TW_Staff
05-19-2009, 11:20 AM
For the second year in a row, the FLW Tour visited Beaver Lake for its Walmart Open during a period of high water. This time around, Beaver was about 8 feet above full pool. And due to a cold spring, the fish weren't quite as far into the post-spawn as in years past.
That meant there were still plenty of spawning fish up shallow. It also meant the shad spawn had yet to develop fully.
Ray Scheide won the event by flipping heavy cover. The fish changed location each day and he changed with them. He moved from ultra-shallow cover to deeper trees the final day.
“Once the lake came up fast like that, I knew exactly what I was going to do in the tournament,” Scheide said. “And there was no need to even try it in practice.”
Winning Pattern:
Essentially, Scheide’s tournament plan all along was to wait his turn to fish some of Beaver Lake’s more popular pockets in the Prairie Creek and midlake areas and then simply push farther back into the flooded, matted debris than all the others who had fished before him.
“There’s no sense in even trying to practice that way,” Scheide explained. “For one, it can scratch up your boat, and, second, there was no need to disturb those mats before the tournament began.”
Scheide saw two boats fishing in a pocket he wanted to fish. Twenty minutes later he came back by the pocket and noticed it was empty. So he pulled in the popular spot and idled all the way to a lay-down log that blocked off the back end of the pocket.
“I could tell every boat that had fished in there had turned around at that log because the debris behind the log was completely undisturbed,” he explained. “And there was still a lot of water behind that log, including a big green flooded tree. I used my Yamaha to jump that log and get back there where no one else had been. I ended up catching four keeper largemouths from the one tree in the back of the pocket.”
“Once all the other boats were eliminated and we were down to just 10 boats, then I didn’t need to push myself back into those places,” Scheide explained. “I started fishing more obvious spots, but I knew with most of the field eliminated, there had not been five or six boats in front of me on some of those more high-percentage spots.”
“I pitched my bait way into the heart of a flooded hardwood tree,” Scheide recalled of the winning fish. “I didn’t even see where my bait landed. But when it hit the water, I felt the line tighten from a bass bite. I set the hook and I could hear the fish thrashing around back there amid the branches and dark shade, but I could not see it at all. So I put the trolling motor on high and crashed into the interior of the tree, wrestling my way into the branches. When I got in there, I saw this big fish pinned up in the branches.
Winning Gear:
Flipping gear: 4'2" medium-heavy Fenwick Elite Tech Flippin' Stik (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=FETC), Abu Garcia Revo STX (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=AGRSTX) casting reel, 15-pound Berkley Trilene 100% fluorocarbon (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=BTFCC), 5/0 Gamakatsu Superline (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=GSOWG) hook, 1/4- and 1/2-ounce tungsten weights (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=CTBW) (pegged with bobber stopper), 4" Berkley Crazy Legs Chigger craw (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=BPCLCC) (watermelon/candy).
The Field:
Mark Rose:
He worked the same shad-spawn spot he did last year, which he said was the same morning spot Mark Pack fished last year (when pack won) and this year. Rose described it as a "hard-bottom, pea-gravel spot on a point. Those shad would get up there to spawn at night. Last year I'd catch a limit and leave and I barely missed the cut. This year I spent more time on it.
He cranked the shallow part of the shad-spawn area, but his best fish hit a wakebait that he declined to name. He often finished his limit from the area with a shakey-head.
After the shad-spawn bite was done, he went and flipped shallow bushes, as well as trashpiles in "the back ends of little pockets."
Shakey-head gear: 6'6" medium-action G. Loomis (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=GLSJG3S) rod, Shimano Stradic (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=SSTFI) 2500 spinning reel, 6- and 8-pound Seaguar InvizX (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=SIF) fluorocarbon, 1/16- and 1/8-ounce Strike King shakey-heads (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=SKTSH), 4" unnamed finesse worm (watermelon).
