For the first time this entire season, a tough fishery slapped the Bassmaster Elite Series pros upside the head. The Arkansas River at Little Rock, Ark. isn’t a bad fishery – but the recent Bassmaster Legends Major hit the venue at the worst possible time. I believe in general, the Major’s have been tougher tournaments that the regular Elite Series events, not sure if that is by deisgn or coincidence….
The result was a host of zeros and one fish sacks. It took only 12 pounds to make the Top 12 cut on day 2, after which the field moved into the pre-designated six-hole course. Three locals made the final Top 6 cut on day 3 – Scott Rook, Kevin Short and Greg Hackney (a former local). No angler caught a limit on either day 3 or 4, and Rook locked up victory with just a little over 15 pounds.
It was his first-ever BASS win. Here’s how Scott Rook did it.
Practice
Rook grew up on this stretch of the Arkansas River and knows it like his truck cab. He did a little prep and planted some brush before the off-limits period, but entered practice with one goal: to establish a pattern, rather than rely on hotspots.
He couldn’t establish a reliable overall pattern, but did have one spot – a backwater area – that he wanted to check. He went there on Tuesday and got six or seven bites on a worm and stuck one, which measured. Then he pulled two or three more toward the boat that were under the 15-inch minimum.
“Then I had another bite that felt like a keeper, and I’d caught keepers there before, so I thought, ‘Well, I’ll just come in here on day 1 and catch two or three, then go fish some underwater dikes.'”
About the underwater dikes, he said: “They were basically submerged rocks from 2 to 5 feet deep. The fish get up on top of them this time of year.” So that’s what he carried into the tournament – his backwater area, his submerged dikes, and the scattered brushpiles he’d planted.
Days 1 & 2
> Day 1: 5, 12-13
> Day 2: 3, 6-08
> Total = 8, 19-05 (2nd)
On days 1 and 2, anglers were allowed to roam, but they couldn’t fish most of the Little Rock pool, which was reserved for the hole course. Rook started in his backwater, flipped up three keepers in the first 20 minutes and decided to stay longer. “I ended up with another keeper 3 hours later, then with 20 minutes left caught my last one,” he said.
He ended the day in 2nd, with a comfortable 5 1/2-pound buffer between him and the 12th-place cut spot. With that buffer, he knew he could be less aggressive on day 2, so he spent almost the entire day in the backwater once again.
“It was 11:00 before he got his first bite, then about a half-hour later he caught another keeper, and he just continued to mill around in there, then caught a 3-pounder with 30 minutes left. He only weighed three fish, but retained his 2nd-place position.
Days 3 & 4
> Day 3: 3, 7-14
> Day 4: 4, 7-06
> Total = 7, 15-04
Day 3 marked the beginning of competition inside the six-hole course, where anglers fish each of the six holes for 70 minutes. During the final hour, anglers can fish wherever they like. All weights were zeroed for day 3, so effectively, a new tournament began.
Rook started the morning of day 3 with 18 rods. “I did the old hometown deal,” he said. “I fished a lot of key areas where I’d caught fish in the past. At about 11:00, I hadn’t caught a fish and was staring a zero in the eyes.” At that point, he moved into a creek and “flipped around.” He finally caught a keeper, then several shorts, all shallow fish.
He left hole 3 and moved into hole 4, where he immediately flipped grass on the topside of a jetty. He caught a 3 3/4-pounder. “Then, two jetties up from there, I caught a 2 1/2-pounder. When I got to the next hole, there wasn’t that type of cover. It was at the upper end of the (Little Rock) pool, and I didn’t get that many bites at all.” He ended day 3 with a three-fish, 7-14 sack. Not bad, but not nearly as good as Shaw Grigsby’s 11-05. He trailed Grigsby by 3-07.
The morning of day 4, he noticed the water in the Little Rock pool had dropped 10 inches. He’d caught his fish shallow the day before, but knew that bite would be over. He caught an early keeper, then basically waited until he could get into his creek in hole 4. When he got there, he moved away from the bank and targeted submerged cover. He caught two keepers in the creek, then returned during happy hour for his fourth and final fish of the event.
“I caught three of my four keepers out of that creek,” he said. “With the water drawn down, I had the local knowledge of knowing I should go in there. I flipped bridge pilings, a concrete culvert with water and shade around it, and laydown logs. “It was a narrow creek – not more than about 60 yards wide,” he added. “I caught a keeper off a laydown, one off a culvert and one off a bridge piling.”
