5th – Matt Lee – 40-10 ( 15 )
Lee scored a Top-five finish by mixing it up with sight fishing and the big bait , starting close to the ramp to begin the event and moving up the lake as the event went on .
“ We had perfect conditions during practice to sight fish , and I had the trolling motor on high and fished a Deps Slide Swimmer 175 glide bait in the Butch Brown crappie color to cover water and locate bedding fish that would show themselves ,” Lee said .
Once he had fish located , he would pick them off with a drop-shot or Neko Rig . He used a hand-poured finesse worm on a 2 / 0 Owner Cover Shot hook with a 3 / 16-ounce Titan Tungsten weight for the drop shot and a 5-inch green pumpkin purple soft stick bait on a 1 / 0 Owner Jungle wacky rig hook with a 5 / 64-ounce Titan Tungsten nail weight for his Neko .
6th – Casey Ashley – 40-4 ( 15 )
Ashley went with just a shaky head and jig for the event .
“ I just fished those two baits . It was pretty simple ,” Ashley said . “ I was focusing on those shallow docks on flats . I stayed in the middle section ; fishing those docks for spotted bass , but caught a few largemouth , which seemed to be way back in the pockets .”
He fished a 1 / 8- and 3 / 16-ounce Greenfish Tackle Casey Ashley Clean Up jighead with a green pumpkin Zoom Trick Worm and then switched to a Greenfish Tackle HD Skipping jig in 1 / 2-ounce with a Zoom Big Salty Chunk , rotating through different colors depending on water clarity .
7th – Dustin Connell – 37-3 ( 15 )
Connell kicked off the tournament with a Day 1 best bag of 16-7 . He caught those on a crystal shad-colored jerkbait while using his Lowrance ActiveTarget forward-facing sonar on deeper spawning flats . That bite went away for Connell , and he switched gears to finesse with a wacky-rig and shaky head and power fishing a swimbait around docks located further up the lake than many in the field .
“ Finding dingier water was key for me ,” Connell said . “ I was up the river a decent ways .”
He fished a Googan Baits Slim Shake in blue baby on a shaky head and a Googan Baits Lunker Log in baby bass on a wacky rig . His swimbait of choice was an albino Bass Mafia Daingerous swimbait .
8th – Adrian Avena – 36-13 ( 15 )
Avena determined early on that sight fishing would be a factor and that ’ s what he did to start the tournament around the takeoff at Blythe Landing .
No one bait was the top producer and Avena said he rotated through a “ Plano box full ” of his favorite sight fishing plastics . He rigged them all on 3 / 0 Berkley Fusion straight shank hooks with 1 / 4- and 3 / 8-ounce tungsten weights .
“ It was just a matter of switching baits on the fish until I found one they couldn ’ t stand and bite ,” he said . “ Later in the event , I kept the Berkley Cull Shad swimbait in my hands unless I saw one on a bed . That bait is cool because it has slots to insert nail weights , and I would add them to get the perfect weighting and caught most of my fish skipping it around the catwalks on docks and on isolated shallow laydowns and stumps .”
PHOTO BY GARRICK DIXON PHOTO BY JODY WHITE PHOTO BY PHOENIX MOORE PHOTO BY GARRICK DIXON
APRIL-MAY 2023 | MAJORLEAGUEFISHING . COM 39