TW_Staff
01-20-2009, 10:39 AM
There are few bites better known than the pre-spawn lipless rattlebait bite. When the grass is a few feet tall and the big fish are assembled and ready for a shallow move, it's hard to beat a rattlebait fished slowly along the tops of the grass.
The biggest thing about this PAA Series event was the great anglers from both FLW and BASS. If you look at the field, it's probably the toughest field out there, because it takes the best from both sides. We were missing a few PAA members, like Kevin VanDam and Stacey King, but when you combine the top two tours, you get one heck of a group of fishermen.
Winning Pattern:
About the winning area, Snowden said: "It was big, 300 or 400 yards, with grass scattered in about 6 to 8 feet of water. What was weird about it was that I never caught a quality fish in the same spot. It was just a random, painstaking cast-after-cast deal to cover as much water as you could. I'd actually just drift with the wind and make different drifts each time, covering different areas of the grassbed."
He threw two rattlebaits – an Xcalibur Xr50 (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=XCRB)and Xr75 (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=XCR7). About his presentation, he said: "The best analogy is it was like slow-rolling a spinnerbait. The grass was only 2 to 3 feet of bottom. You'd pop it off the grass every now and then if you hit a clump, and I was trying to just very slowly click the tops of the grass. It was a very slow presentation. They spayed Toho recently, and a lot of the grass was dying, so it wasn't very tall off the bottom."
Winning Gear:
Lipless rattlebait gear: 7' medium-heavy St. Croix Legend Tournament (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=SCLTC) rod, baitcasting reel (6:1), 17-pound fluorocarbon, Xcalibur Xr50 (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=XCRB) and Xr75 (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=XCR7)(foxy shad and royal shad).
TW Staff
The biggest thing about this PAA Series event was the great anglers from both FLW and BASS. If you look at the field, it's probably the toughest field out there, because it takes the best from both sides. We were missing a few PAA members, like Kevin VanDam and Stacey King, but when you combine the top two tours, you get one heck of a group of fishermen.
Winning Pattern:
About the winning area, Snowden said: "It was big, 300 or 400 yards, with grass scattered in about 6 to 8 feet of water. What was weird about it was that I never caught a quality fish in the same spot. It was just a random, painstaking cast-after-cast deal to cover as much water as you could. I'd actually just drift with the wind and make different drifts each time, covering different areas of the grassbed."
He threw two rattlebaits – an Xcalibur Xr50 (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=XCRB)and Xr75 (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=XCR7). About his presentation, he said: "The best analogy is it was like slow-rolling a spinnerbait. The grass was only 2 to 3 feet of bottom. You'd pop it off the grass every now and then if you hit a clump, and I was trying to just very slowly click the tops of the grass. It was a very slow presentation. They spayed Toho recently, and a lot of the grass was dying, so it wasn't very tall off the bottom."
Winning Gear:
Lipless rattlebait gear: 7' medium-heavy St. Croix Legend Tournament (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=SCLTC) rod, baitcasting reel (6:1), 17-pound fluorocarbon, Xcalibur Xr50 (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=XCRB) and Xr75 (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=XCR7)(foxy shad and royal shad).
TW Staff