Winning Gear Notes
He flipped plastics all 3 days. He caught his day-1 fish on an 8-inch Snaketail worm (black/red with silver glitter), which he said he recently bought. The second day, he caught his fish on a junebug Berkley Tournament Strength Bungee Power Hawg.
On day 3, he ran out of the Bungee Hawgs and switched to a Zoom Tiny Brush Hog in two color variations – junebug and black/red-flake.
He flipped with a 7-foot medium-heavy St. Croix Legend Elite rod and Abu Garcia Revo STX-HS casting reel (7.1:1 gear ratio).
He fished the plastics on 20-pound Vanish fluorocarbon. His terminal tackle included a 1/4-ounce lead weight (unpegged) and 5/0 Daiichi straight-shank hook.
The Bottom Line
> Main factor in his success -“Local knowledge – I could adjust to the water drop (on day 4) because I knew where the fish would go when they pulled out of the grass.”
Here is how the other top finishers caught their fish.
2nd: Greg Hackney
Hackney spent days 1 and 2 cranking shallow wood, and caught all his fish on a Strike King Pro-Model Series 1 Crankbait.
Hack was fishing back in a creek and in the mouth of the creek – right next to the main river. It was critical to make contact with the crank, and got all his bites as it deflected off wood. Often it took repeated casts. His timing improved on day 2, when he caught his only limit of the tournament.
Once he switched to the six-hole course for the final 2 days, he flipped. “I caught most of my fish flipping vegetation. It was some shallow grass, and some vine-type grass that was floating. It had to have at least 3 feet of water under it, but it could have had up to 12 feet under the floating mats.”
> Crankbait gear: 7′ Quantum PT Gary Klein signature series cranking rod (fiberglass), Quantum Accurist PT casting reel, 12-pound Gamma fluorocarbon line, Strike King Series 1 Crankbait (chrome with a gray back).
> Flipping gear: 7’11” medium-heavy Quantum PT Greg Hackney signature series flipping stick, same reel, 20-pound Gamma LIne and 65-pound unnamed braid (in heavier cover), 1 1/2-ounce Tru-Tungsten weight (black), 4/0 Tru-Tungsten prototype hook, generic plastic crawfish (green-pumpkin and watermelon).
> The prototype Tru-Tungsten hook is one he’s designing. “I can’t say it’ll be out next year – we’re working on it – but it will be the deal for flipping heavy vegetation,” he said. “Tru-Tungsten is the first company that’s building tournament tackle, not fishing tackle. It’s tackle designed for tournament fishermen in all the extremes.”
> Main factor in his success – “I was slow and methodical and I fished every piece of cover like it had a fish on it.”
> Performance edge – “I’d say that it was my boat and motor. I was making a long boat ride (on days 1 and 2), and I had no trouble winning the boat race. I actually had extra fishing time because my boat was so fast. I’m running a Triton 21-X with a Mercury 250 Pro XS on back. When you lock, everybody locks together. The first day, we had 36 boats in the lock, and when I got to where I was going, I looked around and I couldn’t see another tournament competitor. I was pumped when I got there. It was like I already had an edge.”
3rd: Kevin Short
Kevin Short focused on schooling fish each day. It’s a dominant pattern on the river this time of year, and will hold up reasonably well, but it’s a timing issue. The schools only bite at certain times.
“The key to it is figuring out what time period during the day each school is going to be active,” he said. “Lots of times, at the same time up and down the river, all the fish will start biting. On day 1, he flipped to a school that was in matted grass. On day 2, he fished a school in pool 7 and caught one on a topwater and three on a crank.
Once inside the course, on day 3 he found a school and threw a crankbait. That took him up to 3rd place. He got to the school late on day 4, due to his hole rotation, and only caught one.
> Flipping gear: 7’6″ heavy-action St. Croix Legend Elite rod, Shimano Castaic SF casting reel, 65-pound Triple Fish Bully braid, 1-ounce Bass Pro Shops XPS tungsten weight (pegged), 4/0 Owner straight-shank wide-gap hook, Zoom Ultravibe Speed Craw(watermelon/candy and blackberry).
