Welcome to the BassBlaster, your daily email about all things bassin’. Hey – take a sec to forward this Blaster to a bassin’ bud! Click here to forward to a bud(s)
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Today’s Top 3
Apologies for the lack of a Blaster during the Classic and earlier this week. Was beat!
1. Cool Classic stuff.
Hope you caught some of the War Room coverage, if you did thanks for watching. Thought it was pretty good – props to Steve Bowman and the producers, as well as host (co-host?) Rob Russo.
Some things noticed at and around the Classic, thought worth mentioning:
> Cliff Pace is a good guy and showed some (a little!) emotion when I interviewed him before the final day weigh-in. So don’t know if he was just wasted tired, beat emotionally or what…but COME ON, man! You won the Classic and $500K! That’s better than goin’ to Disney!
> Case there’s any doubt about how competitive the Opens are, how ’bout the fact that three of the Top 7 Classic finishers were Open qualifiers, and the four Open guys who made the cut accounted for a quarter of the Top 16. Not too dang bad!
> Hank Cherry was bummed about two big’uns he lost the last day, but he really lost his shot at the Classic title on day 2. That 10-13 really hurt him. Can say the same about Mike McClelland.
> Flip side is day 2 was when Cliff won the tournament…incidentally, the same thing we said on the War Room that day – that day 2 would be the most important day.
> No secret but will mention it: Watch out for Brandon Palaniuk. Too early to tell about Cherry, but he seems pretty dang good too.
> How ’bout Nation angler Jonathan Carter from Maine (pictured below)? He didn’t even know bass weren’t all brown! (Haha….)
2. Mentally it affected me a lot because I’m pretty much a nutcase and I can’t keep it together.
– Ike talking about his day 2 meltdown when his trolling motor crapped out, my favorite quote from the Classic. Honest!
3. All through this event, I was fishing for key bites – big, quality bites because I knew a guy could go catch 10 or 11 pounds easy, but I wasn’t going to accomplish what I was here to accomplish.
– Cliff Pace showing nerves of steel, my second-favorite quote from the Classic. Interesting how he committed to that deep jig bite.
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BassGold News
1. BassGold frickin’ does it again!
Gotta crow about this. BassGold launched at last year’s Classic, nailed the winning and high-placing patterns down to the pools on the Red River, and predicted Chris Lane’s winning weight within 6 ounces.
Then it was a pretty amazing 92% accurate in predicting the 2012 Elite Series winning patterns and weights, even on lakes for which it had no data (because bass in similar lake types act the same).
And at this year’s Classic? Well, even though BassGold just had one pattern for February on Grand Lake (not many tourneys there that time of year), using end-of-year winter and March patterns for Grand, it predicted the pattern and weights almost exactly once again!
One exception: spinnerbaits – which have been a factor in wins of winter and March tournaments, and which locals thought would figure in the Classic – were a non-factor.
Not a bad scorecard, eh? If you haven’t started to use BassGold yet, get on it!
2. MegaStrike sponsors BassGold.
Cool! Check out MegaStrike’s innovative fish attractant and baits here.
3. BassGold being redesigned…
…and some cool new features coming. Subscribe today with the B.A.S.S. discount: Use code BASS132 (case sensitive) when you sign up, and save 15% on the annual subscription.
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Other News
1. Some crazy weights being caught on A-rigs.
We’ll take a closer look at this in the next BassBlaster, but in the meantime go get you an umbrella rig and start a-chuckin’ it. Get YUMbrella rigs here.
2. Bassin’ Hall of Fame going to Cullman, AL.
> “This is like landing a 20-pound bass with a 10-pound line on a spinnerbait,†Cullman Mayor Max Townson said.
> The $17 million hall of fame will be constructed as a joint project between the City of Cullman and Cullman County. Hall of fame officials are ramping up a fundraising campaign now and will help pay for a portion of construction.
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Tip of the Day
Tommy Biffle didn’t reach way back to his old jerkbait experience on Grand Lake like we kinda hoped, but instead stayed true to what he liked to do: Fish his Larew Biffle Bug on a football head. A few tips on that:
> He drags the lure across the bottom, but he moves the offering with his reel, not his rod. The lure stays in motion all the time as he cranks. “I’m holding my rod at about an 8 o’clock position and cranking the Bug so that it’s dragging and bumping everything it comes in contact with along the bottom,.”
> Often, there will be no distinctive thump. The rod tip will simply stop jiggling for a moment when the fish lifts the lure off the bottom.
> The exact cast that produces a fish can be repeated and often will produce more fish that are relating to the same structure.
> He always re-ties after his bait gets hung in the rocks — even if only for a moment. In fact, he doesn’t even finish the presentation. He doesn’t want to risk hooking a big fish when his tackle is in less-than-perfect condition.
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Quote of the Day
He texted me last night and told me to keep doing what I knew how to do and that it was working.
– Cliff Pace talking about Gary Klein texting him after day 2 of the Classic. Very cool.
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Shot of the Day
One of the basses painted by Tulsa-area businesses as part of Classic week. How would you custom-paint a bass? Think I’d do Eddie Van Halen stripes….
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