On a lake thought to be dominated by bronzebacks it was the green fish that garnered the most green backs ($$) in the end.
Tommy Biffle started to practice on smallmouths, but switched the second day when he got shallow bites. Nearly everyone who handicapped the recent Oneida Bassmaster Elite Series predicted the event would be won with 60 pounds of smallmouths. This super-clear New York smallmouth factory did kick out thousands and thousands of smallmouths. And Kevin VanDam weighed 60 pounds of them.
But flipping legend Tommy Biffle took everyone to school. He knew he could catch smallmouths, but instead, he worked the bank and weighed largemouths all 4 days. While others fought the battle of ounces, he won the tournament by nearly 3 pounds – a virtual blowout. It was his first BASS win since 1995, and it moved him past the $1 million mark in career BASS earnings. Here’s how he did it.
Practice
The official practice started on Monday, which left anglers 2 1/2 days to pattern a bite. Like nearly everyone else, Biffle started on smallmouths. “At the start of practice, I took (someone) from the Ranger service crew around, just so he could catch smallmouths,” he said. “I did that for a couple of hours, but never caught any good smallmouths. We just kind of messed around, really.”
Day 2 was when he switched his focus. “I started looking for largemouths, had a few good bites, and knew that was the way I wanted to go. So I started hunting places to catch them.” He mixed up depths and found an inconsistent flipping bite in the grass. Then he started moving shallower. “I caught some real shallow – out from under trees, overhanging bushes and limbs. That’s what got me on it.”
He explored the super-shallow flipping bite with a Sweet Beaver, and learned about another key cover element – undercut banks. “They were really shallow there too – more or less a foot underneath undercut banks. They were in the shade of the undercut – that was the key.”
Day 1: 5, 16-12
Biffle began the tournament on his best undercut bank. In fact, he started there all 4 days.
He started down a bank of wood that was both wood and undercut, and caught three on a Reaction Innovations Sweet Beaver 4.20. Then he ran to a tree that’s had two good ones and caught both of them. The first five fish gave him a good day 1 stringer, so he went looking after that. He caught his biggest fish that day – a 4-14 – on a Stanley Ribbit Frog, he was throwing it between cover.
> He ended day 1 in 2nd (1-10 behind leader Lee Bailey).
Day 2: 5, 14-07 (10, 31-03)
Day 2 kicked off with clouds and fog – usually bad news for a flipping bite. So he started throwing the frog right away and caught three good ones. He never fished the frog within cover – only between cover or just outside of it. However, day 2 was the last day he caught a frog-fish.
“I threw it pretty religiously between cover spots, but never got a bite on it the rest of the tournament.”
And it was overall his toughest day – he only caught six or seven keepers. He ended day 2 in 4th (1-03 behind leader Yusuke Miyazaki).
Day 3: 5, 16-07 (15, 47-10)
Biffle headed right for his undercut bank on the morning of day 3 and flipped up three keepers on his Sweet Beaver.
About his day-3 water, he said: “I was just fishing – flipping whatever I found. I fished both places I knew, and (new) places I found.” One concern did arise though. He was fishing inches of water, and the water was dropping. “I was really worried,” he said. “They all said (the largemouths) couldn’t last – that they’d run out. And I was waiting for them to run out.”
> He ended day 3 in 1st (7 ounces ahead of Ken Cook).
Day 4 : 5, 16-00 (20, 63-10)
Day 4 started cloudy and overcast, and Biffle struggled. The clouds were one factor – he needed the sun to force his flip-fish tighter to cover. At 9:00, he finally caught his first bass. He struggled the rest of the day with a fish here and there.
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Biffle used a Tru-Tungsten weight, pegged with the new Tru-Tungsten Peter “T” Smart Peg.
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He’d blown leads in the past, and as the clock wound down, he decided he needed to do something. “I had a good stringer, but in the last 25 minutes, I said, ‘I have to do something. I have to have a 4-pounder.” It’d been a while since he got bit, so he decided to run and try three spots he hadn’t touched since practice.
