ON TOUR
COSTA FLW SERIES
By Rob Newell
photos by kyLe wood
LAKE SEMINOLE
BAINBRIDGE, GA.
detaILs
March 2–4, 2017
presented by Mudhole Custom tackle
hosted by bainbridge Convention & visitors bureau
Costa FLw series division: southeastern
Winning angler
buddy gross, chickamauga, ga.
Winning Weight: 64-11 (15 fish)
stat line: Gross is an FLW Tour pro whose strong suit is fishing deep vegetation with
swimbaits. He used that combination to earn his first FLW Tour win on Lake Pickwick in
May 2016 and again employed swimbaits in deep grass in March at Seminole for his first
Costa FLW Series win.
Winning baits
84
Gross used different com-
binations of swimbaits or soft
jerkbaits and weighted hooks
or heads to reach various
depths and to give the baits
different vibrations. His three
primary combinations includ-
ed a 5-inch Zoom Swimmer
rigged on a 3/4-ounce Owner
Beast Flashy Swimmer, which
is a weighted hook with a
belly spinner blade; a Zoom
Magnum Super Fluke on a
3/4-ounce Tennessee River
Tackle Tremor Head; and a
Zoom Super Fluke on a 1/2-
ounce Tennessee River Tackle
Tremor Head. All soft plastics
were some sort of shad pattern
or white, and all were fished on
17-pound-test Seaguar InvizX
fluorocarbon.
target areas
Gross began his practice
by flipping deep walls of
hydrilla along the main chan-
nel in Spring Creek. Most of
the deepest grass clumps
and stalks grew up as tall as
14 or 15 feet off the bottom.
Due to the very mild winter,
much of the deeper hydrilla
was still green and healthy.
As Gross worked along
the deep wall of hydrilla, he
noticed several sharp “cuts”
or “pockets” in the grass wall
which were formed by small
feeder ditches running into
the main channel. Those
“mini-drains” served as short
avenues to a large spawning
flat and also provided refuge
areas for balls of shad look-
ing to get out of the main
creek flow.
CONDITIONS
Weather | post-frontal,
clear and sunny
air temperature |
highs in the 80s in prac-
tice, followed by a cold
front and lows in the
mid-30s, highs in the
low 60s during the
tournament
Water temperature |
mid-60s
Water clarity | 1 foot
in the rivers; 5 to 6 feet
in Spring Creek
Wind | NE at 20 mph
moon phase | waxing
crescent
predominant lake
features | flooded tim-
ber, various grasses,
creek channels, ditches,
ledges, ponds, broad
flats
fishery type | lowland
impoundment of some
37,500 acres in size,
formed at the conflu-
ence of the Flint and
Chattahoochee rivers
and Spring Creek
The combination consti-
tuted perfect staging areas
for big female bass to hold
up while waiting to move to
spawning areas.
presentation keys
Gross marked the cuts
and drains in the wall of
hydrilla as he discovered
them during practice.
“When I was flipping in
practice, I kept feeling like my
boat was right over the fish,”
Gross explains. “When I’d
come to those cuts I could
flWfIshIng.com I may-june 2017