When it comes to bass fishing you can not beat a good flipping bite in the grass. Big bass love to burry up in the grass because it offers shade, protection, increased oxygen, and great cover to ambush prey. Whenever you have a lake that has vegetation in it the bass will almost always use it at some point during the course of a year.

We all know that big bass like jigs, especially big bass hanging out in the grass. One of the problems though you can face with throwing jigs in grass is that sometimes grass can get caught around the weedguard which can make for an unatural presentation to the bass.

Naked Bait Company has the solution to this problem in the Skirted Weight System. Naked Bait Companies Skirted Weights allow the angler to present a bait with the same exact profile as a jig while allowing the angler to add whatever bait they wish as a trailer.

Skirted Weights do such a great job of coming through the veggies and they are offered in both freshwater and saltwater sizes to make punching the thickest vegetation possible. A freshwater pack contains two of the following 1/16 oz, 1/8 oz, and 3/16 oz. A saltwater pack contains two of the following 1/2 oz, 3/4oz, and 1 oz.

When rigging the Skirted Weights what I like to do is take the 1/2 oz or the 3/4 oz and add one or two skirts to the collar. Then I’ll put the skirted weight on my line and then tie on a Honey Hole 3/0 hook. I’ll put either a Sweet Beaver or some type of craw on the hook texas style. Then I will peg the skirted weight with a rubber stop that is also available from Naked Bait Company. When everthing is set to go one more thing that I will do is slide the weight on down to the hook but make sure you leave a little room between the hook and the weight so you can get good hook movement so you can a good hookset. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to slide the weight all the way down on the plastic bait which makes hookups harder. Leave about a 1/4 ” space.

When you have your Skirted Weight rigged up just take the bait and throw it in the grass and work it like you would a jig. The action is so good and you will be surprised with how many more fish you catch in the process. All the components of the Naked Bait Company Skirted Weight System can be purchased by visiting www.nakedbaitco.com.

Just got back from fishing Kentucky Lake for the last couple of days. I went down to Kentucky Lake to compete in the Riverwoods Church Open Bass Tournament that took out of the KY Dam on Saturday. The tournament had no entry fee and guaranteed a 5,000 dollar first place prize as well as paying out the top 10. The tournament had around 200 boats. Entered in the tournament were a couple of local FLW tour pro’s as well as local guides on the lake so I knew there was going to be some competition.

I got down to the lake around 1 pm on Friday and put the boat in the water to check out some of the spots that have produced a lot of keepers for me in the past up by the dam. All I could gather from practice was what areas I would not be fishing in the tournament. One of the biggest problems was that there was no current being generated which was changing the way the fish were positioned on the ledges that had been so fruitful in the past. Instead of the fish being positioned on tops of the ledges on a 15 to 20 foot break and just on the drops the fish seemed to be suspended out in 25 to 30 feet of water on the base of the drop offs on the channel bottom or out in open water. Not much was showing up on the depth finder on top of the ledges. Whenever there is current the fishing is a lot easier because the bass will pop up on top of the ledges and get tight to the bottom. Since there was no current the fish were backed out off the ledges and I knew it was going to be a grinder for me because I’m still learning how to catch these fish.

Going into the tournament I knew where a couple of rock piles where out in 25 to 30 feet of water that I had found in previous visits to the lake. I hadn’t checked these spots yet so I thought it would probably be a good place to start. When my boat number 83 was finally called I tore out of the marina and headed full speed to the first deep rock pile. I had on the deck a 3/4 oz OMEGA football jig that I had added a custom made skirt that was watermellon candy with a couple of strips of firetiger on the belly that I had created with the Naked Bait Co skirt expander and a 10 inch green pumpkin Power Worm. When I got to the spot I found another boat already sitting on it working it over. He wasn’t fishing the rock pile though but fishing about 30 yards to the right of where it was so I idled on over to the spot and noticed that he wasn’t in the tournament. After a couple of words were exchanged he said it was fine for me to fish the spot too. I pulled out the rod with the power worm and made repeated casts to the rockpile and on the 8th or 9th cast I got a solid thump and set the hook on a 3lb bass and quickly swung it in the boat.

