CROSS LAKE CONDITIONS
Cross Lake is an 8,600-acre suburban water supply lake located
on the outskirts of Shreveport, La. Despite its small size as a tour-
nament lake, Cross cranks out some big bass thanks to an abun-
dance of shallow cover, which includes backwaters and bayous
filled with cypress trees and plenty of docks along the main lake.
The All-American visited Cross in the May-to-June transition,
making it a hot-weather event. As projected, water temperatures
had already passed the 90-degree threshold, and Cross Lake bass
were in full summer mode, lurking in the cooler shade of cypress
trees and docks while wolfing down bream that were trying to bed
around the same shallow cover.
Water levels were about 2 feet low, rendering many of the
lake’s extreme backwaters too shallow for bass to hide. As a
result, a lot of bass were forced to slide out to more predictable
cover along transition areas in and out of the forests, including
points within the trees, deeper or isolated trees, and duck blinds
on the main lake.
Also, the low water made Cross Lake’s numerous docks more
accessible with lures. With extra inches to work with under the fixed
platforms, dock anglers were able to get lures into places where
bass don’t normally see them.
The low water conditions combined with the diminished fishing
pressure of just 49 boats and a single practice day led to an
impressive display of big limits on the first day of the event. Along
with LeBrun’s whopping 26-9 limit, there were seven other limits of
more than 20 pounds weighed in.
Weights fell off the second day as fishing pressure began to
take its toll. But it’s a Cross Lake condition LeBrun had anticipated.
“This lake is notorious for producing big bags one day and
nothing the next, so I knew the second day would be the hardest
day of the event,” LeBrun says. “I spent time in pre-practice looking
for alternatives – off-the-wall places where I could catch a fish or
two if I got in trouble. Looking back, that really bailed me out. The
crankbait made the big catches, but catching a few fish on a pop-
ping frog on the second day really saved me.”
WHAT ELSE WORKED
Nick LeBrun won the 2018 BFL All-American by attacking
cypress tree bases with a 6th Sense Movement 80X crankbait
to provoke reaction bites.
While Cross Lake’s ubiquitous cypress trees were a staple
in many of the top patterns, finalists also fished docks and
duck blinds.
Nick LeBrun
90
Jigs and straight-tail worms rigged on shaky heads were
fish producers for local runner-up Randy Deaver of
Blanchard, La., and third-place finisher Adam Wagner of
Cookeville, Tenn.
Deaver favored a compact jig with the skirt trimmed down
for fishing cypress trees in the morning. He switched to skip-
ping a shaky head under docks in the afternoon.
Randy Deaver
Adam Wagner
flWfIshIng.com I august-september 2018