As a tournament angler at times you need to know your competition, especially when it comes to vague information given via the Internet or what others may say to you. We all do it without knowing that the information we're posting can be figured out by someone, somewhere, somehow. Just about a week before the tournament that myself and partner Mike "Color Me Fishin" Skwira were to fish, a post by one of the Bad Water Boyz hit one of the Bass Forum board of a Chicago area web site. I was intrigued by the post and kept on rereading the post, trying to come up with a location that fit the description, which was difficult because there are so many to choose from. It bugged me for days trying to put this puzzle together and it really didn't hit me until two days before the tournament.

I'm out at Bedford Sales - Morris when like a thunderbolt from above, it hits me. Wham, Bam! It's not in the post. It's by knowing the habits of the poster of the report. What I surmised was when this Bad Water Boy goes fishing his time is limited, so long boat rides are out of the question. Having to get a line wet is the utmost importance to him. This broke it down to areas close to a launch that are only minutes away. Running it through my mind I'm recalling the areas around most of the ramps, minutes, only minutes, minutes, only minutes. Wham, Bam, Clarkes Shoal……….Where else? None. Clarkes Shoal must be it and it's off to the tackle aisles for a few supplies. No, not for those 5-inch tubes. Those Bad Boyz can throw them; I don't like them, too much bait, too little jig hook at the back-end of the bait unless its Texas rigged on a 4/O or 5/O offset worm hook. Then the bait's great for flipping or pitching grass, brush, brush piles; took thirteenth in 99 B.A.S.S. Oklahoma tournament using them, but pulling a bullet weight in the rocks is just asking for trouble.

I'm pushing to get home now, hoping to get the boat hooked up and go take a look-see. Maybe can make the water by 2:30 PM. The closer I get to Chicago the darker the skies becoming. It's a no-go for today; it's raining so hard that I have to put the wipers on the highest setting. The fronts just keep moving in for the rest of the day and I have plans to meet with "Color Me Fishin" tonight. At Mike's house that evening I give Mike my theory on why we should dedicate our Saturday pre-fish time on Clarks Shoal. We both agree and plans are made to be on the water by 6 AM.

Saturday 8/2, 6 AM

Launch and make the run in less than three minutes. Like I said before only minutes….. We start out by the red buoy and work our way in. Mike running a custom painted "Color Me Fishin" crank bait (You would have to ask him the color, I don't know, they're his color names!) And I'm slinging a three quarter ounce all chartreuse Nichols spinner bait, changing the retrieve pattern on every other cast, burning, slow roll, stop and go, stop with a flutter, or steady retrieve. The latter pattern gets me two bumps and three follows and these fish look to be keepers. Mike tags one but it's short, we keep moving inward over the shoal. I pick up a tube and start with a long cast pulling the bait back to the boat. No fish for the efforts. We keep moving, moving, and moving. Inside, outside, and between the many breaks in the shoal. The wind has calmed a bit and at around 10 AM you could actually see the smallmouth roaming the area. We both stop fishing just to observe their movement.

Surprise, I spot one that seems to be sitting on a bed. Telling Mike I position the boat so as to have the sun at my back. This makes it harder for the fish to see you. This technique allows you to get closer to the bedded area where a more accurate cast can be made. You also need to be careful making sure you don't cast a shadow over the bed; this defeats using the sun as a blinder.

Pitching a smoked (old Berkley style) single tail grub on a three-eight ounce ball jig the smallie aggressively murders the intruder on the first presentation. It was amazing to see this fish attack the bait like it did, I mean it didn't even give the bait time to come close to its nesting area. As I'm reeling her to the boat we both note the four other smallies with her, fighting to get the bait from her. Mike rushes to pitch a tube at them but they're gone before he can get a cast to them. Landing the fish, she's a heavy at around four plus pounds. We could use her tomorrow, so I GPS the spot and we start looking for more beds which doesn't take but thirty feet and again one cast to land another keeper. Hit the GPS button and kept moving to find another nester. As we're moving we're fan casting the area and Mike hits another keeper. Again as the fish gets closer to the boat I note some companions with his fish and make a cast to the area. The bait was barely in the water before it was hammered.

We're both happy with the results of the last thirty minutes. Four solid fish in the boat that have some good weight to them. I estimate around ten and a half to eleven pounds. We sit and strategize what we had just found. Why were these fish so much more aggressive then shallower bedding fish? Why did some of these fish have companions following the hooked fish? Why were we catching fish when we knew that area had no bedding fish? Did we just luck into these fish? Would they be here tomorrow? All good questions that needed some answers! It's part of the three W's a tournament angler needs to know. Where, When, and Why, with Why, being the most important.

Let's take one question at a time and see if it makes any sense:
Why were these fish so much more aggressive then shallower bedding fish?
Over the years I have found that shallower bedding smallmouth are less aggressive because of the effort it takes to defend that bed. It's more likely that the fish expends more energy and tires faster in that defense. The food chain is of more abundance in shallower water than deep, which makes shallow bedding smallmouth get less and less aggressive with each passing day. These fish get so tired at times that they actually give up defending its nested eggs. It's a choice between life and death. Compare that to the deep-bedded smallmouth where they may not see an intruder for days making them more aggressive and ready to attack if an intruder even comes close to its nesting area.

Why did some of these fish have companions following the hooked fish?
It's very rare for spawning smallmouth to have more than one companion along side it after it is hooked. But when it comes to schooling smallmouth this is a very common occurrence. Clarke's Shoal supported four types of smallmouth that week, pre-spawn, spawn, post-spawn, and feeding schools of smallmouth. We hit the mother lode of patterns. When one didn't work we could easily move to another with successful results.

