Entry 201-1

Wake-Up Bass with Mark Davis

Part 1: How Davis Found the Winning Pattern

Question: Mark, what were your practice-days like?

Davis: In practice, I learned that the bass were moving up to the shallow water to spawn. A few of the bass were already going to the beds, but I didn’t feel that bed fishing would win the tournament.

Question: Why did you decide not to bed fish?

Davis: Bed fishing was the obvious pattern, but there weren’t many areas on the lakes where the bass were bedding. Because there were 200 pro contestants, the majority of the fishermen would be targeting the beds. Therefore, you couldn’t put together a consistent pattern to win over a four-day event. When you put all the fishing pressure on a few areas, most of the time, the fish that are available to be caught are divided-up among so many people that no one can catch enough to win the tournament. When I go to a lake, I determine the obvious pattern that should win the event, because that’s the one most of the competitors will fish. Then I find a different pattern everyone else may have overlooked that I can use to fish for and catch the bass that aren’t getting as much pressure as the other fish. History has proven that most of the time, the angler who wins the tournament, overlooks the obvious and finds a pattern and a way of fishing that very-few other anglers are using.

Question: What kind of bass were you looking for, Mark?

Davis: Not all bass go to the beds at the same time, on any lake. I decided to catch the pre-spawn bass that hadn’t moved to shallow water and weren’t sitting on the beds. I thought those bass probably would still be on the main lakes, but holding close to the spawning areas. I looked at main-lake structures, such as points and humps out in the main lake and especially in the mouths of big spawning bays. There were plenty of contestants in this tournament trying to catch the spawning bass, but not nearly as many contestants attempting to catch pre-spawn fish in deep water. I thought I could more than cut the field in half by not fishing for spawning bass. In most tournaments, you can eliminate a good portion of the field of contestants, if you don’t fish the obvious pattern.

Question: What did you find in practice that helped you win the tournament?

Davis: I really didn’t find very much. I was struggling until the last practice day. The last practice day only allowed the anglers half a day to fish. I’d already fished three days and hadn’t really come up with any way to catch bass consistently. Finally, I decided to try the Strike King King Shad and a vintage Bomber Long A. I was making these lures create a wake on the surface. Most people don’t know that pre-spawn bass holding in deep water will come up to the surface and take a bait, like the King Shad, that runs just under the surface and creates a wake on the surface. Over the years, I’ve used this tactic to catch numbers of really-good bass. The real secret to the success of this tactic is to use it on days in the early spring when big warming fronts are coming through, and the surface temperature of the water warms up quickly, causing the baitfish in that top story of water to become active. This tournament was held in the first week of March, and we had several days of 80-degree weather.

Question: How did you get on that pattern, Mark?

Davis: Each day in practice, I’d make the bass bite those wake baits, but I’d only catch one or two bass. On the last half-day of practice, so many people were trying to catch those spawning bass that I knew I had to get away from the crowd. I had to figure out how to make the wake baits work and catch those pre-spawn bass. I put the trolling-motor down and fished about 2 or 3 miles of structure before I found a stretch of underwater structure where I started getting quite a few really-good bites.

I was fishing flat points. Many times, I’d be offshore fishing, and other times, I’d be fishing bluff banks. At the end of the last practice day, I had enough confidence in this pattern that I decided to stay with it. On the last practice day, I caught 7 bass, weighing 3- to 4-pounds each. I didn’t get many bites on the King Shad and the old Bomber Long A, but the fish that attacked these two lures were good, solid keepers. The bass were coming up from the bottom as shallow as 5 feet and as deep as 20 feet. One of the reasons this pattern was so hard to stay with was that depth didn’t have any bearing on where the fish would be found. I knew I had to cover the water and believe in the pattern.

Next: Day 1 of the Competition

Contents:

• Part 1: How Davis Found the Winning Pattern
• Part 2: Day 1 of the Competition
• Part 3: Day 2 of the Competition
• Part 4: Day 3 – The Day I Won the Tournament
• Part 5: The Final Weigh-In