The late summer isn’t quite as action packed as early summer and there are no 100 fish days fishing mega schools of post spawners. There are however really big fish willing to bite this time of year and there are several ways I like to target them.
I hadn’t been on the lake in a couple weeks but I already knew there were five patterns I had to investigate in practice. Three of these patterns I’ve won major tournaments on and the other two were back up plans to fill out limits if my big fish patterns failed to produce.
The first thing I wanted to look at was shallow, stumpy ledges and bars. I won my first BFL in 2009 fishing this pattern and before I left for Michigan, this bite was as good as I’d ever seen it!
My next plan of attack was the grass. I’ve won a WBS flipping hydrilla in August and another swimming a jig around Naiad in September so I knew I had to spend some time playing in the grass.
My third and favorite winning pattern is of course throwing top water. Preferably a bone colored Strike King Sexy Dawg if the wind will allow. It’s still a little early for this pattern to be wide open but I had the best three weeks of fishing in my life last September with a Sexy Dawg in my hand so I had to give it a look.
My final two patterns I wanted to check were flipping shallow wood and scanning for deep schools. I’ve never actually won in the late summer solely doing either of these two things but I have caught key fish in multi day events mixing these patterns in with my primary stuff.
I spent two full days practicing and the main thing I learned was that the fish were very scattered. I got a few bites fishing a lot of different ways but past experience told me I needed to concentrate on the top water bite and the shallow stump pattern even though neither of them was on in full force. I only had one bite a day on my Sexy Dawg but one of them was an 8lb class brute that made me wish I hadn’t cut my hooks off to practice!
So, heading into day 1 I knew it was going to be a grind it out deal but I also knew there were some big bites to be had fishing stumps and top water. I decided I would fish those two patterns until about 1:00 every day and then run to a deep school if I needed a keeper or two to fill out a limit.
TOURNAMENT DAY 1: I’m not going to get into much detail about the fishing during the tournament but talk more so about my approach and decisions. I only caught 13 keepers in two days so the fishing was pretty boring. The first day I started my milk run of top water and stump bars and at 9:20am I had yet to get a bite. I rolled up on a place at that time that I honestly would’ve never fished had my good friend Jeff Archie not told me he’d had some bites there earlier in the week. I caught two 3.75lbers and a 2.75 in about five casts with a football jig and was feeling good about my decision to give it a look. It slowed down after that and I fell back on my old “one pass without a bite, I leave” rule. I reached the end of the stretch and caught a 4lber and a 3lber on consecutive casts so that meant I had to make another pass down the bar. My next pass produced what I’d been looking for, a 5.5lb largemouth. I finally made a pass without a bite and decided to move on. I wasn’t sure how much weight I had, I thought around 18lbs which I was sure would be plenty to make the top 11 cut. It was 11:30 and I was right where I wanted to be. I had a good limit and was right in the middle of my best late summer big fish area of the lake. The catch was that I wasn’t fishing for points, only to try and win. My co angler on the other hand, had fished the entire division and was on the bubble for making the regional. We had to get him a fish in the boat and I knew if I gambled on my “big fish” strategy all day, neither one of us may get another bite. Since I was way ahead of schedule, as I thought it’d take all day to catch a limit, I decided to give my partner 30 minutes on a school of small keepers close by. I ran to the school and suggested he throw a drop shot and I chunked a spinner bait around trying to luck into a better grade fish. He caught 5 fish in a row but they were all short. I felt really bad because I’d told him it would be easy to catch a limit off of this place because I’d done it 100 times in recent weeks. Once he made a few cast without a bite I picked up my drop shot in hopes of relocating the school. I caught a 17” fish on my first cast! I felt even worse then since the fish wouldn’t help me but would’ve been huge for him. At 12:30 I told him I hated to do it but I had to go back to chasing big ones. I ran through several places without bites and on my way in pulled back up to where I’d caught my original limit and culled with a 4.25lber. Just before we had to leave to head to check in, Stevie boated a 3.5lber which was all he needed to secure a spot in the regional! I ended up with more weight than I thought and finished the day leading by a slim margin with 21lbs 4oz.