Why were we catching fish when we knew that area had no bedding fish?
Again, Clarke's Shoal held all four types of smallmouth that week and was answered in the question above.

Did we just luck into these fish?
No, not at all, remember we knew that these fish were located somewhere on Clarke's Shoal and we made a commitment to find them. Pre-fishing for a tournament is more about eliminating water and finding a working fishing pattern. We were lucky with being able to choose from four patterns. We were able to eliminate unproductive water on Clarke's Shoal, which let us concentrate on only a few areas of the shoal that were producing quality keeper smallmouth.

Would they be here tomorrow?
Weather, wind direction, current, and sunlight penetration dictates a lot when it comes to patterning smallmouth. None are a sure thing and like most smallmouth waters, "Here one day, Gone the next". We knew for sure that the bedded smallmouth would be there and that all we needed to do was get the bait in the area of the beds seeing that these deep bedded smallmouth were so aggressive. GPS-ing these beds were part of the game plan on Saturday, marking into the Lowrance X-15 CI GPS / SONAR unit nine GPS locations. This was done just in case we couldn't relocate them on Sunday for whatever reason that the weather threw at us. As far as the other patterns that produced, there are no guarantees when dealing with schooling smallmouth, "Here one day, Gone the next". All we could do was hope they would still be there and if not, we would have to relocate them somewhere on the shoal. Also working in our favor was that the weather was going to be pretty much the same with only wind direction changing throughout the day and any big changes were predicted for late afternoon.

Where, When, and Why?
Clarke's Shoal is a natural reef shoal to the southern basin of Lake Michigan. It's a key location throughout the year and produces quality smallmouth when you can figure out how to pattern getting a hook into them. Tournament fishing is a lot different than fun fishing. I love them both. So when it comes to fun fishing I'm looking for numbers no matter the size, just as long as something is pulling on the end of my line. Smallmouth, Largemouth, Freshwater Drum, Rock Bass, Carp, Salmon, or a Walleye, makes no difference to me. Just love the pull, the fight.

Tournament fishing is a totally different mindset. I see so many anglers making the mistake of going for numbers and hoping for that keeper bite. Sure it's great to hook-up with thirty or forty fish to maybe land three keeper size bass, but it takes time to catch those types of fish. For me the key to tournament fishing is six quality hook-ups, not numbers and sometimes you have to keep moving to find them. I'll play the odds and take my chances and most times remembering the three W's will pay off.

Well, Mike and I are back at the ramp by twelve noon and home by one PM and were prepared with a game plan for the tournament. Boat draw in the morning is not an issue, but an early draw would only help.

Sunday August 3, 2003 Tournament Day

We're off and running by 5:50 AM. There's a good cloud cover, which makes the GPS marking useful. Mike puts us in the area of the first GPS location and I start fan casting the area after placing a fishing buoy near the first bedded smallmouth. Mike starts out throwing that custom painted "Color Me Fishin" Rat-L-Trap and puts two keepers in the boat. I follow with a quality keeper, making it three totaling about seven pounds. Mike hooks up again with another good keeper, making our weight just below ten pounds. My turn with a keeper and we're up to about twelve pounds in five fish. Mike put the sixth keeper in the boat right after just losing a hook-up minutes before. Its nine AM, a limit (6) of fish in the boat totaling about thirteen and half pounds. The wind is beginning to die, the ripples on the water are calming, and the sun is starting to peek out from the cloud cover of the morning. This put us into a search and destroy mission with locating the bigger smallmouth on the beds.

Bingo! I find, hook, and land into the net the biggest smallmouth of the tournament; a hefty 3.60 lbs. and we cull a "Color Me Fishin" smallie of 1.7 lbs., which just touched the fourteen-inch line on the golden ruler. We're hunting and hunting and Mike keeps putting those Rat-L-Trap fish in the boat until he loses both custom- painted "Color Me Fishin" baits. In total I think Mike hooked up with ten to twelve smallmouth on those baits; we both stopped counting, and Mike was able to cull up our weight. At around 11:30 I locate a three pounder on a bed and again out goes the fishing buoy. The fishing buoy marks the general area of the location of the bed, not directly on it. It's hard at times to stay on a location in open water without defined landmarks.

The wind has switched directions and is now coming from the southeast and increased in MPH, putting 1 to 1 ˝ foot waves on the shoal. The wind speed keeps increasing and I'm having a hard time getting this three-pound smallie to bite. Her bed is positioned on an angle on a downside point of the shoal, making for placing the bait directly in the bed difficult because of the wave current. After upping the jig weight three times she hits the net with a one-ounce green/pumpkin tube jig in her mouth. I figured this fish pushed us to around fourteen pounds at 12:30 PM and two hours before we're due in. The clouds are building and the afternoon showers predicted for the day are starting to show. By one PM the skies open all around us with heavy downpours along with the thunder and lightning. Time to put the rods down and sit it out if we can. Around 2 PM I locate another good-sized fish and I work her for fifteen minutes but we need to make sure we make weigh-in and fire up the Mercury 225 OptiMax and head my 520 Ranger back. Our total for the day was 15.70 lbs., a First Place finish and the Big Bass Pot. We figured that we had caught about three limits for the day with two of the patterns found yesterday working.

It shows that reading posted fishing reports and using the Internet's super highway of fishing information can make for a successful day out on the water, tournaments or just plain fun fishing. It also helps knowing your competitor's tendencies and habits that can pay off dividends for a successful day. Having a game plan and working, as a team both in tournament pre-fishing and on tournament day will afford you a better opportunity to having a shoot at the brass ring.

Just a note in closing, the color name of the custom painted "Color Me Fishin" Rat-L-Trap is called "Team BS".

Edward D. Bohn