Entry 310-1

Shaw Grigsby – Raging for Summertime Bass on the Mississippi River

Part 1: Why I Used Aerial Reconnaissance before the Tournament

Question: Shaw, what did you know about the Mississippi River at Fort Madison before you went to this tournament?

Grigsby: I had fished at Moline, Illinois, in the Quad-City area back in 1995, and we had fished the pools north of Moline. This was the year when I was in the lead for Angler of the Year. I had a 25- or 26-point lead over Denny Brauer and a 29-point lead over Mark Davis. Mark Davis won the Angler-of-the-Year title that year, and I lost that title in the upper end of pool 18. I lost a 3-1/2-pound largemouth that, if I’d landed that fish, would have won me the Angler-of-the-Year title for 1995.

I’d fished other areas of the Mississippi River quite a few times, and I’d fished the Illinois River numbers of times. I had studied my maps on the computer, and I purchased river maps and studied them. Then before we fished it, Gary Klein, another bass-fishing pro, and I hired a pilot, rented a plane and flew over the river on the Sunday before the tournament practice started on Monday.

Question: What’s the advantage of flying a river before you fish it?

Grigsby: The advantage of flying a river is that you learn how to get in back-water areas and creeks that you can’t see from water level. You can see if pockets along the river are muddy or clear. You can spot where the structure is, find the mouths of pockets and bays, look at all the creeks and get a bird’s-eye view of the waterway you’re about to fish, which is really important. Knowing how, where and when to navigate certain waterways can be the difference between losing and winning a tournament. When you’re looking for out-of-the-way places to fish, knowing how to navigate into sites that other fishermen probably aren’t going to be able to fish is really important.

Question: Did you use a GPS when you were flying?

Grigsby: I carried my hand-held GPS, but for some reason, my GPS wasn’t able to lock onto the satellites, so I could mark the spots that I wanted to investigate while I was on the water. However, I also carried river maps with me and made notes on them. I was able to mark where I could get into and get out of certain areas. Having that marked river map really paid-off for me during the tournament.

Question: What does flying over a river or a lake before you fish it usually cost?

Grigsby: It’s at least $100 an hour for the use of the plane and $25 an hour or more for the pilot. The cost for Gary and I was about $300, which we split two ways.

Question: What kind of advantage do you think you had by flying the river?

Grigsby: I felt that flying the river gave us a tremendous advantage, because there was no place we wanted to fish on the river that we hadn’t already seen before we got to it. And, more importantly, we knew how to navigate into the areas we wanted to fish. There are plenty of places up and down the Mississippi River that look like they’re landlocked and inaccessible.

Other regions, like lakes and ponds, looked like they should be accessible from the river, but actually you couldn’t get to them because they’d grown-up, filled-in, or grown-over. Maybe the mouth of an area you wanted to fish was blocked by a shallow bar that you couldn’t get your boat over. However, by using the map that I marked while in the air, I saved a tremendous amount of time during practice and the tournament.

I noted areas I wanted to practice in before the tournament began and also places that I knew were inaccessible after flying over them. I got the best information I could get about lake conditions, water conditions, what sections were navigable, and which ones weren’t the day before practice started. I also decided that flipping was probably the technique that I needed to use to do well in this tournament because there was so much structure and so-many good places for a bass to set-up an ambush spot.

Question: What lure did you decide to flip?

Grigsby: I wanted a compact bait that had a lot of action that I could flip effectively. And for me, Strike King’s Rage Craw fit that need better than any other lure in my tackle box. And I really believe that by selecting the Rage Craw, I picked the lure that helped me do well in the tournament.

Question: What colors were you using? What size hook, weight, line, rod and reel were you using?

Grigsby: I was fishing with a No. 6/0 hook, 25-pound-test fluorocarbon line, a 1/4-ounce tungsten weight, and two- or three-different colors of Rage Craw. I used Okeechobee Craw, june bug, and California colors. I was using the Greg Hackney 7-foot, 11-inch flipping stick made by Quantum, and the new Quantum Tour Edition Silver 6.3:1 bait-casting reel.

Next: Flipping Skinny Water

Contents:

• Part 1: Why I Used Aerial Reconnaissance before the Tournament
• Part 2: Flipping Skinny Water
• Part 3: The First Day of Competition
• Part 4: The Second and Third Days of Competition
• Part 5: If I Could've Made One More Cast