TOURNAMENT DAY 2: A cold front had moved through over night and we were greeted with a stout 15 mph NE wind Sunday morning. My first stop produced a line burner keeper for my co angler but that was it. I decided to look at a deep school close by before I headed to my primary area. I saw a few on the Lowrance and pretty quickly hooked up with a 4lb class fish but it jumped and threw my spinner bait. I headed to where I caught my fish on day 1 and after a couple hours I’d only had two bites, a 3.5 and a 4lber. It was about 10:30 and I had a big decision to make. Should I keep chasing “winning size” fish or try to secure as high a finish as possible by getting a limit first? I could tell by the way the fish were acting they were definitely feeling the effects from the front. That got me to thinking that maybe the rest of the field would struggle as well. I decided a limit may be the route I needed to go so I made a run to where I’d taken my day 1 partner that didn’t pan out. I scanned the area and saw several fish on the Lowrance and within 15 minutes I’d put a 3lber and a 2.5lber in the livewell and it looked like I’d made a great decision, would have a limit and be back to swinging for the fences in no time. Unfortunately the little guys decided to swim over and join the party and for the next hour we caught 12” fish after 12” fish. That frustrated me a little as I was really anxious to get back out and start hunting the bigguns’! I finally couldn’t stand anymore and headed back to the shallow ledges. At 1pm I hadn’t had a bite and my brain was churning with ideas of what I needed to do. It finally hit me, I’d found a school about 25 miles north of Paris on Tuesday that was loaded with keepers that I’d totally forgotten about. I strapped my rods down and said, “I know where we need to be!” I fired up and ran 25 miles and within 5 minutes had a 3lber in the livewell which finished my limit. I had some really good shallow ledges in the area as well so I worked my way back to Paris hitting as many places as I could but never had another bite the rest of the day.
As we drove to Wal-mart to weigh-in, I was explaining to my partner how tournaments are won and lost by decisions. I told him that since my bag was substantially lighter than it would’ve been had I caught 5 fishing my shallow bars, I’d probably lost the tournament. At the same time, if everyone else had struggled, it may have been the smartest thing I could’ve done and we wouldn’t know for sure until the scales were closed. I was the last to weigh-in and as I approached the stage, my assumption had been right. The field had struggled and only 4 limits had been caught by my competitors. I needed 13lbs 4oz to win it and in my mind I thought I had between 13.5 and 14lbs. When the scales finally settled they read 15lbs 11oz and I’d earned my 4th BFL win of my career and my 2nd of the year!
SUMMARY: This was one of the coolest, most interesting tournaments I’ve ever fished. September is a really tough month on KY Lake and this one hit at the toughest part of September as there were fish scattered all over the place. To elaborate a little bit on the diversity of the fishing, I’ll discuss who made the cut and how they did it.
2nd Place- James Byrd- J Byrd and I have a little history. When I was leading the LBL BFL last September J Byrd followed me the second day to try and learn more about fishing KY this time of year because he had a BFL regional coming up. Other than borrowing some ice and Rejuvenade from him that day, we’d never actually met until this past Sunday. I knew he was on the roster for this one and as cut throat as competitive fishing has become I had some concerns that he may be fishing some of the stuff he’d seen me on last year. I’m happy to say that J proved to me what kind of person he is. I never saw him all week in practice or in the tournament. He’d taken what he’d learned, found his own pattern and his own places and almost spanked my tail. I let him know after weigh-in how much respect I had for him and he’d shown me the same respect by not fishing anything I’d shown him. Awesome job and congrats to J Byrd!
3rd Place- Drew Boggs- Drew is an Old Hickory guy and a buddy of mine. He’s also, in my opinion, one of the top three flippers in the state of TN. The other two are Adam Wagner and Andy Morgan so that shows you the respect I have for Drew as that’s pretty good company! Drew catches ‘em every time he comes to KY Lake and he always does it with a flippin’ stick. I think it’s awesome when a guy masters a technique to the point he can make it work on a lake or at a time of year that it shouldn’t even be possible. He flipped shallow isolated wood for his 3rd place finish which also earned him the point’s title in the Music City division. Congrats Drew, you are the man but I am gonna beat you in May before I retire!!!
