Five Lucky Craft pro-staffers competed in the 40th Bassmaster Classic on Lay Lake last weekend in one of the toughest and arguably the coldest championships ever. Kevin VanDam of Michigan won his third Classic title and two Lucky Craft pros – 2004 Classic champ Takahiro Omori of Texas and 2004 Toyota Tundra Angler of the Year Gerald Swindle – were among the top 25 who made the final-day cut.

This definitely was a tough tournament due to the conditions. This is the coldest water temperature I’ve ever fished in my career, and that’s more than 300 tournaments all over the place.

I threw a Slender Pointer 97 in American Shad during practice trying to get something to bite. It’s a good bait for cold water conditions but the water in my areas was just too muddy for that bait.

I fished upriver and pitched a small, Texas-rigged creature bait to catch some spots. I had it rigged with a small Tru-Tungsten sinker and Gamakatsu hook, fishing it around channel breaks and eddies with laydown trees or rocks or anything like that. The spots were getting in the current breaks like they normally do.

During the afternoon I was running back downriver and looking in the back of pockets for largemouth in water out to about 5 feet deep. I threw the RC 1.5 crankbait some but never found any aggressive fish on it, and kept throwing the creature bait in the protected pockets around vegetation.

The area where Kevin (VanDam) was fishing, I went in there Wednesday and caught some nice fish so I knew it was a good place. I figured I could catch a big stringer in there, but he was the first boat out on Day 1 and went in there.

Kevin never stays in one spot and I thought he might fish there in the morning and then go somewhere else in the afternoon. But he stayed all day. After that, I didn’t want to go back in there and mess him up.

Dude, it was so tough out there … I’ve fished a long, long time and haven’t seen it that tough.

I caught everything I weighed in on a jig and a drop shot rig. But I dang sure threw the LV-100 a whole bunch because lipless baits obviously were doing the job in some places. I just obviously wasn’t around the fish.

I fished upriver and was hoping I could get out of the crowds by going up there. That was my thinking, but there were more people up there than I thought there would be. It was more crowded than I thought.

I went up there because there’s some little nooks and areas I wanted to slip into. I wasn’t the only one with that idea, I guess. There were too many people for me to have an anywhere to myself. I just worked the jig in creeks around bends with rocks or current breaks.

When I threw the LV-100, it was casting and winding baby.

About all I caught my fish on was an LVR-Mini in solid chrome … I just love a chrome lipless bait and always have. I was fishing in shallow pockets about 2 ½ feet deep and the bait in there was small, so I was fan-casting the bait in the deepest part.

I knew it was going to get warm and fishing would get better. It was just a matter of who was in the place where the fish were going to be when the water started warming up.

It was just a frustrating deal to not get any bites and get a piece of the puzzle to start putting things together. We all want that, just a bite or two so we can get an idea of what’s happening and make a game plan. But it didn’t happen.

About the only way I’ve ever caught fish with the lipless bait is in shallow water on a straight cast-and-wind retrieve. When I think about a lipless bait I think about shallow water. All the lakes I grew up fishing on don’t have grass, so I don’t have confidence like the other guys to rip it out of the grass. I can’t do that all day.

I was throwing the LVR-Mini on 14-pound monofilament. You want to use mono when you’re fishing that shallow because you have to burn it to keep it from digging into the bottom. The mono also allows the fish to get the bait before they feel you. Hold the rod tip high and wind fast to keep it off the bottom.

It was crazy … a crazy event. I thought I’d do better than I did, obviously. I should have started out in Beeswax Creek throwing a LV-100 lipless bait, but I didn’t and though I’d come back about 10 a.m. By then it was crazy.

I can’t believe that creek held up like that. I didn’t believe it had a chance with all those guys in there like that. No one caught jack squat anywhere else on the lake. It’s just the healthiest creek on the lake and has the most coontail grass of anywhere on the lake. They must have all smelled the grass and swam in there from the lake.

I was trying to get away from the pressure. (Jeff) Kriet was sitting right where I wanted to start the first morning. I figured I’d run somewhere else and then come back later. But everyone and their brother was in there, geez … after that, I ran around and then got on a little something the second day.

The first day wasn’t good but the second day the water changed and I caught a couple upriver on the SKT Mini DR on some rocks. I missed a few and then threw a Texas-rigged trick worm in there. They hit it but didn’t get it good … I lost four and caught one that was hooked in the bottom lip. The cold water was just a problem.

It just never panned out the way I thought it would. I’m ready to go (to California). I’m mad at ‘em.

It didn’t go so hot. It was a great PR weekend but I didn’t catch crap for fish.

In practice I looked at a little bit of everything and would get about three bites a day in the back waters. I was focusing on the secondary pockets off the main river going up. I committed to the upper half of the river and didn’t go down at all, figuring somewhere upriver there were plenty of fish to win. I was hoping to catch them with the new SKT but the waters I got into weren’t conducive to it.

The only thing consistently catching or getting bites were the lipless baits and I was throwing an LV-100, and I committed myself to that during competition. I found one decent area that I knew had potential. But instead of starting there I went somewhere else and Billy McCaghren went in there and caught about 15 pounds.

Day two I wound up looking for glory and found some downlake water that had potential. But I was thinking in my head I needed to go upriver and fished my way up. By then there wasn’t any current and the bite was off. I was throwing an LV-100 and the LV-500 in deeper troughs, and then a swimbait on the second day looking for a wad of fish. Lay Lake sets up well for swimbaits and the fish being caught on lipless baits will be swimbait fish in a week.

The second day of the tournament I didn’t have a single bite and I can’t remember the last time that happened to me. I really can’t. But I know I don’t like it one bit.

I don’t like not catching them and don’t like being at the back of the pack. Going into the next two events, I know I’m going to be working harder because I’m pissed off. It definitely got the competitive juices fired up again.