“I ran to the first, caught one and culled. I ran over to the second and the same thing – I caught one and culled. Then I ran over to the third, and my Sweet Beaver got hung up. I moved to go up and get it, and as I turned my trolling motor to go around under a tree, a 3-pounder swam out.
“It had a big, black spot on his head. I ran over in the direction he went, flipped in a tree and caught him. “Then I knew I was going to win.”
Winning Gear Notes
> Flipping gear: 7 1/2′ extra-heavy Quantum Tommy Biffle signature series flipping stick, Quantum PT Burner casting reel (7:1), 25-pound Stren High-Impact mono, 1/4-ounce Tru-Tungsten weight (green-pumpkin, pegged with a new Tru-Tungsten Peter “T” Smart Peg), 4/0 Reaction Innovations hook (new, made specifically for the Beaver), Reaction Innovations Sweet Beaver 4.20 (green-pumpkin/watermelon).
> About the new pegging method, he said: “It’s a little deal they’ve come out with. It’s like a little rubber bobber stopper. You put your line through, and it goes down inside the sinker and pegs it. It’s awesome.”
> Frog gear: 7 1/2′ heavy-action Quantum flipping stick (not as heavy as his signature series), same reel, 50-pound Stren Super Braid, belly-weighted frog-style hook (name/size unknown), 3 1/2″ Stanley Ribbit Frog (green-pumpkin/red-flake/pearl belly).
Notable
> Main factor in his success – “It’s hard to flip in crystal-clear water, but I was flipping in 6 inches to a foot. You could see every pebble on the bottom. I stuck with it, knowing sooner or later I’d run across one somewhere.”
> He overlapped Matt Reed in his main area for all 4 days. Reed finished 11th.
2nd: Charlie Youngers found his smallmouth pattern on the first day of practice, and it held up for his first-ever Top 12 at this level. He also shared his area with Peter Thliveros (who finished 16th).
He found the hotspot by chance. Before the event began, he’d studied maps and determined where he wanted to start practice. On his way across the lake, he noticed an isolated spot where the depth went from 22 feet to 12 feet.
“I caught a 4-pounder on my third cast, and when I pulled it up, there was 20 fish following it. I said, ‘I need to leave here. This is a Top 12 place.'” He also caught some practice fish on a old suspending balsa Rogue jerkbait.
A high-pressure front came through, and he threw a small tube during competition. He and Thliveros then both circled the hump throughout the tournament.
> Tube gear: 6’0″ medium-action Fenwick Techna AV rod, Abu Garcia Torno casting reel, 10-pound Berkley Vanish fluorocarbon, 3/16-ounce homemade insider jighead (2/0 hook), assorted 3 1/2″ Bass Pro Shops and Berkley Power Tubes (watermelon/green).
> He noted that when he went to a bigger tube, he got less bites, so he stuck with the smaller versions.
> Main factor in his success – “Just sticking with it and grinding it out. Every day, you’d get a limit by 7:00, then go through 2 or 3 hours and only catch five or six fish. But I kept moving around and bearing down and I’d run across them.”
3rd: Kevin VanDam also focused on smallmouths. He did spend a few hours on largemouths the final day, but couldn’t upgrade. “I was fishing for smallmouths on the main lake,” he said. “I was offshore, where they were feeding on perch fry mostly, and some bigger perch too. I was looking for edges of grass and areas where there was sand and grass, or rocks and grass.
KVD looked for clean spots – anything that made an edge. The fish would tightly group along that edge, and he worked a series of such areas all 4 days – bouncing from GPS coordinate to GPS coordinate. He threw a number of different baits, but caught most of his quality fish on a Strike King Kevin VanDam’s Pro Model Tube. He estimated he caught well over 300 fish in 4 days.
> Tube gear: 7′ medium-action Quantum Tour Edition rod, Quantum Energy PTi spinning reel, 8- and 10-pound Bass Pro Shops XPS fluorocarbon, Bite-Me Tackle Big Dude insider jighead (“The new one, with rattles.”), Strike King Kevin VanDam’s Pro Model Tube (Great Lakes goby).
