Entry 251-1

Fishing Lake Amistad with Denny Brauer

Editor’s Note: Fifty-five-year-old Denny Brauer of Camdenton, Missouri, has fished professionally for bass for 25 years and has earned more than $2 million during that time. A past Bassmaster Angler of the Year, Bassmaster Classic winner, the FLW Angler of the Year title, and an inaugural member of the Professional Fishing Hall of Fame, Brauer fishes year-round, except when he’s hunting. This week, Brauer will tell how he won $13,500 on Lake Amistad in the spring of 2008.

Part 1: Try the Ledges and Drop-Offs

Question: Denny, you just finished 10th place at Lake Amistad on the BASS Elite Series. How did you find your fish, and how did the bass in practice?

Brauer: I first went to shallow-water cover to look for some spawning bass still holding in that cover, and hopefully still spawning. But before long I figured out that the bass weren’t there. So I moved out to ledges and drop-offs where the bass were holding after the spawn. I think the bass were staging on the ledges and drop-offs before they moved to their deep-water patterns.

These canyons ran across spawning flats and ended in deep-water areas. A lot of times these drop-offs and canyons would be miles offshore. Many times the drop-off will be in 20-foot-deep water and drop off to 100- or 120-feet deep. I was fishing these regions with the new 3/4-ounce Strike King Football Head Jig, and I was using a Rage Chunk behind it in the green-pumpkin and brown color.

Question: Why did you fish for spawning fish first, Denny?

Brauer: In the past, I’ve caught them in some of the bushes I’ve gone to, and we were fishing about the same time of year. But the lake was lower than when we fished there before, and there wasn’t as much cover as I had found a year previously. I found that when there’s low water and very-little cover and the water is still dropping, that I’m better off to move out to deep water to look for bass, than trying to make the bass feed somewhere that they aren’t.

Question: How many practice days did you spend trying to find bass in shallow water?

Brauer: I only spent 2 or 3 hours trying to make the shallow bite happen before I realized I had to move out to deep water. When I started running deep ledges and fishing them with the Football Head Jig, I had a great day of practice.

Question: What do you mean a great day of practice?

Brauer: I caught all of my fish on the Football Head Jig. I went to a lot of places that looked good on my lake map or on my GPS screen, and I figured out that the bass were definitely in a post-spawn mode.

Question: What was unique about the places you found to fish?

Brauer: The main thing I was looking for was a migration route that led from the bass’s spawning area to those deep ledges. I was just trying to intercept the fish as they migrated from the shallow water to deep water. I was really looking for ditches that led out from the spawning flats and out to the deep-water ledges.

Question: How deep were some of these ditches?

Brauer: Some of these ditches had bottoms at 130- to 140-feet deep. I tried to hold my boat in 18 to 20 feet of water, and then I’d cast out into deeper water and let the jig fall. The shallowest fish I caught was in 17 feet of water. And the deepest fish I caught came from about 25-foot-deep water. I was getting a lot of big bites when I started fishing that pattern. I really thought I could win the tournament using this technique. However, unfortunately after the first day, I didn’t find a lot of 6 or 7 pounders.

Fishing Lake Amistad with Denny Brauer

Part 1: Try the Ledges and Drop-Offs

Next: Let it Fall

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