Schultz
PLASTIC, PLEASE
Along with Nick Prvonozac’s soft-plastic
tubes, soft plastics in general dominated the
Grand Lake event, taking up nine of the top
10 spots. Most of the top 10 pros used
weightless plastics or lightly weighted plas-
tics, with weights no heavier than 1/4 ounce.
The most common plastic was some form of
stick worm, which accounted for second
through fourth positions. Other anglers
used various creature baits and lizards. Also,
some pros dyed the tails of their plastic
offerings chartreuse, claiming it is a potent
addition to getting bites in the spring of the
year on Grand.
was used to make under-
hand pitches to heavier
cover such as willows, lay-
downs and debris in along
the bank. The spinning ver-
sion was used to skip under
cables, walkways and any-
thing else hanging over the
water. On a couple of occa-
sions, Prvonozac saw fish he
thought were guarding fry
and was able to catch them
twitching a Rattlin’ Rogue.
keys to victory
Prvonozac learned a great
deal about where Grand Lake
bass bed when he fished a
Costa FLW Series tournament
there in 2015 (he finished
15th). During that event,
Grand’s waters were crystal-
clear due to lack of rain and
the filtering effects of zebra
mussels. No one he spoke
with had ever witnessed such
transparent water in the lake’s
history, Prvonozac recalls.
“In that event, I could see
everything on the bottom and
every place where a fish made
a bed,” says the Ohio pro.
“There were a lot of beds
behind docks, under walkways
and crossties, around cable
tie-downs – under anything
hanging off the bank or any
piece of rock or rock transition
behind a dock.”
Prvonozac likened the
experience to being present-
ed with a blueprint of where
fish bed on Grand year in
and year out. With that
knowledge, he simply revisit-
ed the places where he saw
multiple beds behind docks
during his last visit to Grand.
Another key to his victory
was Prvonozac’s willingness
to wrestle his boat back in
behind docks to get to premi-
um bedding water where fish
were most protected. At
times he would have to grab
cables and walkways and
physically pull his boat behind
the dock and under the walk-
way to reach untapped water.
Sometimes Prvonozac would
spend five or six minutes
wrestling his way behind a
dock just to make one or two
presentations. However, a
couple of those wrestling
matches paid off with fish of
better quality in the weather-
abbreviated tournament.
CO-ANGLER CHAMPION
Name: Mark Talley
Hometown: Grove, Okla.
Winning Weight: 25-11 (10 fish)
Winning Program: Talley pitched a Gene Larew
HooDaddy and a 5-inch Yamamoto Senko –
both with 3/16-ounce weights – to any little
piece of cover he could find in the bedding
coves and pockets where his
pros took him. He fished
both baits on 14-pound-
test Lew’s fluorocarbon
line and dyed the tails
of the HooDaddy char-
treuse for a little extra
attraction.
july 2017 I flWfIshIng.com
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