I picked up the rod and put a new worm on it and threw it right back to the rock pile hoping that I had just gotten a school of bass stirred up. Well after about 8 or 9 more casts with no luck I picked up the football jig and started stroking it on the rock pile and bagged up another 3lber. The fish just about too the rod out of my hands. Having two keepers in the boat for about 6lbs before 7 am I was feeling pretty good but I knew to have any chance I would have to catch some 5 and 6 pounders. Kentucky Lake has so many big fish that if you are not catching 5 and 6 pounders you don’t have a prayer.

After not getting any more bites I decided it was time to make a move to another deep rockpile. On the first cast I caught a short on the worm and went a little while without another bite. I picked up the football jig and hit the rockpile a couple of times and finally got a solid thump and set the hook on another 3lber and swung it in the boat. The fish had the jig all the way down it’s throat but I didn’t need a 3lber I needed one about 4 or 5 lbs. I fished the area without another bite and made a move to another rock pile that sat in 30 feet of water. After a couple of casts to the pile I boated a short and then as I was snapping the jig up off the bottom my rod about doubled over and I set the hook on a 4lber and walked it around the boat a couple of times and swung it into the boat. The jig was all the way down it’s throat.

It was about noon and I didn’t have to be back for weigh in till 3:30 I had plenty of time to check some other locations. I pulled up on this hump up by the dam and caught a short off it on the football jig and then didn’t get any more bites. The day after the tournament I caught a 5lber off the hump so guess I just didn’t time it right. Since nothing was biting I made a move to a rocky main lake point that I have fished in the past with some luck. On about the 3rd cast I got a bite at the end of the cast. I reared back to set the hook and my rod was doubled over. I quickly put the rod down to try and keep the fish from jumping but the 4lber shot up and threw my 1 oz jig. It hurt so much to lose that fish.

It had been a while since I had fished that rockpile that I started on so it was time to make the trip back down lake to hit it again to see if it had reloaded. I managed to pull a couple of shorts off it and then lose another 2lber at the boat because I had tried to swing it and it hit the side of the boat. A 2lb fish on Kentucky Lake isn’t going to help you out at all anyways so it was pretty easy to shake loosing that one off. I rotated through the rockpiles that had produced earlier and just couldn’t get anything off them.

Time was starting to run out and the day wasn’t getting any better. My lack of practice was going to hurt me. All the obvious spots were covered up with boats and I tried joining the party on a couple of the holes but nobody was getting bit. Since the Marina wasn’t off limits to fishing I decided to make a run back to the Marina to fish the last 15 minutes of my day away to try and pick up one more keeper. I was mentally exhausted from battling the heat and boat traffic and I knew that it would take culling all my fish or catching a 10lber to even have a shot at getting in the money because my day had been so slow.

When I weighed in my 4 keepers went 13lbs and it wasn’t good enough to get in the money. I ended up somewhere in the 30′s and was pretty disappointed with how I fished but I guess it could have been a lot worse. The tournament took 19lbs to get into the top 10 and 28lbs to win. That 4lber that I wasn’t able to get in the boat would have made it close. I would have had around 17lbs but I guess that is why they call it fishing instead of catching. The last couple of tournaments I just haven’t been able to control the variables. In order to do good you have to be able to execute when it counts. I’m sorry for no fish photos from the tournament. Since it was so hot the fish after weigh in were released as quickly as possible to try and ensure their survival.

Gear:
7 Foot AiRRUS Co Matrix Rod, 15lb Flurocarbon Line on the Jig, 12lb Fluorocarbon Line on the Worm, 3/4 oz OMEGA Football Jig, 10 Inch Berkley Power Worm Green Pumpkin t rigged on a 5/16th oz bullet weight with Honey Hole Hook.

BassEast is heading out to Vegas on Tuesday, July 13 for ICAST 2010.  From the start of the show on Wednesday through the conclusion on Friday afternoon, we’ll be blogging live from the show floor right here on BassEast Blog.  Alongside the tons of video and featured content we’ll post on the BassEast homepage, be sure to follow the blog throughout the day to see what’s up straight from the show!

