CONROE, Texas — The kickoff to the seventh Bass Pro Tour season at B&W Trailer Hitches Stage 1 Presented by Power-Pole was an instant classic. Lake Conroe provided plenty of action – both with forward-facing sonar and without – and the tournament made Justin Cooper a deserving first-time winner in dramatic fashion.
While the jighead minnow dominated again, the new forward-facing sonar restrictions on the Bass Pro Tour allowed many traditional power approaches to find their way into this Top 10 baits and patterns recap as well. Here’s a look at how the top anglers succeeded on the Texas fishery.
Coming into the event, Cooper was all-in on forward-facing sonar to start the day, and he stuck with that strategy. He caught them fast and furious every morning, including an eye-popping 72 pounds, 4 ounces in the first period of Day 2. All his early fish came via a jighead and Bass Pro Shops XPS Rock’n Shad.
“It’s a new minnow-style bait that has wings and gives it a great rocking action, especially on a 3/16-ounce Owner Range Roller jighead,” Cooper said. “I fished both the 4- and 5-inch baits, but did most of my damage on the smaller one in several shad colors.”
Cooper said he caught all his fish on each of the final three mornings from the same 100-yard stretch, which he described as a hard spot between a creek and a point that would funnel bait into the area. After that, he went to shallow grass, which he says is his strength as an angler.
“Power fishing in the grass is my confidence, and when I go out fishing for fun, that’s what I do,” he said. “I picked up a Bass Pro Shops XPS ChatterBomb in plain white and a swimming worm with a 3/16-ounce Epic Tungsten (bullet weight) and a small lipless crankbait, and that’s what I did all my damage on.”
Making his Bass Pro Tour debut, Louisiana pro Colby Miller nearly pulled off the win, falling just one scoreable bass short of besting his good friend Cooper. Miller followed a similar approach as many in the Top 10, opting to use his forward-facing sonar first before hitting the bank for the rest of the day.
“It was mainly just ‘Scoping each morning with a jighead minnow, fishing various minnows with a 1/4-ounce head to keep it moving slow and just ahead of the fish,” Miller said. “Then, I’d throw a Berkley (PowerBait) MaxScent Magnum Hit Worm in green pumpkin on a Neko rig and a shad-colored lipless crankbait later in the grass for the rest of the day.”
Miller began the day near the second bridge on the upper end of the lake and then moved to the grass in Caney Creek when his forward-facing period was up.
“The best ‘Scoping areas had to be a drain with some timber around it, and it seemed like there’d be baitfish and a decent amount of bass around if you could find the bait,” he said. “For the grass, any little gut, depression, or indentation in the grass would group those fish up.”
While a jighead and minnow were a top weapon for Jacob Wall, he caught fish on various baits ranging from jerkbaits to a Carolina rig and even a swimbait skipped under docks. He also caught a bass on a wacky rig and one on a bed during the tournament – it was a total effort to earn his high finish.
“I started each morning throwing a jerkbait and a 3.75-inch Duckett Fishing Sway Minnow on a 1/8-ounce Dirty Jigs Guppy Head jighead,” he said. “Each day was a little different, and you had to figure out how to get them to bite.”
After the first period, Wall focused on hydrilla, including a key spot he found on the second day.
“It was a steep contour break right off the point with a little line of hydrilla on it,” he said. “There were also clumps of eelgrass and a little hard spot behind it. I put my Power-Poles down, tried to stay as stealthy as possible, and made long casts with a vibrating jig to catch several fish. I used a multitude of colors, but the best was bruised green pumpkin with a black and blue trailer; it seemed like the darker colors got more bites.”
Things improved for Alton Jones Jr. throughout the week as he improved his weight daily. He started with 30-4 on the opening day, slid into the Top 20 with 50-5 on Day 2, and again snuck into the Championship Round in eighth place with 62-13 in the Knockout Round. He experimented with his forward-facing sonar usage, opting to use it during different periods throughout the week.
“I was shaking a minnow like everyone else with a Deps Sakamata Shad and RAID Fish Roller, but outside my ‘Scope period, I caught most of my weight with my Power-Poles down in one spot that was a small drain with hydrilla and eelgrass mixed,” he said. “I started to get dialed into a few shallow spots, and they kept reloading. Later in the event, it was a lipless crankbait, but I was catching them on a vibrating jig for the first two days.”
His lipless was a 1/2-ounce gold-colored Revonik Volbeat, and he fished a 1/2-ounce green pumpkin white vibrating jig with a matching Geecrack Bellows Vibe Minnow (which will become available to the public on Wednesday) as the trailer.
Jacob Wheeler had a similar plan as most of the Top 10, but bucked the trend and ran away from the crowds the final two days. Instead of fishing community holes on the north end of the lake and in Caney Creek, he went south.
“I felt like those areas had so much pressure already, and it was pretty frustrating fishing around so many other anglers, so once I caught enough fish where I thought I would advance, I started looking for new areas,” he said. “I don’t regret my decision by any means; it was difficult to fish where everyone else was. I thought finding something different was my best chance to win.”
Using both a Rapala CrushCity Mooch Minnow and Freeloader on VMC jigheads of various models and sizes, Wheeler had several minnows ready at all times.