4th Place- Ed Gettys- Ed’s one of my best buddies and one of my heroes. He’s a master deep cranker turned grass fishing guru. He learned how to ledge fish when he was 13 years old with a rope and a rock bouncing it on the bottom until he found a drop! Now that’s impressive! He caught his fish swimming a worm around hydrilla both days and rode that to his fourth place finish and added another top 10 to his very impressive resume.
5th Place- John Hopkins- Hoppy is another Percy Priest/Old Hickory fisherman but catches ‘em everywhere he goes. He’s one of the best grass fishermen I’ve ever known but chose to fish deep ledges in this one which really surprised me. What surprised me even more is that I never dreamed that pattern was strong enough to produce a top 5 finish. Very impressive job and congrats to my buddy John.
6th Place- Scott Brummet- Another good friend for whom I have a lot of respect and can flat catch ‘em. He chose to go more the route I went and mixed in a grass pattern, shallow stump pattern and deep ledge pattern.
8th- Phillip Bates- Phillip is another guy I know very well and think the world of. He’s also one that definitely knows how to win in Sept. I didn’t ask him much about how he was fishing but I’d be willing to bet it involved a top water bait, some hydrilla and a loooooong run south.
9th Place- Shawn Perrigo- Shawn is a Pickwick ledge fishing ace and friend of mine who I roomed with several years ago on the Rayovac trail. He managed to find one of very few schools left out deep in a very limited practice session and milked them for his 9th place finish.
I mean no disrespect to the guys I left out I just don’t know how they caught their fish. I got to meet the guys that made the cut that I didn’t know and they are all stand up guys. I was very impressed with the weights everyone caught (on day 1 especially) on an even stingier than normal, September KY Lake. I’d also like to thank all of them for the respect they showed me as it is sometimes frowned upon for a local to jump in another division’s tournament.
My point to this little break down is to show how spread out the fish were and how good these guys have to be to figure them out so many different ways. I’ve fished here so long I feel like I should know every way to catch them this time of year but there were obviously a lot of ways to get quality bites that I overlooked. I learn something every day whether it be from my own outings, a guide client or from my friends and competitors and that’s what keeps me coming back. Thank you God for giving me the opportunity to add another fish trophy to my parent’s trophy case, they are hard to come by!
The first thing I wanted to look at was shallow, stumpy ledges and bars. I won my first BFL in 2009 fishing this pattern and before I left for Michigan, this bite was as good as I’d ever seen it!
My next plan of attack was the grass. I’ve won a WBS flipping hydrilla in August and another swimming a jig around Naiad in September so I knew I had to spend some time playing in the grass.
My third and favorite winning pattern is of course throwing top water. Preferably a bone colored Strike King Sexy Dawg if the wind will allow. It’s still a little early for this pattern to be wide open but I had the best three weeks of fishing in my life last September with a Sexy Dawg in my hand so I had to give it a look.
My final two patterns I wanted to check were flipping shallow wood and scanning for deep schools. I’ve never actually won in the late summer solely doing either of these two things but I have caught key fish in multi day events mixing these patterns in with my primary stuff.
I spent two full days practicing and the main thing I learned was that the fish were very scattered. I got a few bites fishing a lot of different ways but past experience told me I needed to concentrate on the top water bite and the shallow stump pattern even though neither of them was on in full force. I only had one bite a day on my Sexy Dawg but one of them was an 8lb class brute that made me wish I hadn’t cut my hooks off to practice!
So, heading into day 1 I knew it was going to be a grind it out deal but I also knew there were some big bites to be had fishing stumps and top water. I decided I would fish those two patterns until about 1:00 every day and then run to a deep school if I needed a keeper or two to fill out a limit.
