A football jig with an October pumpkin skirt and a root beer pepper green trailer keyed Deakins’
dominating All-American win.
Baits and Adjustments
he says of his day-three struggles.
“When they aren’t pulling current, the
fish get up and start roaming around on
those flats. They don’t position where
they needed to be. But I had to stick with
what got me there.”
When the pressure on his bridge
spot forced Deakins to shift to the shell
beds near Kroger Island, his co-angler –
eventual winner Alex Hester – caught a
5-pounder. Eventually the bridge spot
cleared out, and Deakins returned for
45 unproductive minutes. It was back
92
Throughout the tournament, Deakins
did most of his damage with a 3/4-ounce
Profound Outdoors Swampers football
jig with a Zoom Fat Albert Twin Tail trailer.
Colors were critical for mimicking sea-
sonal forage. Deakins’ jig was October
pumpkin, and his trailer was root beer
pepper green.
“I helped Lionel Botha [former FLW
Tour pro and Halo Rods owner] when
he fished the All-American on Nickajack
Lake [in 2013], and he caught a lot on
that color combination. I’ve been fish-
ing it ever since,” Deakins says. “It works
early in the spring until early summer.
It’s a really good color. I think it match-
es the seasonal crawfish colors.”
On the final day, Deakins struggled
to find consistency with the football
head, at least on his primary spot by
the bridge. He arrived to find a local
boat on “the juice” and had to endure
the pain of watching the angler pick a
good fish off the spot.
Also, lack of current seemed to limit
the football jig’s effectiveness. He
needed good water movement to
escort his bait effectively across that
jut-out spot on the bridge ledge.
Unfortunately, the heavy flow that
anglers found in practice and early on
had subsided, as the Tennessee Valley
Authority decreased the amount of
water moving through the dams. By the
final day, the decreasing water flow had
significantly impacted Deakins’ bite.
“I should’ve known better. I should’ve
thrown a Carolina rig and a worm more,”
to the shell beds then, where Deakins
boated a 4-pounder and – five minutes
later – Hester stuck a 9-4 giant.
Late morning saw Deakins give the
bridge another shot, but again, it frus-
trated him. Rotating back to the shells
added a second keeper, but that would
be the end of his jig bite. He finally
landed three keepers midday from the
bridge spot, but not the way he would
have preferred.
“I didn’t think I was going to catch but
two fish that day, but I picked up a drop-
shot, finished out a limit and caught
one more to cull,” Deakins says. “I never
got another bite the whole day.”
Deakins used a Roboworm in the
morning dawn color and a 1/4-ounce
cylinder weight on his drop-shot.
“I went to the drop-shot as a des-
peration move,” Deakins admits. “I
knew the fish were there because I’d
caught so many the day before.
“On day one and day two, there was
so much current that I’d throw the jig in
there and the water would wash it over
that rock pile. On the third day, every
time I’d throw it in there, it would get
hung up.”
Keeping a cool head and not letting
the early challenges of day three spin
him out were the keys to pulling out a
final-round limit of 15-5. Adding that to
his first two limits gave Deakins a win-
ning margin of 7 pounds, 10 ounces, a
$125,000 prize package and his first
Forrest Wood Cup qualification.
FLWFISHING.COM I AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2017