Entry 212-1
Greg Hackney’s Saltwater Tactics for Catching Bass
Part 1: How to Learn About a Lake You’ve Never Fished
Editor’s Note: On July 22, 2007, Greg Hackney of Gonzales, Louisiana, a power fisherman who enjoys fishing wood and bank structures, finished fifth in the Bassmasters Elite Series tournament on Lake Erie, earning $17,500. In this tournament, Hackney had to use the techniques he’d learned fishing in the Gulf of Mexico in his home state.
Question: Greg, what did you know about Lake Erie before you arrived there?
Hackney: I knew that many of the tournaments had been won by fishing offshore structure. I spent the first day of practice using my depth finder to locate rock piles and ridges and to search for schools of bass holding on these rocky structures.
Question: How did you know that you’d have to graph offshore structure and use a GPS (global positioning system) receiver to find bass and mark the spots you wanted to fish in the tournament?
Hackney: I went on the Internet and Googled Lake Erie bass fishing. The good thing about the Internet is that local guides put up daily information on what they’ve caught and how they’ve caught it. There’s a ton of information you can learn on the Internet. Now, you can’t rely totally on this information, but at least you’ll have a place to start that can give you a general idea as to how, where and on what you should fish before you arrive at a lake. Any time I go to a new lake I’ve never fished before, I’ll Google that lake and read all I can about the best ways to fish the lake. Most of the bass I found in practice on Lake Erie were holding in 22 to 28 feet of water, which was much-deeper water than I’m accustomed to fishing in Louisiana, except salt water.
I made up my mind to pretend that Lake Erie was the Gulf of Mexico and to use my depth finder just as I would if I were fishing in 100 to 200 feet of water. I’d find the structure, look for the fish, hold the boat over the fish and fish straight down to them, using a Strike King finesse worm on a drop-shot rig.
Another critical key was to only fish the spots where I’d found the largest bass. I located about 10 places, several of which had 5-pound smallmouth bass holding at them. There was a lot of moss on the bottom of the sites where I was fishing, so I put my drop-shot worm about 18-inches up from my lead. This way, I could drag my lead along the bottom in the moss and the bass could see the worm. During practice, I fished each one of the sections I’d pinpointed. I wouldn’t mark a spot as a waypoint I planned to fish, unless I caught a 5 pounder there, which would give me an opportunity to catch a 20- to a 25-pound string every day of the tournament.
Contents:
- Part 1: How to Learn About a Lake You’ve Never Fished
- Part 2: How I Fished During Day One of the Bassmasters Lake Erie Elite Tournament
- Part 3: How I Fished During Day Three of the Bassmasters Lake Erie Elite Tournament
- Part 4: How I Fished During the Final Day of the Bassmasters Lake Erie Elite Tournament
- Part 5: What I’ve Learned