Flipping gear: 7'5" heavy-action G. Loomis Mossback (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=GLMBF) flipping stick, Shimano Chronarch (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=SCHD) casting reel, 20-pound Seaguar InvizX (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=SIF) or 50-pound unnamed braid, 4/0 extra-wide-gap hook, 1/2-ounce tungsten sinker (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=TTBW), Strike King Rodent (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=SKPR) (watermelon/red-flake).
Performance edge – "The Strike King shakey-head. It allowed me to get my limit every day. That's the bait the fish wanted more than anything. I caught the most on it."
Clark Wendlandt:
He started the event by sight-fishing, but soon abandoned that and worked a full post-spawn pattern the rest of the time.
"I was mainly throwing a crankbait," he said of his post-spawn pattern. "I was fishing it fairly shallow and I had two or three different cranks I caught fish on. I was fishing mainly points and the water where I was fishing was a little bit dirtier.
"They were either main-lake or secondary points," he added. "The main-lake points generally had a little more wind, and I liked having a little bit of wind."
Cranking gear: 7' medium-action Falcon Lowrider (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=FLRC) CLC 4-17 cranking rod, Abu Garcia Revo STX (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=AGRSTX) casting reel, 12-pound Berkley Trilene 100% fluorocarbon (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=BTFCC).
Performance edge – "I really think it was my Falcon Lowrider cranking rod. It's a composite rod and it's just a good cranking rod because it doesn't let the fish feel you before you set the hook, and it casts well. I think it was a big key in landing those fish I was catching on a crankbait.
Jason Christie:
"My main area was the back of a creek," he said. "But the water dropped a little the final day, and I think it pulled the perch and the baitfish and everything out."
He flipped trees in 9 to 10 feet of water with two different baits.
Flipping gear: 7'3" heavy-action Falcon Cara (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=FCCSG) rod, Pflueger Summit (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=PSTCR) casting reel (7:1), 25-pound XCalibur Silver Thread (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=STEC) fluorocarbon, 4/0 XCalibur Tx3 hook (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=WTXWG), 3/8- to 1-ounce XCalibur tungsten weights (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=XTBW) (pegged with bobber-stopper), Yum Garrett Tube and Yum Wooly Hawg Craw (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=YWHC).
He said the 1-ounce weight helped generate reaction strikes. "Sometimes it would only sink 3 or 4 feet and I'd pick up on it and there's be a fish."
Keith Combs:
Keith Combs was another who worked a split pattern. In the mornings he targeted the shad spawn on points in 3 to 8 feet of water. A few points had isolated trees, while other points just had a hard-bottom area.
"If the shad were spawning, I'd catch them on a crankbait," he said. "If there were no shad present, I'd just forget about that deal and go back in short pockets off the main river channel and flip the heaviest stuff I could find.
"I was trying to (flip) my bait into 3 feet of water or less," he added. "And I was keying on the green trees. There weren't that many of them – most were dead from the high water last year. The tree either had to be green, or there had to be some type of horizontal cover on it, like a laydown."
Carolina-rig gear: 7'6" medium-heavy Power Tackle PG104 rod, Shimano Curado E7 (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=SCER)casting reel, 15-pound Seaguar CarbonPro (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=SCPFL) fluorocarbon, 2/0 Owner offset hook (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=OOSWGW), 1-ounce weight, Strike King Game Hawg (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=SKPGH) (green-pumpkin).
Cranking gear: 7' medium-action Power Tackle PGC 170 rod, same reel, 10-pound mono, Norman Deep Little "N" (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=NSDLN) (nutter shad) and Lucky Craft RC 1.5 (shad).
Flipping gear: 7'6" heavy-action Power Tackle PG104.5 rod, same reel, 20-pound Seaguar AbrazX (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=SAFL), 3/0 Owner wide-gap hook (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=O5139), 5/16- and 3/8-ounce Tru-Tungsten worm weights (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=TTCBW) (green-pumpkin), Strike King Game Hawg (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=SKPGH) (green-pumpkin).