Just got back from spending a week in Paris. No, I didn’t make a trip to Europe but I was in Paris, Tennessee competing in the Boat. U.S. Collegiate Open presented by Pepsi on Kentucky Lake. The Boat U.S. tournaments are very popular among collegiate anglers and feature some of the stiffest competition you will come across at the collegiate level. The tournament had 65 boats, 36 teams, from all different parts of the country. There were teams from as far away as Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina participating in the tournament. Most of the Boat U.S. college tournaments have been held in the south the past couple of years so when I heard there was one coming to Kentucky Lake I thought this might be my only shot at getting to fish one and see what it was all about.

The first day of practice I didn’t get to determine a whole lot as I had some motor troubles that ended my day a little short. I had a stuck solenoid that I was able to fix myself when I got off the water. During the day I was only able to locate a couple of schools of smaller bass that wouldn’t have amounted to much for the tournament.

The second day of practice I hit the lake a lot harder and I spent the whole day fishing off shore points, ledges, and steeper banks. I was able to catch a couple of 3lb fish on a few stretches but fishing out deep seemed to be like finding a needle in a haystack. One of the problems that you run into on the southern part of Kentucky Lake is that there is just so much bottom structure. You can fish for miles ledges that look just perfect that have bait and fish on them and not get a bite. My depth finder on my consul also wasn’t working properly and I don’t own GPS yet so eliminating stretches of the ledges was a lot more work than it probably had to be.

After a tough day of fishing deep I decided to go out on my third day of practice to see if I could get on a shallow topwater bite. It’s been my experience that there can be an early bite on Kentucky Lake in the shallows and that you can catch some nice fish on a topwater. During this day of practice I had hooked into about 3 keepers in the 3lb range and caught about 40 fish in the first two hours or running some flat banks in the backs of the creeks. I spent some time flipping some shallow cover and docks that I now wish I had spent that time and effort fishing out on the ledges.

The last day of practice I put in and did some more searching for an early topwater bite and didn’t end up finding any more areas. I also spent some time cranking some ledges and caught one skinny 15inch bass that came off a shell bed. The ledge was a ways off the main river channel and I didn’t see it being something that would replenish from day to day with new fish so I wrote it off.

So after spending four days of searching I had found one early morning spot that I hope would produce a couple of fish and one ledge that I thought might hold some fish for the tournament. It was a pretty rough practice for me but there was no way of knowing what kind of potential my spots would have as I didn’t fish them hard at all during practice. Whenever I stuck a fish I would just leave the area or keep on moving.

My partner Mike McCarthy got down the night before the tournament and I told him that we would start shallow and then go hit a ledge that I though would have some fish on it. Mike wasn’t able to get down to practice with me cause he couldn’t get away from work.

Tournament:

We blasted off and headed to my early morning spot and Mike was able to hook up with a nice fish in the 2 and a half pound range on a rattle trap. The fish came off the hook at the boat and I got the net on it just in time. We pounded out the area some more but we only had that one keeper fish to show for it. I was hoping we would get a couple more fish in the morning but the wind had changed directions on tournament day and the fish were not schooling up like they were just days before on top.

I decided it was time to make a move out to the ledge were I had caught some keepers in practice. We got to the spot and the wind was blowing right across the ledge which made holding on it a bit difficult. I had to keep my 70lb thrust trolling motor going on high the whole time. Mike was able to put another keeper in the boat that went about 3 and a half pounds and one more keeper off the spot. I was catching a couple of shorts but Mike with a fresh outlook on things had turned us onto throwing brush hogs on the back of our jigs. For some reason they seemed to be liking the way that brush hog was falling. We stopped getting bites and decided to let the spot rest.

We fished on down the ledge for about a half an hour and then came back to the sweet spot and I finally caught a keeper that went about 5lbs on my Omega Jig tipped with a brush hog. What was interesting about the fish was that it had one of my Omega football jigs in it’s gullet from a couple of days before. I had broken off a fish on the spot in practice and well I guess I caught the same fish again. We fished the spot for about another half an hour without a bite and I decided it was time to make a move.

