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Gagliardi finishes 16th in Knoxville
Quick adjustments key to top finishes at Fort Loudoun-Tellico lakes |
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KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – What happens when bass patterns go from winter to summer overnight?
For answers, just ask the Lucky Craft pro team members who fished the FLW Tour stop on Fort Loudoun and Tellico lakes near Knoxville, Tenn., March 29 – April 1, 2007.
When practice began a week before the event, anglers were greeted with standard pre-spawn conditions where water temperatures hovered in the mid 50s. Several Lucky Craft team members reported finding fish on suspending Pointer jerkbaits in pre-spawn locations just outside of spawning bays and pockets. Then a heat wave settled over East Tennessee just before competition began. In a period of three days, water temperatures spiked from the mid 50s into the 70s. |
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>>>Anthony Gagliardi |
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Gagliardi finished up the best out of the Lucky Craft team in Knoxville. He caught 12 pounds, 8 ounces on day one of competition and 11 pounds, 8 ounces on day two. With a two-day total of 24 pounds even, putting him in 16th place overall, Gagliardi was just two pounds short of the top-10 cut.
“The first couple of practice days I used a Pointer 78 DD on Tellico to find a lot of fish grouped up just outside spawning coves,” Gagliardi said. “When the warm up began, I knew they would go to the bank. So during the tournament, I started looking in the pockets near where I had caught fish on the Pointer 78 DD. And sure enough, by day one of the event, they were on beds.”
Gagliardi then settled into a sight fishing pattern on Tellico, casting plastic craws, tubes and wacky worms to visible fish. “It was a sight fishing tournament for me all the way,” he added. “Everything I caught during the event came off beds.” |
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>>>Brent Ehrler |
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Similar to Gagliardi, Lucky Craft pro team member Brent Ehrler of Redlands, Calif., fished a Pointer 78 DD and an RC 1.5 to find a few fish during practice, but relied on sight fishing during the tournament.
“I only had one keeper in the box at noon the first day,” Ehrler recounted. “As I was running back down towards the launch, I pulled into a tiny pocket where I had seen about eight or nine shallow beds during practice.” “I started fishing for largemouths on the shallow beds when I noticed a couple of really dark spots out under my boat in about five feet of water. I pitched at one dark spot and caught a 4-pound smallmouth. Then I pitched at the other dark spot and caught a 3-3/4 smallmouth. A few minutes later I caught a 3-1/2-pound largemouth off a bed, too.” “I couldn’t believe my fortunate flurry of bed fishing,” he added. “I caught about 11 pounds of bass in 30 minutes from one little area.” Though Ehrler never finished out a limit on day one, his four bass weighed 12 pounds, 13 ounces and put him in 31st place. On day two, Ehrler went back to the sight-fish only to discover some of the day one leaders were in the same pocket.
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>>>Gabe Bolivar |
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At that point, he fell back on a pattern teammate Gabe Bolivar had told him about involving patches of rock on slick mud banks.
“Most of the banks in Fort Loudoun are super-shallow flat banks with just sand and mud,” Ehrler described. “But every now and then there would be a little vein of rock that ran out off the bank into the water or a patch of boulders out off the bank just under the surface.” Erhler then targeted the shallow rock patches with a 1/16-ounce Picasso Shakedown jighead and Net Bait T-Mac worm. “The rock was only in about eight to 20 inches of water,” he said. “I couldn’t believe the fish were that shallow. But when the sun would come out, I could read the shadows and crevices in the rock and present my worm in those specific edges in the rock; that’s where all my bites came from.” Erhler fished the tiny worm rig on 8-pound test, Sunline fluorocarbon line, on a Lucky Craft 7-foot heavy-action spinning rod. The rock pattern produced a limit for the California pro on day two, weighing 8 pounds, 4 ounces, to allow him to finish the tournament in 32nd with 21 pounds, 1 ounce.
Finishing 100th was Gabe Bolivar of Ramona, Calif., with a two-day total of 14 pounds, 4 ounces.
“I’m not happy about finishing100th, I can tell you that,” Bolivar said. “Out of all the lakes I’ve been to in the East, this was the hardest one for me to figure out because it was so shallow, flat and stained. Being from out West, I’m used to lakes with more depth, breaks and clarity, so Fort Loudoun was a real challenge for me.” Bolivar began practice in colder waters with a Real Skin Pointer 78.
“I found two groups of fish with the Pointer but by the time the tournament started, they had gone on beds,” he noted. “During the tournament, I had to resort to sight-fishing. While looking for beds, I would cast a 1/8-ounce Reaction Innovations Screwed up jighead shaky head around and caught a couple keepers that way. The rest came sight-fishing.”
When Bolivar sight-fished, he used a crappie jig on a drop-shot rig. He rigged the drop -shot on a 7-foot Lucky Craft medium heavy rod. “I had a real hard time getting the fish to bite,” he said. “But when that little crappie jig got in their beds and started darting around, they couldn’t stand it.” The 2006 FLW Tour Rookie of the Year got off to solid start on day one with a limit weighing 10 pounds, 2 ounces. But on day two, he caught just two bass for 4 pounds, 2 ounces. “I really just ran out of fish the second day,” Bolivar said. “When I went to my secondary spot on day two, it had already been picked over pretty good.” |
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>>>Joe Thomas |
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Lucky Craft pro Joe Thomas of Milford, Ohio checked in a limit for 8 pounds, 14 ounces on day one and one bass for 1 pound, 9 ounces on day two. Thomas finished the day with a two-day total of 10 pounds, 7 ounces for a 139th place finish in Knoxville.
Thomas began practice with a suspending Slender Pointer 112 and an RC 1.5 crankbait. “As the water warmed, I could tell the fish were getting past that stage of the pre-spawn,” Thomas said. “I could still get a few bites on the Pointer in the morning, but once the sun got up, the fish headed shallow.”
Thomas caught two keepers on day one with the Slender Pointer 112 in American Shad, sight-fished one bass off a bed and then went to fishing a shaky worm shallow.
“My primary pattern during the event became the shaky worm fished in one to three feet of water,” he said. “I was throwing to any dark spots I could find up along the bank.”
“I was still catching a bunch of fish, but they were all just short of the 14-inch keeper line,” he said. “It seemed like the dropping water and fishing pressure moved the better fish back off the bank. Late in the day, I caught my only keeper off a dock in seven feet of water, which made me realize I should have backed out sooner in the day.” >>>Coming up>>> The next FLW Tour event for the Lucky Craft Pro Team will be at Lake Norman in North Carolina, April 26 – 29, 2007. |
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Provided by Cox Group