About his bait choice, he said: "That Game Hawg's the deal. It's so soft it won't last through many fish, but if one bites it and you miss it, he's going to hit it again.
TW Staff
That meant there were still plenty of spawning fish up shallow. It also meant the shad spawn had yet to develop fully.
Ray Scheide won the event by flipping heavy cover. The fish changed location each day and he changed with them. He moved from ultra-shallow cover to deeper trees the final day.
“Once the lake came up fast like that, I knew exactly what I was going to do in the tournament,” Scheide said. “And there was no need to even try it in practice.”
Winning Pattern:
Essentially, Scheide’s tournament plan all along was to wait his turn to fish some of Beaver Lake’s more popular pockets in the Prairie Creek and midlake areas and then simply push farther back into the flooded, matted debris than all the others who had fished before him.
“There’s no sense in even trying to practice that way,” Scheide explained. “For one, it can scratch up your boat, and, second, there was no need to disturb those mats before the tournament began.”
Scheide saw two boats fishing in a pocket he wanted to fish. Twenty minutes later he came back by the pocket and noticed it was empty. So he pulled in the popular spot and idled all the way to a lay-down log that blocked off the back end of the pocket.
“I could tell every boat that had fished in there had turned around at that log because the debris behind the log was completely undisturbed,” he explained. “And there was still a lot of water behind that log, including a big green flooded tree. I used my Yamaha to jump that log and get back there where no one else had been. I ended up catching four keeper largemouths from the one tree in the back of the pocket.”
“Once all the other boats were eliminated and we were down to just 10 boats, then I didn’t need to push myself back into those places,” Scheide explained. “I started fishing more obvious spots, but I knew with most of the field eliminated, there had not been five or six boats in front of me on some of those more high-percentage spots.”
“I pitched my bait way into the heart of a flooded hardwood tree,” Scheide recalled of the winning fish. “I didn’t even see where my bait landed. But when it hit the water, I felt the line tighten from a bass bite. I set the hook and I could hear the fish thrashing around back there amid the branches and dark shade, but I could not see it at all. So I put the trolling motor on high and crashed into the interior of the tree, wrestling my way into the branches. When I got in there, I saw this big fish pinned up in the branches.
Winning Gear:
Flipping gear: 4'2" medium-heavy Fenwick Elite Tech Flippin' Stik (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=FETC), Abu Garcia Revo STX (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=AGRSTX) casting reel, 15-pound Berkley Trilene 100% fluorocarbon (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=BTFCC), 5/0 Gamakatsu Superline (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=GSOWG) hook, 1/4- and 1/2-ounce tungsten weights (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=CTBW) (pegged with bobber stopper), 4" Berkley Crazy Legs Chigger craw (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=BPCLCC) (watermelon/candy).
The Field:
Mark Rose:
He worked the same shad-spawn spot he did last year, which he said was the same morning spot Mark Pack fished last year (when pack won) and this year. Rose described it as a "hard-bottom, pea-gravel spot on a point. Those shad would get up there to spawn at night. Last year I'd catch a limit and leave and I barely missed the cut. This year I spent more time on it.
He cranked the shallow part of the shad-spawn area, but his best fish hit a wakebait that he declined to name. He often finished his limit from the area with a shakey-head.
After the shad-spawn bite was done, he went and flipped shallow bushes, as well as trashpiles in "the back ends of little pockets."
Shakey-head gear: 6'6" medium-action G. Loomis (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=GLSJG3S) rod, Shimano Stradic (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=SSTFI) 2500 spinning reel, 6- and 8-pound Seaguar InvizX (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=SIF) fluorocarbon, 1/16- and 1/8-ounce Strike King shakey-heads (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=SKTSH), 4" unnamed finesse worm (watermelon).
Flipping gear: 7'5" heavy-action G. Loomis Mossback (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=GLMBF) flipping stick, Shimano Chronarch (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=SCHD) casting reel, 20-pound Seaguar InvizX (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=SIF) or 50-pound unnamed braid, 4/0 extra-wide-gap hook, 1/2-ounce tungsten sinker (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=TTBW), Strike King Rodent (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=SKPR) (watermelon/red-flake).
