out of the equation. It's definitely a bank beaters dream lure, but for fun fishing, practicing and guiding, I think it's the most awesome thing ever! 

Thursday, January 12, 2012

STILL IN HOUSTON

It's Thursday and I'm still in Houston at Lani's apartment with no transportation during the days while he's at work. I have gotten a lot done as far as talking with sponsors and writing some articles and getting this blog going....BUT I'M READY TO FISH!!!  We did get some good news yesterday and that's that the boat is fixed and ready for us to roll out towards Zapata Friday morning.  The pulse pump had gone out in it so there was no way we were going to be able to get back on the water last weekend which makes us feel a little bit better.  I'm pumped about the tournament but we sure needed those extra days of practice. Things have changed a LOT since I was at Falcon in November.  It's an awesome lake, but it can still be time consuming finding the right kind of fish you need to do well with.  It's weird to be catching 5's and 6's on every cast but have to leave them because their too small!  I could get used to it though.  Looks like the plan is to beat up on the two schools we found the first couple hours of the tournament and try and catch as much weight as possible out of them and then practice the rest of the day.  I know the lay of the land there pretty well but there's a lot of it and we may run out of time before we find what we're looking for.  If I have to fish a tournament blind I can't think of any other place I'd rather do it though! 

Falcon Bass Champs Practice Day 3

Well, we drove to Laredo to the nearest boat dealership in hopes of getting fixed up for Sunday.  We were a little disappointed to find they were closed for the weekend when we arrived.  Luckily we'd packed everything up before we left just in case something like that were to happen so we cut the trip short and headed back to Houston.  We dropped the boat off at BPS in Houston and are waiting to hear back from them to see if we're going to be able to fish next weekend!

Falcon Bass Champs Practice Day 2

Day 2 was rough. We got on the water at daylight and made a 25 mile run down the lake.  We hit a spot that had produced several fish over 8lbs for me back in November. Lani quickly caught a 5lber but that was it.  After two more hours of checking old and new stuff we'd only managed 4 more fish with none of them over 4lbs.  We decided to totally make a change and head back up the lake and as we were idling out of a creek, his engine shut off.  We checked everything we knew to check and managed to get it started again but as soon as I hit the throttle it died again.  Luckily a couple of super generous guys also practicing for Bass Champs saw us working on the engine and came to our rescue. If it wasn't for them we'd probably still be in Mexico. They towed us across the lake to the state park which took a solid two hours.  Once we got there we had to wait on someone to come in off of the lake to carry one of us back to Zapata to get the truck and trailer.  Luckily after about an hour, local guide Tommy Law came in off the lake and took Lani back to Zapata to get the truck while I took a nap on the front deck of the boat!  Not a good day but it could've been a lot worse!

Falcon Bass Champs Practice Day 1

I flew into Houston Tuesday January 3rd and met up with my buddy Lani Ordone. We headed to Falcon Wednesday night to practice for the upcoming Bass Champs team tournament on Falcon Lake.  We rolled into Zapata early Thursday morning and slept for a few hours. We finally got on the lake about 11am and headed straight to a place where I'd caught them good in Nov. We got a few bites on our initial stop but didn't hook up.  We worked futher back into the creek and hit a decent school of fish. We had a few 5's, a 6 and one over 7 and we moved on.  We fished our way down the lake but never had a bite until we reached Salinillas which is my favorite creek on the lake.  We hit a rock pile in there that was loaded up pretty good and caught several more 4 and 5lbers and an 8lb. 10ozer. That gave us about 32lbs on our best 5. Seems like a good sack but not down there. We'll need at least 45lbs to have a shot at winning Bass Champs.