Bass Fishing Aug - Sept 2016 | Page 99

PHOTO BY CURTIS NIEDERMIER

Lambert seemed to hit all the right places when the fish were most active in their feeding.

a creek channel, and once they started getting pounded, they shifted to the south [ upcurrent ] side of the same creek channel,” Lambert recalls.“ I know it’ s the same fish; it’ s not a new group of fish that came out there. They were getting pounded, so they shifted to something that was really similar. It was a safe haven, basically.”

Working the Numbers

Covering a 70-mile range from Kentucky Dam down to Richland Creek in Tennessee, Lambert hit about 25 to 30 spots. He mostly targeted river bends and points where a creek channel met the river channel. He never found any“ champ” spots that could win a tournament alone. Instead, he hole-hopped. And it wasn’ t until day four that he was really able to light it up.

coNdItIoNs

Weather: sunny, hot, humid and calm all four days air temperature: mid-60s to upper 90s; heat index of 100-plus Water temperature: upper 70s to low 80s moon phase: waxing crescent predominant Lake features: river-channel ledges, points, humps, stumps, shell beds

august-september 2016 I fLWfIsHINg. com

“ There wasn’ t any one particular place I caught them good every day, but there was a place every day where I caught a couple of key fish,” Lambert adds.“ I never caught a great big one – my biggest fish all week until day four was 5 1 / 2 pounds – and I never got one of those Kentucky Lake schools fired up until Sunday afternoon. With only 10 of us fishing [ on the final day ], I had actually fished that school and caught a 3 1 / 2-pounder, but I came back over them later in the day and it was lights out. I absolutely crushed them for about 30 minutes.”

This exemplifies one of his rules for offshore fishing: Let’ em rest. With miserably hot conditions and little current or wind, the only thing that would put the fish back into feeding mode was downtime.

“ I think that with these ledge fish, there are windows that open, and when they feed, they all feed,” Lambert explains.“ That’ s not to say you can’ t catch a fish or two at any time, because that’ s kind of what I did the first three days. I caught one or two fish off a spot, and it was over. It’ s really hard to put a finger on why they trigger. I do know that if you have a school that has quality fish, it’ s imperative that if they don’ t bite that you cycle back through them in a couple of hours.”

This freshening-up period allows the fish to settle back down, relax, regroup and get their appetites back online. Lambert could actually discern a school’ s disposition from their proximity.

“ It’ s almost impossible to catch them when you see them and there are two here, two there, three over there,” he says.“ But when they’ re in a group – five, 10, 30 or however many – most of those fish will feed if they’ ve had time to get fresh.”

Lambert says community holes seldom enjoy such refreshment periods, as the fish see a constant stream of baits from boats moving in and off. The tournament’ s final day brought a different picture.

Every fish he weighed on day four came off big schools and community holes. It was part of Lambert’ s strategy. On Sunday, about the only tournament pressure was from the 10 guys who made the cut at the Tour event. Coupled with extreme heat that kept the locals away, low angling pressure freed up some key spots. That gave Lambert free run of the area he was fishing.“ I could fish like 15 schools within sight of each other, and there was no fishing pressure on them at all,” he says.“ They’ d had the whole day to sit there, and by the time I got there around 10:30 or 11 o’ clock, I could catch two or three fish out of every school I pulled up on.”

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