We ran to my next spot and Mike was able to boat our 5th keeper and I was able to catch another keeper that didn’t count for our limit. We thought we had about 15 to 16lbs. Everyone that I had talked to said that the bite was pretty though so I though that we might be able to crack the top 10 after the first day with what we had. We weighed in our fish for 16.36 lbs and ended up in 11th place after day one. If we could have another day like our first day I felt that we would be able to stay in the top 10.

The second day of the tournament things just went bad from the start. The underwater tree that we caught almost all our fish off on day one had gotten moved from the current about 25 yards or so from where it was originally. They hadn’t been generating water all week and the evening of the 1st day they were drawing a lot more water that moved the tree. The tree was now on a 9 foot flat instead of having it’s branches extending into 14 feet on the left and 18 feet on the right with the base of the tree in 9 feet. All those depth changes on the tree before probably had helped to make it a bass magnet.

The tree was still holding some fish but we continued to have bad luck as Mike hooked up with a fish that would have been over 4lbs that somehow managed to wrap itself around the underwater tree we had been fishing all week and break him off. The fish had been wrapped around the tree on his line for a good 10 minutes and just wouldn’t swim out or unwrap itself. We took the boat into the spot and probably spooked the fish in the area in the process. We left the spot and then came back about an hour later and our bad luck would continue as I lost one about 3 and a half pounds off the tree. The fish bit me as I was pausing to take a drink of water and I reeled down and hammered him but he managed to shoot up about 3 feet out of water and throw the 1oz football head.

We went a while without a bite and I was starting to get bit again by dragging the jig on the bottom really slow. I caught a couple of shorts and finally got keeper number one in the boat. It was a 16 inch fish that fell victim to a 1oz brown and orange Omega football head that I pulled off a ledge. We returned to our primary area and didn’t get any more fish and the day was wearing on. We went back to the take off and fished the release area a bit as it wasn’t off limits. Mike managed to bag up 3 more keepers back there on the brush hog to give us 4 fish for about 10lbs.

Our lost fish on the second day bumped us down to 15th place on the tournament. We could have had about 15 to 16lbs on the second day if we had managed to get those key fish we missed in the boat. While I never got onto that 22 to 24lb sack of fish that was needed to win I didn’t feel too bad about having a shot at 16lbs a day on a part of the lake that I have never fished before.

After talking to the winners and everyone else that did good in the tournament it seemed like most of the anglers were on just one spot the whole week that produced their fish. It wasn’t like anyone was running a pattern all over the lake and just catching fish off a bunch of spots. The fish seemed to be pretty grouped up down there right now and if you can find the spot on a spot you will do well. I know that the team that got 1st place and 4th place fished boat to boat on the same spot all the way up by the dam. Other teams in the top 10 fished went even further south to catch their fish.

Even though things didn’t work out from the tournament I am walking away with more experience with deep water ledge fishing on Kentucky Lake as well as knowing what it’s like to camp out in 90 degree plus heat all week while sleeping in your truck. The skeeters were just thirsty for blood and I didn’t get much sleep. I went into the tournament with a 200 dollar budget. That was for gas in the truck to get to the lake and back, gas in the boat, food, fishing licenses, and tackle. For all you younger anglers out there that want to compete just remember that you will get want you want if are willing to sacrifice. Where there is a will there is a way.

One tip I have for you if you are planning on hitting up Kentucky Lake soon is to add some orange to your baits. It seemed like the bass at Kentucky Lake were liking some orange in your jig. I was able to modify my jig skirts during the week with the Naked Bait Company Skirt expander and it seemed to help put more fish in the boat as my practice went on. Try a PBNJ skirt with about four strips of orange in it or a green pumpkin brush hog with orange in the tips.

Gear:
Omega Jig: 7 foot Medium Heavy AiRRUS Co Matrix Rod 15lb fluorocarbon line.
Brush Hog: 7 foot Medium Heavy AiRRRUS Co Matrix Rod 15lb fluorocarbon line.
Rattle Trap: 7 Foot Medium Copperhead Cranking Stick 12lb fluorocarbon line.