BassBlaster

Five firsts at Cherokee, Wheeler’s winning baits, Which lipless when

By (mostly Jay)

Posted on February 14, 2017

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Today’s Top 3

Five firsts at Cherokee.Â

Will call this one, using Mercer Scrabbleness, “cumulative bizarre incidentals:”

1. Jacob Wheeler won the first Elite event he ever fished.

> I am 100% NOT counting the 2014 Bassin’Festivus, which was 100% kinda sorta not an Elite at all. If you need proof, here you go: Wheeler fished it, and he weren’t no Elitist at the time.

2. He won Cherokee fishing part of a day out of another competitor’s boat.

Props to rookie Dustin Connell for having his back, and so did other Elitists. How’d this happen?

> Wheeler: “I read the rules 4 times. You’re not going to retain every piece of information, but that’s something that stands out pretty dang good — if you’re broken down you can fish from another competitor’s boat. I called Trip, and he said, ‘Well yeah you can.'” Actually Trip said:

3. He won the tournament without having half his waypoints for half the derby.

> Half his waypoints disappeared when he changed out electronics units, and all the stuff he lost were upper-lake rockpiles he wanted to pick fish off from. He remembered some of it, but not all of it — but got to hit them later in the derby. “Waypoints are only so good, and those fish move around on bait so much you’re almost better off sometimes not having an exact waypoint.”

4. This is the first time (I believe) an Elite tournament was won with only smallies on a mixed smallie/largie lake.

> Not only is that saying something weight-wise — which is why all-smalls never win on mixed-species lakes — when brown fish are schooled up like they were on Cherokee, if you catch enough of them in a spot they will do the notorious smallie shutdown — which Wheeler said did happen to him. “On camera I caught like 12-15 off this one spot then they shut down — but like 50-100 were there.”

5. Don’t know this for a fact cuz I’m not Ken Duke, but I believe this is the first time rookies have ever finished 1-3 in an Elite derby, especially the first one.

Not only did this shock the monkey, merp the bass was like:

Wheeler’s bait/pattern deets.

Get ’em all on the BassBlaster website (too much for here), but some highlights:

Main pattern

> “The biggest thing this week was fishing holes, or pond dams/depressions. The holes would be about 20′ around the side, and if rock was around them, the smallmouths would live there. If it had a rock vein [going into the middle], the smallies would live on those veins.

> “The holes harbored the bait. Bait was all over the lake, but schools of smallmouths were sitting around those holes/depressions — in 20-30′ at the bottom of the hole.”

Big fish pattern

> “This is what I call ‘sneakier stuff’ — big giant flats [in 22-29′] with tiny isolated rockpiles on them. It was sneakier because they might only be good for 1-2 fish and they were more time-consuming to find.

> “It might be a boulder in the middle of a rocky flat, or hard-bottom spot — it was always about that little bit of hard bottom.”

Main bait

> 3/8-oz VMC Neon Mooneye Jig (black and white) with a 3″ translucent pearl white Fluke-style bait.

> “The #1 thing when you’re fishing those smallmouths with that technique [dropping on them] is getting the bait down to them quickly. That 3/8-oz jig gets down there way faster than a quarter — especially with the wind blowing — and it’s so much easier to get the fish to react….”

> “Why that jighead is so good is it has a pretty large barb even though it’s thin wire. So when you hook them, they’re on there good. That’s really important with smallmouth, when they’re jumping and everything. Some of those fish I could barely get off with pliers.

> “The biggest thing with the setup was the 8-lb Sufix NanoBraid. It’s super-thin — it would fly off the reel 10x better than any other braid or fluorocarbon. So it got off the reel quicker and got down there faster, so I got a better drop on those fish and got more bites.”

> His leader was 8′ of 6-lb Sufix Invisiline Castable Fluorocarbon. “I normally don’t have a long leader — I don’t like it to go inside the spool. But that 6-lb is like dental floss, so I like a longer leader when I go lighter. It allows more shock-absorption. You might have to retie the leader knot every once in a while, but my opinion is that’s the way to go. You don’t break nearly as many fish off.

Way more good stuff on BassBlaster.rocks. Here’s the rest of his baits. Bottom one is the new Storm 360 GT Searchbait.

Heck no I gotta do whatever I do to catch ’em.Â

– Wheeler’s response to my question: “Do you feel like less of a man because you fished a wimp stick for 4 days?”

HAHAHAHA! Yep I did! J-Wheels also said:

> I try to be a student of the game and do whatever I need to do.

Okay mang but I told my buddy Phil about it and he was like:

Don’t think Phil is a wimp-stick kinda guy….

News

1. Elitists now in Mafia.

New made men are: Fred Roumbanis, Brett Hite, Jeff Kriet, Cliff Prince and Jay Brainard. Word is they send these guys to ask you to join and no one ever refuses the offer:

2. B.A.S.S. reups with ESPN.

Cool the Live show will be on the WatchESPN app. Could be huge. Side effect is bass peeps will finally be hipped to the fact that Tommy Sanders must either have a twin brother or never sleep.

Good to see Mike McKinnis quoted, which I guess means he’s coming out from behind the curtain. This is somewhat like Mike in his office in ArkansOz:

3. FLW doing more live streaming.

> …launch of an expanded “FLW Live” broadcast, which will showcase an online in-studio show, hosted by Byron Velvick and Travis Moran, that will feature live on-the-water footage from each of the 2017 FLW Tour events. The footage will be livestreamed from the top five anglers on competition Days 3 and 4.

Sounds familiar…? lol, regardless a good thing for FLW anglers.

FLW also got Old Spice again.

4. TX: ShareLunker program a bust?

Only 2 13+ lb fish weighed last year, lowest in history. Guess selectively bredding giants isn’t working?

5. AR: April 1 derby to benefit Van Buren officer.

6. MN: Gander Mntn filing for bankruptcy?

Huh. Doesn’t mean they would go away, but doesn’t sound good.

Tip of the Day

Stetson Blaylock: When to fish different-sounding lipless cranks.

When to rattle and when to knock? Stetson talks when and how he prefers each type of lipless crank in this short tip.

Since he’s a BOOYAH guy he’s talkin’ the Hard Knocker vs the One Knocker….

Quote of the Day

I never in my right mind ever thought I’d win a smallmouth event.

– Yep you guessed it — Wheeler again. Got that here because this is the type of fisherman he is:

> “I wasn’t going to fish the [last Northern Open last year on] Champlain…but I wanted to learn to fish for smallmouths. So the whole event I spent fishing smallmouths out deep, getting used to what they get on, and I applied a lot of the stuff I learned there on Cherokee.”

And that’s how you become a friggin’ Elitist boys n girls!

Shot of the Day

This is what all you Everglades bassers have to look forward to…or not. Do a show down there Z!

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Jay Kumar is the guy who created BassFan.com, co-hosted Loudmouth Bass with Zona, was a B.A.S.S. senior writer and a whole lot more in bassin’. Jay Kumar’s BassBlaster is a daily-ish roundup of the best in bassin’, and is the #2 daily read on any given day in the wide world o’ bass.

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