> He used Mustad Ultrabite scent for two reasons. 1. It helped lubricate the inside of the tube to insert the jighead. 2. “I think on smallmouths, when they’re bunched up, it gets you more bites.”
> He also used his Biosonix electronic fish-attraction unit. “The fish are bunched up on those spots. Typically with smallmouth, when you pull them off a spot, you pull a school. Then they scatter and quit biting real quick. The Biosonix is able to keep them biting for 30 to 40 minutes longer on a spot.” Find Biosonix @ BassPro.com
> Main factor in his success – “Just probably my knowledge of northern smallmouths going into the tournament.”
4th: Dave Wolak started the tournament with smallmouths in mind. “I had a couple of smallmouth areas. One, Aaron Martens was on – he was right on my GPS point. I felt like a chump, but I stayed there for 5 minutes, caught one fish and left. “Then I went to my other spot and (Mike) Iaconelli was on it.”
He spent most of the day running humps and had an average limit. Near the end of the day, he pulled the plug on his smallmouth bite and went after largemouths. He caught one and culled to 14 pounds. After that, he focused on largemouths for days 2, 3 and 4, but contacted occasional quality smallmouths in his largemouth areas.
“I was just flipping the grass,” he said of his largemouth pattern. “And the reason I used heavy stuff was there’s zebra mussels all over the grass, and when you flip in there and a good fish saws you through 30 stalks of grass, you can’t have light line. “I’m willing to sacrifice bites to get the fish into the boat when they do bite.”
He also noted that in the mornings, or whenever it was cloudy, he stayed on the edges in the sparser grass. As the day progressed, he flipped “the heart of the grass.” Neither method produced decidedly better fish than the other. In general, he fished water about 8 feet deep and the fish were suspended in the grass.
> Flipping gear: 7’6″ extra-heavy flipping stick, unnamed casting reel, 50-pound Power Pro Braided Line, 1/2-ounce Fin-Tech Title Shot jig, a variety of pale-green trailers (rear section of a Brush Hog with arms cut off, double-tail grub, NetBait Paca Craw).
> He made his own perch-colored jig skirt.
> Main factor in his success – “Knowing the way the New York fish relate to grass, and what grass to look for. There’s lots of grass in this lake, but if you found a good mix of vegetation and hung around
it long enough, and were very persistent, you’d get bit.”
5th: Ken Cook dropshotted smallmouths all 4 days. He began day 4 just 7 ounces behind leader and eventual winner Tommy Biffle, but his quality bites finally sputtered.
Ken was fishing a big bay, he said. “I’m sure the smallmouths spawned somewhere in there. The main thing I was focusing on was the presence of huge schools of yellow perch fingerlings.
Within the bay he concentrated on spots where the deep weed-edge contacted sand. He felt that was a spot where the smallmouths gathered to flush young perch out of the grass. “I was throwing my dropshot into those sandy, open spots. You couldn’t really see them – you had to figure them out where they were. They were in about 10 to 12 feet of water.
> Dropshot gear: 7′ medium-action Fenwick Techna AV rod, Abu Garcia 503 ALB spinning reel, 8-pound Berkley Vanish Transition, 1/8oz Tru-Tungsten Convertible Drop Weight , size 1 VMC Fastgrip hook (red), 4″ Berkley Gulp Sinking Minnow (watermelon/red-flake, wacky-hooked).
> About his technique, he said: “I caught most of my fish on bottom, and the better fish came from bottom. I was trying to fish below the school for the bigger, lazy fish. I was shaking it with a slow shake.”
> He noted the Tru-Tungsten weight was important because it helped him feel where the sand areas were.
> He first found the bay through observing bird activity.
> Main factor in his success – “One of the real keys to my success, and why I was able to stay on them so well, was the Biosonix (unit). I discovered it last year at this lake, and I believe smallmouths are really affected by the sound that makes. The fish would come up chasing minnows, and I’m convinced they stayed around my boat because they could hear that activity around my boat.” Find Biosonix @ BassPro.com
It will be interesting to see whether the bronze or green bass bring home the gold this week at Champlain.
Rich
www.richlindgren.com
basstournament.blogspot.com
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