M
aking his Forrest Wood Cup debut,
Ontario’s Chris Johnston stayed in
Wheeler Lake’s lower end and staked his
entire event on schooling bass. Johnston
fished between the Elk River and
Wheeler Dam and caught his fish mostly
on shallow points in 2 to 5 feet of water,
but he had one clandestine spot that
went overlooked by competitors.
“There was this one shoreline where
a shoal came out from an underwater
point, but the fish were actually school-
ing next to it over about 20 feet of
water,” Johnston says. “That spot was
kind of an ace in the hole because no
one found it. Every day, I caught two or
three good fish off this spot.”
Johnston caught all of his keepers on
an Evergreen SB-105 pencil popper in
the American shad color. He used a 7-
foot, 2-inch, medium-power Shimano
Cumara rod with an 8.5:1 Shimano
Metanium XG baitcaster and 20-pound-
test PowerPro braid.
“You needed that soft rod for
throwing the topwater so when you set
the hook, you didn’t rip the bait out of
its mouth,” he says. “You had to use
braid for the castability. You had to be
able to throw that topwater 60 yards
sometimes.
“When they’d blow up, you had to
put that bait within a 1- to 2-foot radius
of their boil, and you had to hit it with-
in probably two seconds or you’d miss
your chance,” Johnston adds. “If you
did hit that circle and you didn’t get
one in the first couple of twitches, you
just weren’t going to get a bite.”
That’s where the high reel speed
came into play. Johnston often waited
up to 30 minutes between frenzies, but
the ability to gather line quickly allowed
him to target more blowups when he
spotted schoolers.
Johnston located six spots in prac-
tice, but competition allowed him to
fish only three. He rotated through his
available areas and found the schooling
activity extending later than normal.
“You’d think first thing in the morn-
ing would be best for schooling fish, but
it seemed like the fish were schooling a
little better once the sun got up,” he says.
“On the third day, I caught my biggest
one and a 2 1/2-pounder around 2:30.
“On the first day, someone started
on one of my schooling spots. He left
after the first hour and never came back
because he thought they were done
schooling. They were actually schooling
a lot better later in the day, and that’s
when I caught a lot of my good fish.”
JOHNSTON’S KEYS TO SUCCESS
With his tournament fortunes riding daily on the unpredictable schooling
fish, Johnston did all he could to maximize each opportunity. The spots he tar-
geted were littered with small fish, so in the interest of time management, he
had to choose his targets wisely.
“If you saw a shad jump and you knew there was a blowup about to hap-
pen, you had to be able to tell which fish were the bigger ones,” he says. “There
was a bunch of 10- and 12-inch fish, and you had to pick out the big-fish boils,
based on their intensity.
“Some of them would come out of the water, but with the ones that didn’t,
you could tell [the size of the fish] by the size of the blowup. The key was you had
to get your bait right on the spot where you saw a blowup within two seconds.”
Also essential was a topwater with a feathered rear treble. Johnston’s
Evergreen SB-105 sported a hook dressed with white feathers and green tinsel
– an accent he’s convinced played a pivotal role in his success.
“The shad in my areas were very small,” he says. “I could actually see some
of the fish come up like they were going to explode on the [artificial] bait, but
they’d get close and then turn away. I think some of them mistook that feather
for a small shad. I caught quite a few fish that only ate the back of the topwater
bait. I know that got me a bunch