> Topwater gear: 6’8″ medium-action St. Croix Legend Elite rod, Shimano Chronarch casting reel, 15-pound Triple Fish CamoEscent line, 3 1/2″ homemade propbait (Tennessee shad, double-prop).
> Crankbait gear: 7′ St. Croix Premier rod (fiberglass), Shimano Chronarch casting reel, 15-pound Triple Fish Fluorocarbon, Norman Deep Baby N (pink/white) and Lucky Craft RC 1.5 (black/white) exclusive at Bass Pro Shops.
> Main factor in his success – “Finding those little schools of fish and knowing what to do when I found them. It was a timing thing and I had to keep checking them.”
> Performance edge – “Probably, with all those zebra mussels, it was my Triple Fish Fluorocarbon line. I was fishing around rocks quite a bit and the fluorocarbon is so tough and durable around zebra mussels. If I was fishing with regular mono, I’m sure I would have broke off several times.”
4th: Shaw Grigsby
Grigsby spent the entire tournament with a big stick in his hand. He was flipping vegetation like alligator weed and hyacinth – all floating vegetation, just flipping every nook and cranny he found. He caught a fair amount of fish in practice, but squeaked into the cut in 12th. He whacked a big day-3 sack in the hole course and led with 1 day of fishing left, but then zeroed on day 4.
“(On day 3), I pulled into hole 5 and whacked three keepers first thing,” he said. “Then I went back to the same stretch in the afternoon and caught four, but only one kept.
“(On day 4) I went back there and didn’t catch a single bass.”
> Flipping gear: 7’6″ Quantum PT Gary Klein signature series flipping stick, Quantum Tour Edition PT 1160 baitcasting reel, 65-pound unnamed braid, 1-ounce Penetrator tungsten weight, 4/0 Eagle Claw straight-shank hook, Strike King Wild Thang Jr. and Shaw Grigsby Pro Series The Beav (black/blue and watermelon-flake).
> Main factor in his success – “Just perseverance – staying out there and chunking and getting it done. Then finding that little stretch of bank that held those fish (on day 3).”
> Performance edge – “If you have to look at one thing, it was probably the (electric) Power-Pole on the back of my boat. When you’re going down a bank and get close to a mat and try to stop, your momentum carries you forward. And if you reverse your trolling motor, you blow the mat out. Instead, I just drop the Power-Pole and it stops me. Then I can lift it a little, move, and drop it again. It allows you to fish a lot more efficiently, and I think that was the key to my flipping this week.” The Power-Pole is an after market electric unit that mounts to the stern of a boat. It extends up to 6 feet below the surface to penetrate the bottom with a composite spike.
5th: Gary Klein
Gary Klein had two different patterns working, but his main focus was on a single area. He chose it, then worked it for everything it had. “It was an area I didn’t think could win an event, but one I thought I could make a Top 12 out of,” he said. “Instead of running around, I stayed and milked it.
“The first day, I was fortunate enough to catch four keepers. I caught two flipping and two on a shallow crank. The second day I caught one flipping a jig, then two on a shallow crank.” He noted his area was on the back end of a large flat.
Once inside the course, he switched to main-river fishing. He caught two keepers off rocks with a jig on day 1. He caught his biggest fish on day 2 flipping grass.
> Flipping gear: 8′ Quantum PT Gary Klein signature series flipping stick (has a parabolic bend), Quantum PT Accurist 500 casting reel, 65-pound Spiderline Spiderwire Stealth braid, 1-ounce Penetrator weight (pegged), 5/0 Gamakatsu hook, unnamed plastic creature bait (black/blue and green-pumpkin) and Spro prototype jig.
> Crankbait gear: 7′ Quantum PT Gary Klein signature series cranking rod (fiberglass), same reel, 17-pound Berkley Trilene XT (green), unnamed crankbait (square bill, shallow running, shad pattern).
> He caught one topwater fish on day 4 that bit a Lunker Lure Original Buzzbait.
> Main factor in his success – “Probably confidence. I had an area I felt had some fish in it, and went fishing instead of worrying about it and running around.”
> Performance edge – “That’s hard to say, since everything I have basically becomes me. My rod is an extension of my hand, then the reel and performance of my boat, stealth-like maneuvering with my trolling motor, my GPS and electronics – it’s all a package.”
Rich
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