Entry 321-1
Greg Hackney Tries Out the Strike King Hack Attack at Lake Oneida
Editor’s Note: Two-weeks before the last event on the BASS Elite Series, Strike King pro Greg Hackney of Gonzales, Louisiana, won the 2009 Forrest L. Wood Cup and $500,000 at Three Rivers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But after this big win, Hackney had to turn around, re-program himself, drive over 1,000 miles from his home in Louisiana and fish Lake Oneida in New York to fish against another group of some of the best bass fishermen in the world. There was a $100,000 first-place prize, but more importantly, he had to make sure he qualified for the 2010 Bassmaster Classic. Having won over $1/2-million dollars 2-weeks earlier, most of us would have kicked-back and coasted during the next tournament, but not Hackney. Hackney, like all of the Strike King pros, is a staunch competitor first and a bass fisherman second. He enters a competition, not to play the game, but to give his best effort to win. Let’s see how Hackney rebounded after winning the FLW Championship.
Part 1: The Key to the Tournament – The Hack Attack and the Rodent
Question: Greg, what did you know about Lake Oneida before you arrived at the tournament?
Hackney: I had fished there before, and I knew that Oneida was a grass lake and was set-up well for the flipping tactic. When I fished there the year before, I found a pattern for flipping the grass. Using this pattern, I almost made the top-10 cut last year. I already was in pretty-good shape for making the Classic at Alabama’s Lay Lake in February, 2010. I was in 25th place in the Angler-of-the-Year race, and I knew that all I had to do was catch two good limits of bass to make the Classic again this year.
The money I’d won at Three Rivers took some of the financial pressure off of this tournament. I picked-up my flipping stick and new Strike King Hack Attack jigs and decided to see what I could catch by strictly flipping this new jig in practice. This tournament was really the first one where all the conditions were right for me to use this new jig. In practice, I spent all 3 days flipping grass with the new Hack Attack jig.
Question: What color Hack Attack jig were you using?
Hackney: I was fishing the yellow-perch color with a green-pumpkin Rage Craw trailer.
Question: What did you learn in practice?
Hackney: This was the first time that I could remember finding big schools of smallmouths while flipping the grass, as well as big schools of largemouths. 
I felt like I had a back-up, because if I couldn’t catch the smallmouths on the jig, I’d fish the places where I’d found the largemouths. If I couldn’t catch the largemouths, I’d flip other spots where for the smallmouths.
Question: Greg, smallmouths don’t usually hold on grass, do they?
Hackney: No, they don’t, but there had been a large crawfish hatch on Lake Oneida, and the crawfish were in the grass. A lot of big smallmouths were in the grass feeding on those freshly-hatched crawfish. Now up North they call them crayfish, but in Louisiana, we call and eat them as crawfish.
When you go to a lake that has both smallmouths and largemouths in it, you usually assume that if you fish for largemouths you should catch bigger fish. However, the two biggest fish I weighed-in during these tournaments were smallmouths. Each day of the tournament I’d have about a 50/50 split between largemouths and smallmouths that I’d weigh-in at the end of the day. On this lake, the smallmouths were just as big as the largemouths.
Question: During practice, how big were the smallmouths you were catching?
Hackney: The biggest smallmouth I was catching was about 3-3/4-pounds, which was a good solid smallmouth for this lake, and most of the largemouths weighed 2-1/2- to 3-1/2-pounds.During practice, I didn’t find many largemouths, but I did find numbers of smallmouths.The largemouths seemed to be in smaller groups, and they were more-difficult to catch than the smallmouths.
Question: Were you using any other lures besides the Hack Attack in this tournament?
Hackney: When fishing would get really tough between 9 am and noon, I’d switch from the Hack Attack jig to the new Strike King Rodent. Some of the fish that I weighed-in I caught on the Rodent. But all my bigger fish I caught on the Hack Attack jig.
Question: What color Rodent were you flipping?
Hackney: I was using the green pumpkin
Question: Why did you switch from the jig to the Rodent?
Hackney: There were periods of time when the bass just didn’t want the jig. 
The Rodent’s a very-subtle bait. It has no action, but it does have a small profile that looks like a crawfish and is a really-subtle bait that you can flip on heavy tackle.
Question: How did you feel before the first day of competition on Lake Oneida?
Hackney: I felt pretty good about my chances to win. I caught a lot of smallmouths and largemouths during practice, and I’d learned that when the Hack Attack jig wouldn’t catch them, the Rodent would. I felt like all I needed was a few big fish to bite during each day of competition, and I’d have a chance to do well in the tournament.
Contents:
- Part 1: The Key to the Tournament - The Hack Attack and the Rodent
- Part 2: The First Day of Competition
- Part 3: The Second Day of Competition
- Part 4: The Third Day of Competition
- Part 5: The Final Day of Competition