TOURNAMENT DAY 1: I’m not going to get into much detail about the fishing during the tournament but talk more so about my approach and decisions. I only caught 13 keepers in two days so the fishing was pretty boring. The first day I started my milk run of top water and stump bars and at 9:20am I had yet to get a bite. I rolled up on a place at that time that I honestly would’ve never fished had my good friend Jeff Archie not told me he’d had some bites there earlier in the week. I caught two 3.75lbers and a 2.75 in about five casts with a football jig and was feeling good about my decision to give it a look. It slowed down after that and I fell back on my old “one pass without a bite, I leave” rule. I reached the end of the stretch and caught a 4lber and a 3lber on consecutive casts so that meant I had to make another pass down the bar. My next pass produced what I’d been looking for, a 5.5lb largemouth. I finally made a pass without a bite and decided to move on. I wasn’t sure how much weight I had, I thought around 18lbs which I was sure would be plenty to make the top 11 cut. It was 11:30 and I was right where I wanted to be. I had a good limit and was right in the middle of my best late summer big fish area of the lake. The catch was that I wasn’t fishing for points, only to try and win. My co angler on the other hand, had fished the entire division and was on the bubble for making the regional. We had to get him a fish in the boat and I knew if I gambled on my “big fish” strategy all day, neither one of us may get another bite. Since I was way ahead of schedule, as I thought it’d take all day to catch a limit, I decided to give my partner 30 minutes on a school of small keepers close by. I ran to the school and suggested he throw a drop shot and I chunked a spinner bait around trying to luck into a better grade fish. He caught 5 fish in a row but they were all short. I felt really bad because I’d told him it would be easy to catch a limit off of this place because I’d done it 100 times in recent weeks. Once he made a few cast without a bite I picked up my drop shot in hopes of relocating the school. I caught a 17” fish on my first cast! I felt even worse then since the fish wouldn’t help me but would’ve been huge for him. At 12:30 I told him I hated to do it but I had to go back to chasing big ones. I ran through several places without bites and on my way in pulled back up to where I’d caught my original limit and culled with a 4.25lber. Just before we had to leave to head to check in, Stevie boated a 3.5lber which was all he needed to secure a spot in the regional! I ended up with more weight than I thought and finished the day leading by a slim margin with 21lbs 4oz.
TOURNAMENT DAY 2: A cold front had moved through over night and we were greeted with a stout 15 mph NE wind Sunday morning. My first stop produced a line burner keeper for my co angler but that was it. I decided to look at a deep school close by before I headed to my primary area. I saw a few on the Lowrance and pretty quickly hooked up with a 4lb class fish but it jumped and threw my spinner bait. I headed to where I caught my fish on day 1 and after a couple hours I’d only had two bites, a 3.5 and a 4lber. It was about 10:30 and I had a big decision to make. Should I keep chasing “winning size” fish or try to secure as high a finish as possible by getting a limit first? I could tell by the way the fish were acting they were definitely feeling the effects from the front. That got me to thinking that maybe the rest of the field would struggle as well. I decided a limit may be the route I needed to go so I made a run to where I’d taken my day 1 partner that didn’t pan out. I scanned the area and saw several fish on the Lowrance and within 15 minutes I’d put a 3lber and a 2.5lber in the livewell and it looked like I’d made a great decision, would have a limit and be back to swinging for the fences in no time. Unfortunately the little guys decided to swim over and join the party and for the next hour we caught 12” fish after 12” fish. That frustrated me a little as I was really anxious to get back out and start hunting the bigguns’! I finally couldn’t stand anymore and headed back to the shallow ledges. At 1pm I hadn’t had a bite and my brain was churning with ideas of what I needed to do. It finally hit me, I’d found a school about 25 miles north of Paris on Tuesday that was loaded with keepers that I’d totally forgotten about. I strapped my rods down and said, “I know where we need to be!” I fired up and ran 25 miles and within 5 minutes had a 3lber in the livewell which finished my limit. I had some really good shallow ledges in the area as well so I worked my way back to Paris hitting as many places as I could but never had another bite the rest of the day.
As we drove to Wal-mart to weigh-in, I was explaining to my partner how tournaments are won and lost by decisions. I told him that since my bag was substantially lighter than it would’ve been had I caught 5 fishing my shallow bars, I’d probably lost the tournament. At the same time, if everyone else had struggled, it may have been the smartest thing I could’ve done and we wouldn’t know for sure until the scales were closed. I was the last to weigh-in and as I approached the stage, my assumption had been right. The field had struggled and only 4 limits had been caught by my competitors. I needed 13lbs 4oz to win it and in my mind I thought I had between 13.5 and 14lbs. When the scales finally settled they read 15lbs 11oz and I’d earned my 4th BFL win of my career and my 2nd of the year!