“I would change it based on how deep the fish were, how close they were to the boat, and how shallow it was,” he said. “I had rigged up a hodgepodge of different baits, colors, and jigheads.”
When not using forward-facing sonar, Wheeler covered ground quickly, targeting a variety of vegetation with a 1/2-ounce Z-Man Evergreen Jack Hammer ChatterBait with a Freeloader on the back. Both were the green pumpkin shad color.
Also making his BPT debut, Jake Lawrence showcased his excellent forward-facing skills with a jighead minnow while spending the rest of the day shallow with moving baits.
“It was a two-pronged approach, using my forward-facing time first every day,” he said. “Early in the day, with the low-light conditions, the fish were up high and close to the surface. I would lose them around 9 o’clock every morning, and they would leave or swim off somewhere.”
His minnow was a Yamamoto Scope Shad in both 3- and 4-inch sizes and various shad patterns. Afterward, Lawrence went shallow and fished in both Caney Creek and the Lake Paula area of Conroe.
“I would fish a vibrating jig and a 1/4-ounce Bill Lewis Rat-L-Trap on fish relating to secondary points with grass, whether it was eelgrass or hydrilla,” he said. “Both were good; they just had to have deep water adjacent to them.”
Drew Gill showed off his excellent forward-facing skills but caught them shallow without the technology, too, including an 8-2 on the last day. Both approaches worked, but the early morning frenzy was critical to boosting his weight each day.
“The fish were suspended in timber, chasing bait around in a creek channel,” he said. “Most of those fish were singles and high in the water column, so you had to fly around pretty fast and throw a 4-inch minnow on a 3/16-ounce jighead at them. That’s what worked the first few days, but it wasn’t happening the last day. I think it was just because of the pressure all week, and I had to abandon that and use a Neko rig on some shallow sandy areas where the fish were getting ready to move into spawn during my forward-facing sonar period to catch them.”
His Neko rig fish were caught with a Big Bite Baits Nekorama in matte green pumpkin with a 1/8-ounce nail weight. Gill also employed several moving baits during the week, including a shallow diving crankbait, vibrating jig, and lipless crankbait around shallow vegetation. The lipless crankbait was the 3/16-ounce Mini Bill Lewis Hammer Trap in purple nurple.
Zack Birge secured yet another Bass Pro Tour Top 10 by using forward-facing sonar early and staying around grass the rest of the day.
“I used a 4-inch minnow on a 3/8-ounce Omega Hook Up Head the first period and fished right in the middle of the creek channel,” he said. “There was a little bend, and that zone seemed to have the most baitfish around. You had to keep moving and chasing them because they were moving so much.”
Birge fished his minnow on an Alpha Angler Wrench rod and utilized 10-pound Yo-Zuri SuperBraid with a 10-pound Yo-Zuri T7 fluorocarbon leader. After the period, he headed for the hydrilla and picked up a Yo-Zuri Rattl’n Vibe lipless crankbait in crawfish and shad patterns. He fished his lipless on an Alpha Angler Mag Rebound rod with 16-pound Yo-Zuri T7 fluorocarbon.
“It seemed like most of the hydrilla was in the 3- to 5-feet range in Caney Creek,” he said. “Points in the grass were better, not just flat stretches.”
Nick LeBrun breezed through the Qualifying Rounds and skipped directly to the final day after catching the top weight – 60 bass for 135-2 over the first two days. He also employed a mixed approach of a jighead minnow early each day and reaction baits around aquatic vegetation afterward.
“During my forward-facing sonar period, I used several different colors of the Yamamoto Scope Shad on a little ball head and fished it on 12-pound Sunline SX1 braid and 8-pound Sniper fluorocarbon,” he said. “I used 3/16- to 3/8-ounce jigheads depending on the fish’s depth. There really wasn’t any rhyme or reason to where they were; just put your trolling motor on 100% until you saw one.”
Once he headed shallow, LeBrun looked for irregularities in the grass within Caney Creek. He plied them with a chartreuse and white vibrating jig with a matching Yamamoto Zako on the back.
“There’d be holes in the grass that were about the size of the hood of your truck, and they would bite it right when your bait came over the hole,” he said. “I stayed Power-Poled down, and sometimes you’d catch more than one in each hole in the grass. I fished the vibrating jig on a 7-feet, 4-inch TFO Taction medium-heavy rod and 16-pound Sunline Sniper fluorocarbon.”
After spending the first three days of the tournament using forward-facing sonar in the first period, Justin Lucas rolled the dice and saved it for the last period on the final day. It didn’t work out as planned, but he secured an excellent finish by spending his forward-facing sonar time on the lake’s northern end before running to the hydrilla in Caney Creek for the rest of the first three days.
“I used a jighead minnow, and then when I wasn’t using forward-facing sonar, I was targeting the edges of hydrilla,” he said. “It was all 2 to 5 feet of water in little drains. I caught them with either a Berkley Frittside 5 in candy apple red and Kentucky blue and a 4-inch Berkley PowerBait Hollow Belly Swimbait in the hitch color fishing around hydrilla.”