How they caught them on Oneida Lake
But the Bassmaster Elite Series pros earn their money another way, through competition for one week, and one week only, on a particular body of water. Then they move on to the next. So they can provide a wealth of knowledge on how catch bass, after they've finished competing.
There were some striking observations from the pros this week about two days of fishing Oneida Lake, the 51,000-acre naturally-formed bass factory near Syracuse. Maybe the most striking was made by Dean Rojas, the Grand Saline, Texas, resident who led after two days on Oneida with two five-bass limits totaling 33 pounds, 1 ounce.
"Of all the lakes I've fished, I've never seen fish stay this shallow in water this clear," said Rojas, who will be 36 years old on the last day of this month and has 18 top 10 Bassmaster tournament finishes on his resume.
Rojas wasn't the only pro to make such a profound statement.
"Absolutely," echoed Jeff Kreit. "The time you thought, 'There's no way,' that's when you'd catch them."
"I agree 100 percent, I sure do," Randy Howell said. "Think shallow. A lot of people overlook the shallow bite. The deeper you went, the smaller the fish got this week."
But there are multiple approaches to that shallow bite. Rojas did it by "throwing Kermit for two days."
"Kermit" is his nickname for Spro's Dean Rojas Bronzeye Frog, the topwater lure that Rojas has put into near-legendary status. He casts it on 65-pound braided line. And in this clear water, it's important to keep your boat off the shore and cast like you're trying to throw it out of Yankee Stadium.
Rojas worked that frog in the plentiful aquatic vegetation of Oneida Lake. He weighed-in nothing but largemouth bass.
Howell weighed-in nothing but smallmouth bass. He used a drop shot rig coupled with a Berkley Gulp Minnow or a Berkley PowerBait Minnow on spinning gear. Like Rojas, he wanted something he could cast for distance.
"I was staying way back and making long casts," Howell said. "I caught most of my fish in 3 to 7 feet of water. Look for holes in the grass. That's the key. Hard spots or rock mixed with the grass."
The primary bass forage in Oneida comes in two forms — crawfish and minnow-size yellow perch. Both have a bright orange color pattern to them. Many anglers were dipping various soft plastics in orange dye to mimic the crawfish. And angler after angler talked of pulling handfuls of crawfish from their livewells, which had been spit up by the bass they'd kept.
Howell's smallmouth were feeding some on crawfish, but primarily on yellow perch minnows about 1-inch long. But Kriet's smallmouth were gorging on crawfish.
"I dumped four handfuls (of crawfish) out of my livewells just a minute ago," Kriet said Saturday morning. "(The smallmouth) were eating these little crawdads about two inches long. They were watermelon, purple and orange in color.
"A fish coughed one up on my boat deck. I threw my tube down there, and it was a perfect match."
Kriet put a rattle in a Right Bite soft plastic watermelon-colored tube lure that featured both purple and bright orange flakes in it. He added a 5/16ths-ounce weight and, cast with a flippin' stick and 20-pound test fluorocarbon, swung for the fences.
"I'd just chunk that tube as far and as high as I could throw it," Kriet said.
But if he were just fishing for pleasure this weekend, Kriet would scale down his gear a bit.
"If you want to catch a bunch of smallmouth, I'd drag a tube across those flats to the drops," he said. "I'd use 10-pound test and a 3/8ths sinker. Cast it up on a flat and just drag it back. You could catch 40 or 50 a day doing that."
Editor's note: Check in each day for live video of the weigh-in and the realtime leaderboard at 6 p.m. ET. There will be a special Hooked Up show at 10 a.m. ET Saturday, with tournament updates Sunday at 8 a.m., 10 a.m. and noon ET. The Hooked Up show begins at 5 p.m. Sunday and leads into the live final weigh-in.
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