SUMMARY: This was one of the coolest, most interesting tournaments I’ve ever fished. September is a really tough month on KY Lake and this one hit at the toughest part of September as there were fish scattered all over the place. To elaborate a little bit on the diversity of the fishing, I’ll discuss who made the cut and how they did it.
2nd Place- James Byrd- J Byrd and I have a little history. When I was leading the LBL BFL last September J Byrd followed me the second day to try and learn more about fishing KY this time of year because he had a BFL regional coming up. Other than borrowing some ice and Rejuvenade from him that day, we’d never actually met until this past Sunday. I knew he was on the roster for this one and as cut throat as competitive fishing has become I had some concerns that he may be fishing some of the stuff he’d seen me on last year. I’m happy to say that J proved to me what kind of person he is. I never saw him all week in practice or in the tournament. He’d taken what he’d learned, found his own pattern and his own places and almost spanked my tail. I let him know after weigh-in how much respect I had for him and he’d shown me the same respect by not fishing anything I’d shown him. Awesome job and congrats to J Byrd!
3rd Place- Drew Boggs- Drew is an Old Hickory guy and a buddy of mine. He’s also, in my opinion, one of the top three flippers in the state of TN. The other two are Adam Wagner and Andy Morgan so that shows you the respect I have for Drew as that’s pretty good company! Drew catches ‘em every time he comes to KY Lake and he always does it with a flippin’ stick. I think it’s awesome when a guy masters a technique to the point he can make it work on a lake or at a time of year that it shouldn’t even be possible. He flipped shallow isolated wood for his 3rd place finish which also earned him the point’s title in the Music City division. Congrats Drew, you are the man but I am gonna beat you in May before I retire!!!
4th Place- Ed Gettys- Ed’s one of my best buddies and one of my heroes. He’s a master deep cranker turned grass fishing guru. He learned how to ledge fish when he was 13 years old with a rope and a rock bouncing it on the bottom until he found a drop! Now that’s impressive! He caught his fish swimming a worm around hydrilla both days and rode that to his fourth place finish and added another top 10 to his very impressive resume.
5th Place- John Hopkins- Hoppy is another Percy Priest/Old Hickory fisherman but catches ‘em everywhere he goes. He’s one of the best grass fishermen I’ve ever known but chose to fish deep ledges in this one which really surprised me. What surprised me even more is that I never dreamed that pattern was strong enough to produce a top 5 finish. Very impressive job and congrats to my buddy John.
6th Place- Scott Brummet- Another good friend for whom I have a lot of respect and can flat catch ‘em. He chose to go more the route I went and mixed in a grass pattern, shallow stump pattern and deep ledge pattern.
8th- Phillip Bates- Phillip is another guy I know very well and think the world of. He’s also one that definitely knows how to win in Sept. I didn’t ask him much about how he was fishing but I’d be willing to bet it involved a top water bait, some hydrilla and a loooooong run south.
9th Place- Shawn Perrigo- Shawn is a Pickwick ledge fishing ace and friend of mine who I roomed with several years ago on the Rayovac trail. He managed to find one of very few schools left out deep in a very limited practice session and milked them for his 9th place finish.
I mean no disrespect to the guys I left out I just don’t know how they caught their fish. I got to meet the guys that made the cut that I didn’t know and they are all stand up guys. I was very impressed with the weights everyone caught (on day 1 especially) on an even stingier than normal, September KY Lake. I’d also like to thank all of them for the respect they showed me as it is sometimes frowned upon for a local to jump in another division’s tournament.
My point to this little break down is to show how spread out the fish were and how good these guys have to be to figure them out so many different ways. I’ve fished here so long I feel like I should know every way to catch them this time of year but there were obviously a lot of ways to get quality bites that I overlooked. I learn something every day whether it be from my own outings, a guide client or from my friends and competitors and that’s what keeps me coming back. Thank you God for giving me the opportunity to add another fish trophy to my parent’s trophy case, they are hard to come by!
