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A ledge produced for Blenn (left) and Alsop early, but it was deep brush that gave up the winning fish on the final day.
A VERSATILE GO-TO LURE
Another factor that helped the KSU team was its versatility in fishing one bait.
Going into the national championship, the pair was aware of the Zoom Brush
Hog’s reputation as a fish-catcher, especially in the Tennessee River system.
When it came time to offer Wheeler’s bass a variety of lures, Alsop and Blenn
simply tripled up on the Brush Hog for varying situations.
They used a standard Texas rig when pitching docks, but rigged the Brush
Hog on either a Carolina rig or Big Bite Baits Swing Head when fishing ledges
and brush piles. When using the Swing Head version, they cast the lure out, let it
go to the bottom, and then retrieved it steadily and slowly along the bottom,
hoping to contact brush or other cover to trigger bites. No matter which rig they
fished, they always used green pumpkin and dyed the tails chartreuse for a little
extra flash.
“We found a couple of high spots on
the Decatur ledges that were holding
some quality fish, but they were not big
schools by any means,” Alsop says.
“They were more like mini schools that
would only fire up for a few seconds
and then be gone. Counting totally on
such flighty fish was not going to work,
so we kept searching.”
The next pattern the team estab-
lished was pitching docks in the
Decatur area. They located a couple of
stretches of docks that were key
because they were positioned near
current, but out of the flow. The bonus
of the Decatur docks was that they
were situated close to the Wildcats’
best ledges, so they could bounce back
and forth between the ledges and the
docks easily.
Finally, the team did some snooping
close to the takeoff area near Joe
Wheeler State Park in First Creek to
find some “last-minute fish” they could
target with a few casts just before
check-in each day. Their search turned
up some productive deep brush piles
near Joe Wheeler State Park Marina.
“By the time practice ended, we had
three different ways to catch fish,”
Blenn says. “But we didn’t want to just
run around hitting that stuff with no
rhyme or reason. We wanted to maxi-
mize our rotation so we could get the
best timing out of each spot.”
After a long discussion the night
before the first tournament day, they
decided that the ledge bite was the
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