Entry 140-1

Mark Davis's $100,000 Weekend

Great Practice

Editor's Note: On April 23, 2005, Mark Davis won his third Bassmaster Elite 50 Series Championship against 50 of the best fishermen in the nation. In four days of fishing on Alabama's Smith Lake, Davis earned $104,000. This week, we'll see not only how Davis won the big bucks against the best of the best, but also the character and personality of a true Strike King pro.

Davis: Before I came to Smith Lake, I knew the lake was one of the clearest lakes we would fish on the pro circuit and that its bass population was fickle. I also realized that Smith Lake was the kind of lake I'd like to fish. The last time I fished Smith Lake was in February 2004 when all the pros had terrible fishing conditions with bad weather and torrential rains. We all caught only a few bass. However, I really liked to fish deep, clear, rocky, mountain lakes like Smith Lake, since I grew up fishing those kinds of lakes.

The average bass fisherman has a hard time on lakes like Smith because they're so challenging, and they really test your fishing skills. If you're going to fish a lake like Smith, more than likely, you'll have to change your tactics every day.

I had a really good practice before the tournament started. During practice, I learned that the bass had pretty much finished the spawn, although a few were still spawning. I decided to fish for both spotted bass and largemouth because Smith Lake had both species of black bass in it. I established that the spotted bass were holding on steep bluff banks close to deep water. I was able to catch these fish on a Strike King finesse worm, with watermelon being the most-productive color to fish. I also learned in practice that the largemouth tended to hold in the flatter, larger pockets that had pea-gravel-type banks and didn't contain big rocks. The bass were holding mostly on bushes.

I found I could catch the largemouth on a Strike King Zero, a soft-plastic fall bait, in the green-pumpkin color. I was catching the fish just by casting out the Zero, rigged wacky style, and letting it fall to the bottom. When the bait hit the bottom, I'd reel it out and cast it out again. The bass would bite when I threw the Zero right by a bush, let it fall, twitched it a few times and then once it hit the bottom, reeled it in and cast it out again. Using this tactic, I caught three largemouth that weighed more than 5-pounds each during practice.

I was also catching spotted bass weighing 3-1/2- to 4-pounds each. The biggest largemouth I caught during practice weighed 7 pounds, which was a really-big bass for this lake. I saw the big bass holding on a bush in a pocket. That fish was the second big fish I caught in this pocket, and I really felt confident I'd established a pattern by taking a good number of big fish during the tournament using the Strike King Zero. After catching the second big fish out of this pocket, I decided this area was the one I'd fish. So going into the first tournament day, I was extremely confident that I knew where the spotted bass and the largemouth were holding, and that I had the lures and techniques to win the tournament.

Mark Davis's $100,000 Weekend

Great Practice

Next: The First Day of the Tournament

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