BassBlaster

Today’s BassBlaster 6/25/12

Welcome to the BassBlaster, your daily email about all things bassin'. Hey — have you sent the BassBlaster to a bassin' bud yet?!

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Today's Top 3

1. One interesting tidbit from Todd Faircloth's win: Shad Walker.

As everyone expected, including BassGold.com, Todd Fairthcloth won the Elite Series event on the upper Mississippi River fishing shallow with a frog, swim-jig and creature bait. (Okay, BassGold had "tube/grub/craw" as the third possibility, but a creature is close!)

So far no deets or real surprises except this line from a Bassmaster.com story: "…he worked a shad walking bait he’d modified with frog hooks to reduce the amount of vegetation that would cling to his bait."

Word is this was a Shad Walker – believe that's the Picasso or maybe an older Tru Tungsten Shad Walker – that actually is pre-rigged like a frog. Below is a pic, and here's a little more on it.

2. Anything in your box that mimics a mayfly?

Bill Lowen on the upper Mississippi yesterday:

> "I would have given a hundred-dollar-bill for one mayfly (lure) today."
 
> "I pulled up on this spot and saw all these bugs coming down the current seam. It looked like trout coming to the surface, so I stopped there for a minute to watch."
 
> At first, Lowen saw only six- to eight-inch smallmouth bass rising… Then he glanced further down the current seam, where the mayflies were piling up, and couldn't believe his eyes. "I'm talking fours-, fives and maybe some six-pounders," he said. "You can see their brown-and-black backs and all the bars on their sides."

> Lowen caught one 3.5-pounder on a tube bait, but couldn't coax another strike. "A hundred casts later, after I tried everything I could think of, I finally said, 'I've got to go.' I may never be in that situation ever again, but I'm going to have something that looks like a big mayfly. I was looking at 20 pounds."

> "I've never seen anything like it. It was incredible."

I have seen something like this before. I want to say it was on Lay Lake – one of the Alabama lakes, before a Classic. Can anyone check me on that?

3. Homer Circle dead at age 97.

If he wasn't the first, Homer was one of the first "sports writers" – as they called them back in the day – to embrace competitive bassin'. Ray Scott never let anyone forget that.

Homer was a good guy, a kind man who always had an encouraging word, and he loved to fish for bass. He also loved to sport stylin' threads, like this "water camo" jumpsuit. We lost a good one. RIP Uncle Homer. Love ya, man!

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Tip of the Day

Flipping Pop-Rs with Ott Defoe.

> “It's kind of a regional thing that’s a fairly common tactic where I live in East Tennessee. A lot of the credit can be traced back really to one person, Craig Powers who's fished on the FLW Tour for many years."

> "It really is at its best when the fish are post-spawn and in the early summer phase before the major waves of bass will move deep into their mid-summer lairs. You can catch a few lingerers shallow all summer long, but the post-spawn when the water is still in that 70-75 degree range, that’s when the topwater flipping bite is really hot.”

> “When you twitch the original P70 Pop-R, it doesn’t travel forward like a Spook or others where they glide forward on top of the water. The Pop-R will walk side to side while sitting in place. It will walk back and forth 4 or 5 times and only come forward for 6 inches."

> DeFoe pretty much uses one presentation which is to flip or pitch the old Pop-R into the heart of thick cover and walk it like a Spook but without it moving forward very far. That’s all he’ll do all day long.

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Quote of the Day

I'm about ready to eat that one, just to keep a bass from eating it.

– Aaron Martens, ticked off about the huge mayfly hatch yesterday, from the above Bassmaster.com post. He also said:

> It's like eating a Cheez-It. They feel like we would after eating a box of Cheez-Its.

> It really scattered the fish. They were all up off the bottom. It was frustrating, really frustrating.

Shot of the Day

Didja see the bass these guys were weighing in, specifically the color? In case there was any doubt these fish were being pulled out of heavy veg…. Some largies were so yellow/brown, they almost looked like smallies.

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2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. Flip'N'Pitch

    June 25, 2012 at 4:10 pm

    I too have stood helpless and frustrated in the middle of a mayfly hatch on the TN River. It’s hard to compete with thousands upon thousands of the real thing, even when you’re an Elite. Former Elite (’07) and local Guide Jimmy Mason says your best bet here is to try to mimic the panfish that are feeding on the mayflies rather the mayflies themselves. The only other time the fish have “rubbed my nose in it” so bad was trout fishing in a Catch and Release Only area in Colorado. They would just about swim through your legs and jump clear out of the water feeding on nymphs just so you could see what you were missing! Still though, it is cool to see Mother Nature in overdrive but of course my livelihood isn’t riding on catching them.

  2. pz @ klamath bassmasters

    June 25, 2012 at 10:49 pm

    one of top lakes ore (crane prarie resvr) gets a huge hatch and they only eat mayflies. keep mouth shut when moving!!

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