the areas
name
hometoWn
WeIght
1. DAVID WILLIAMS
MAIDEN, NC
64-09
Williams began practice
2. JOHN COX
DEBARY, FL
59-12
with the mindset of fishing to
3. CODY MEYER
AUBURN, CA
59-02
his strength: targeting large-
4. MATT AREY
SHELBY, NC
57-06
mouths up shallow. The
5. JORDAN OSBORNE
LONGVIEW, TX
54-10
recent rains had raised the
lake up to create miles of
flooded cover and trash piles
far up the various creek arms, and that’s exactly what Williams wanted to fish. It was sim-
ilar to how he fished when he made the top 10 at Lake Lanier a month earlier.
After looking at the map for areas he felt would offer the most flooded cover, Williams
began scouting for water with just the right amount of color – stained, not clear nor dirty.
The best combination was in White Oak Creek. Everything looked perfect, yet bites were
hard to come by. He suspected the water might have come up too much, causing the fish
to get too deep into the cover where he couldn’t reach them with a lure. Still, the area was
his best bet going into day one. Little did Williams know everything would change
Thursday morning.
“I was fishing some bushes when I started seeing shad swimming around them,” he
says. “Once I saw that I knew the shad spawn would be the deal.”
Williams shifted his attention to the docks in White Oak Creek the first morning, but
eventually he expanded to Crooked Creek and farther up Rock Creek. The key elements
for each were water clarity and water temperature (about 65 degrees), and, of course,
having as many docks to hit as possible.
fIsh
20
20
20
20
20
WInnIngs
$102,700
$30,000
$25,000
$20,100
$19,000
WINNING CO-ANGLER
the pattern
North Carolina anglers are known for how well they can skip jigs under docks, and
Williams is no exception.
“We fish a lot of docks in the Carolinas, and I’ve made a lot of money off the shad
spawn,” Williams says. “So once I realized the shad were spawning on the floating docks it
was right up my alley.”
Williams did the majority of his work with a swim jig, skipping it around and under any
floating docks and quickly swimming it back out. He put the trolling motor on high and
worked every dock, occasionally going down mile-long stretches of shoreline. Williams
says there was no rhyme or reason to explain why some docks produced better; he simply
had to hit as many as possible.
While he often re-fished the same docks each day, Williams was never worried about
his areas running out of fish. Shad spawn on the dock floats at night, which attracts more
largemouths to move up each night to eat them. He picked off the fish still hanging around
first thing in the morning.
Williams figures he caught more than 20 keepers each morning off the docks and basi-
cally had the majority of his weight by 10 a.m. all four days.
He also tossed a buzzbait and did some flipping around flooded cover in between
docks. That accounted for at least a few key bites each day. On day three, he picked up a
frog and pitched a spinnerbait around docks, too.
juLy 2018 I fLWfIshIng.com
joel Willert
Prior Lake, MN.
Winning Weight:
24-04 (10 fish)
Winning program:
Joel Willert is in rare com-
pany as a co-angler. By win-
ning the Lewis Smith event,
he became just the fifth co-
angler to ever win back-to-
back Tour events and the
first to do it since Casey
Martin in 2011.
Willert drew Josh Douglas
and Scott Martin, who were
both mainly targeting spot-
ted bass out deep. That can
be a hard thing for a co-
angler, as presentations can
be limited. That’s why Willert
tried to take a different
approach than his boaters
and fished smaller offerings.
He fished 2.8 and 3.3
Keitech Swing Impact FAT
swimbaits on 3/16-ounce jig-
heads, or he cut down a
green pumpkin Zoom Trick
Worm and rigged it on a
3/16-ounce shaky head.
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