Since winning REDCREST, I’ve had some people ask me about my critical decision to move out deeper and snap a jerkbait over brushpiles on the final day. With such a strong warming trend and a growing moon, some wondered what made me leave the shallows and move out deeper on the last day.
In order to answer this, we have to go way back – like 10 years back. I grew up fishing the Coosa River Chain: Jordan, Mitchell, Lay and Logan Martin. A lot of what I’ve learned in bass fishing was earned from fishing those lakes for days on end.
From that experience, there are several fishing techniques I’ve grown to love. Two of those are swimming a jig shallow and snapping a jerkbait. As a professional angler, I’ve gained some notoriety for swimming a jig up shallow; it’s a technique I’ve won a lot of money with. As for a jerkbait, I haven’t had as many opportunities to use it in national tournaments. REDCREST at Lake Eufaula was where my jerkbait knowledge finally paid off.
I’ve always loved a jerkbait, but a jerkbait is a very fickle bait. There are floating ones, suspending ones and even sinking ones. Some are shallow lipped, some are deep lipped. Fishing the same exact jerkbait on 12-pound line versus 15-pound makes it do two different things. And don’t even get me started on the hundreds of colors jerkbaits come in.
I’ve always said the jerkbait is the bait of a 1,000 personalities. It’s one thing to cast a jerkbait out and twitch it, it’s another to really understand the nuances of jerkbaits and how to apply them.
When it comes to jerkbaits, I’m lucky to have had a great teacher. About five years ago, I spent some time fishing with Chris Rutland from Alabama. Chris is an extremely talented angler and the best jerkbait fisherman I know.
When Chris and I fished together, we learned a lot from each other. I’d always used a jerkbait, but Chris taught me about the subtleties of it. I took this knowledge and expanded on it, especially when it comes to using it to catch fish suspended over brushpiles. I invested a lot of time in jerkbait fishing because I felt it’s an overlooked tool in the realm of tournament fishing.
One of the windows where a jerkbait works best is when the water temp is 53 to 58 degrees and fish are in that springtime transition before the spawn. This is especially true if you have a very fast warm up. Before they commit to beds, bass spend a lot of time in the 6- to 12-foot zone suspending on stuff, getting acclimated to a shallower column of water. During this time, they’re not really eating, but not yet in the defensive spawning mode either; they are in more of a reactionary state. This is when a jerkbait can ring their bell.
With one day of practice at Eufaula, I spent some time swim-jigging in the mid-lake, and I spent some time scanning piles down the lake. I got a few bites on the swim jig, which was promising because the forecast called for a solid warming trend. At that time, I saw very few fish in piles. Plus, the water was muddier than I like for a jerkbait.
Given the forecast, I started the event with a swim jig up shallow. I caught 15 pounds on day one, which put me in 12th place. At that point, I figured more fish were coming shallow with the rising temperatures.
The second day was when the red flags started flying on that shallow bite for me. I fished up shallow all day and it wasn’t happening. By afternoon, I actually felt like it was going away. Heck, I only caught 7 pounds and barely made the cut in 19th place!
After the Qualifying Round, I figured the fish simply weren’t coming to the hill as fast as I thought. It was warming up fast, but the water level was still bouncing around a little too much for them to replenish on the bank. There were a few fish up the first day, but there were no more behind them.
Going into the Knockout Round, I knew the shallow banks weren’t replenishing fast enough and I needed to find something else to do. But because that night before the Knockout Round was so warm, I was torn. I decided to give the shallow banks one more chance.
I fished the entire first period of the Knockout Round up shallow and caught one 2-pounder. When I heard a SCORETRACKER® update that Andy Morgan and Andy Montgomery weren’t catching them either, I was done shallow. I assumed those two were fishing shallow, too, and it only confirmed my theory that despite the warming temps, these fish weren’t moving up at all.
If you could freeze frame my winning move of REDCREST, it’s right here in this moment: after the first period of the Knockout Round. The critical part here was being totally done trying to force that shallow bite. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do, but I had to get that swim jig out of my head – and I did.
At the beginning of the second period of the Knockout Round, I ran all the way to the lower end of the lake. When I rounded the corner down near Sandy Branch and saw how much the water had cleared up since practice, my heart skipped a beat. The first thing I did was scan a brushpile from practice and it had three or four bass in it. I picked up a jerkbait and caught a non-scoreable bass. At that point, I knew exactly what I was going to do the rest of the event.
As I scanned more brush, I saw far more fish in brush than I did the day of practice. With the clearing water and warming temperatures, the fish had made that move from their wintertime areas to that first-contour line brush to stage up. It’s the same thing they do back home. When I saw this happening, I was overwhelmed with confidence. I started side-scanning piles on the fly, marking them and coming back to fish them with ActiveTarget and a deep-diving jerkbait; it was just like being on Mitchell or Jordan.
Over the course of the next four hours, I caught 15 pounds out of brushpiles. Once I got to 17 pounds and was 10 pounds ahead of the cut for Championship Day, I spent the last 45 minutes of my day doing nothing but scanning brush and marking it for the final day.
As I described in my last blog, on that final day I had a peaceful calm come over me like I’ve never felt before. I was in my own world, snapping a jerkbait over brush like I had done for so many years on Jordan and Mitchell. But this time I had ActiveTarget forward-facing sonar on my side, helping me be so much more efficient with my presentations.
My REDCREST win was the coming together of a lot things in a single week. Experience combined with new technology, combined with good decision making, combined with trusting the process of letting it all unfold and making adjustments. The best part is this win came at the beginning of the year, and now I’m ready to keep that momentum going into the rest of the season!