Performance edge – "The Strike King shakey-head. It allowed me to get my limit every day. That's the bait the fish wanted more than anything. I caught the most on it."
Clark Wendlandt:
He started the event by sight-fishing, but soon abandoned that and worked a full post-spawn pattern the rest of the time.
"I was mainly throwing a crankbait," he said of his post-spawn pattern. "I was fishing it fairly shallow and I had two or three different cranks I caught fish on. I was fishing mainly points and the water where I was fishing was a little bit dirtier.
"They were either main-lake or secondary points," he added. "The main-lake points generally had a little more wind, and I liked having a little bit of wind."
Cranking gear: 7' medium-action Falcon Lowrider (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=FLRC) CLC 4-17 cranking rod, Abu Garcia Revo STX (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=AGRSTX) casting reel, 12-pound Berkley Trilene 100% fluorocarbon (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=BTFCC).
Performance edge – "I really think it was my Falcon Lowrider cranking rod. It's a composite rod and it's just a good cranking rod because it doesn't let the fish feel you before you set the hook, and it casts well. I think it was a big key in landing those fish I was catching on a crankbait.
Jason Christie:
"My main area was the back of a creek," he said. "But the water dropped a little the final day, and I think it pulled the perch and the baitfish and everything out."
He flipped trees in 9 to 10 feet of water with two different baits.
Flipping gear: 7'3" heavy-action Falcon Cara (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=FCCSG) rod, Pflueger Summit (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=PSTCR) casting reel (7:1), 25-pound XCalibur Silver Thread (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=STEC) fluorocarbon, 4/0 XCalibur Tx3 hook (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=WTXWG), 3/8- to 1-ounce XCalibur tungsten weights (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=XTBW) (pegged with bobber-stopper), Yum Garrett Tube and Yum Wooly Hawg Craw (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=YWHC).
He said the 1-ounce weight helped generate reaction strikes. "Sometimes it would only sink 3 or 4 feet and I'd pick up on it and there's be a fish."
Keith Combs:
Keith Combs was another who worked a split pattern. In the mornings he targeted the shad spawn on points in 3 to 8 feet of water. A few points had isolated trees, while other points just had a hard-bottom area.
"If the shad were spawning, I'd catch them on a crankbait," he said. "If there were no shad present, I'd just forget about that deal and go back in short pockets off the main river channel and flip the heaviest stuff I could find.
"I was trying to (flip) my bait into 3 feet of water or less," he added. "And I was keying on the green trees. There weren't that many of them – most were dead from the high water last year. The tree either had to be green, or there had to be some type of horizontal cover on it, like a laydown."
Carolina-rig gear: 7'6" medium-heavy Power Tackle PG104 rod, Shimano Curado E7 (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=SCER)casting reel, 15-pound Seaguar CarbonPro (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=SCPFL) fluorocarbon, 2/0 Owner offset hook (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=OOSWGW), 1-ounce weight, Strike King Game Hawg (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=SKPGH) (green-pumpkin).
Cranking gear: 7' medium-action Power Tackle PGC 170 rod, same reel, 10-pound mono, Norman Deep Little "N" (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=NSDLN) (nutter shad) and Lucky Craft RC 1.5 (shad).
Flipping gear: 7'6" heavy-action Power Tackle PG104.5 rod, same reel, 20-pound Seaguar AbrazX (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=SAFL), 3/0 Owner wide-gap hook (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=O5139), 5/16- and 3/8-ounce Tru-Tungsten worm weights (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=TTCBW) (green-pumpkin), Strike King Game Hawg (http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=SKPGH) (green-pumpkin).
About his bait choice, he said: "That Game Hawg's the deal. It's so soft it won't last through many fish, but if one bites it and you miss it, he's going to hit it again.
TW Staff