3. THE ROCK/GRASS
LANE
Strategy: Slow it down with a
crankbait or jointed structure jig.
Rocks and grass contributed signif-
icantly to Rose’s 2017 victory at
Guntersville, where he worked pres-
pawn travel routes in Browns Creek to
take home the trophy. In the creek,
Rose located open lanes of water –
transition lanes – between inside
grass lines and rocky banks, as well as
channels loaded with large rocks and
riprap along a bridge causeway. The
staging areas he found at Guntersville
were shallow – only 2 or 3 feet deep –
but they kept reloading with bass on
each day of the tournament.
“In stained water, the staging areas
can be very shallow,” he says, “which
is exactly what happened there.”
Rose fished a lipless crankbait on
the inside grass line for a couple days
before a cold front hit, forcing him to
switch to slowly fishing the rocks (and
some wood cover along the banks)
with a combination of small jigs and
crankbaits for the last two days.
Given just one lure with which to
work rocks, though, Rose suggests
the Strike king jointed Structure jig.
he rigs the swing jig with a Strike
king Rage Bug and methodically
scrambles the bait up, down and
around the rocks to tempt bass.
Another approach: Wilson, too,
faced rocky staging areas during the
2017 season. At Chickamauga, he real-
ized that the bite would be slower
because water temperatures were bare-
ly topping 60 degrees and fish were just
starting to transition in from deeper
areas. Consequently, he fished a football
jig on steep-sloping rocky banks near a
spawning flat in 8 to 10 feet of water.
1/2-OUNCE STRIKE KING RED EYE SHAD
STRIKE KING RAGE BUG
1/2-OUNCE STRIKE KING JOINTED STRUCTURE HEAD
Key Factors
72
Depth is relative in bass fishing, but in the prespawn transition situations they
encountered during the 2017 season, Rose and Wilson spent the majority of their
time fishing 8 feet deep or shallower.
In fact, they both agree that staging areas can be as shallow as 2 feet under
the right water conditions. The key is being able to identify spawning areas, find-
ing channels or other highways that run to them, and pinpointing the