How to Catch PreSpawn Bass

Alright guys today we're going to do a little recap video on how I caught my fish on the second stop of the Bass Mash Lucie Reeves on the Tennessee River out of Knoxville Tennessee and after this I'm going to race that RC boat behind me because that sucker's going about 65 miles an hour and I think I can crush that thing he's definitely going to get me out the hole but I think I can catch up to him in the long run so going after we get done this recap drifted on me bad gumming if you want to get you some coffee to drip on you whenever you can welcher 15 will get you 15 off black rifle coffee right now I've had that code for a couple videos now haven't told you all that you want to make an order your first order only welcher 15 15 percent off and you can you can drip it on your nice striker active pants also so let me uh dig out my rods I used it might even drip onto your ranger yeah you never know you just never know you might could drip it anywhere you want it so gotta dig the rods out and give you a little review of how I caught them so let's go all right guys I'm gonna start with the least amount of fish caught on a bait and go towards the most amount of fish caught on a bait the I only caught three I only caught fish on three different baits one bait was the one that I threw the most being a flat side crankbait we'll get to that at the very end I'll show you all the exact setup that I used for everything that I was fishing in that exact tournament so term has been over and I've been fishing a couple of times since then so I have changed out the exact baits on these rods to some different colors some different weights and stuff like that just for the conditions I've had at home in Alabama but these are the exact setups that I was using up there just a little bit different baits on there so number one I was actually using a three-eighths ounce finesse jig like I cut the skirt down very small I was throwing a little chunk style trailer on the back and I was throwing a three-eighths ounce up around some of these docks whenever it was super sunny on day one that's one of the things I did and I caught a few fish on that only one keeper though on a little three-eighths ounce jig and I was actually throwing that on 18 pound shooter because I was downsize the jig big time so I went to a thinner line that'll give me a little bit more of a natural fall rate and I was only fishing you know two and a half to four feet deep under most of these docks so I went ahead and went to a three-eighths ounce jig give me a little slower fall keep me make me go a little bit slower and I'd work that bait extremely slow trying to catch those fish because the water temp was only 45 degrees so seven foot three heavy point blank rod that I built myself this one has all titanium guides an eight to one shimano reel this is actually the titanium I was using to skip one of those docks and like I said 18 pound shooter around the docks and that was my number one setup I only caught one keeper on I only caught one keeper on it on day one on the rest of the days I pretty much caught them on these other two baits so I really tried a lot to fish a ton of docks in this tournament because there was some really good bites to be had around docks and the number one bait that I was using because we had a lot of wind a lot of rain and a lot of overcast conditions I was able to skip just a vibrating jig underneath the underneath the docks this one in particular is actually a half ounce jackhammer z-man chatterbait I can say the brand because I'm not sponsored by any company that makes these but it's basically just a standard jackhammer and what I was able to do first off I'm gonna show you the trailer I was using I was using a very streamlined trailer that does not catch a lot of water and the reason for that was it's easier for me to keep that bait down like four feet deep whenever I have a bait that's really you know doesn't have much water resistance on back it's just a very streamlined trailer I can get that bait down a little bit deeper and I can reel it relatively slowly and still keep it down deeper and the trailer is not gonna add any drag and cause the bait to lift up very much so that's the bait that I was throwing the most around the docks and I actually tried a lot in the tournament I'd fish a stretch of docks I thought was super good I might catch a fish or two underneath them I would turn around and go back through flipping a jig or flipping a worm and I never got a bite fishing behind myself so it really allowed me to on the end of days two and three to really cover a ton of water and go extremely fast with this chatterbait because I never felt like I was fishing over fish because whenever I went back and fished slower I never caught another one so the setup I was throwing this on is a seven foot three medium heavy point blank rod a seven to one gear ratio shimano reel this is actually a chronarch this is 18 pound shooter also fish around them docks in that cold water I wanted to downsize line just a little bit just to give that vibrating jig a little bit more vibration and help me fish that bait a little bit deeper because the main depth I wanted to be in was in the four to five foot depth range I caught some out of like two and a half to three but mostly it was around that four foot range so this is the bait that I was able to cover a ton of water with skip it under a lot of docks I caught a bunch of fish on this bait every single day but primarily short fish it was very difficult to catch a 14-incher on that lake it was you know surprisingly difficult actually so the last rod is the most important one of the week and I have changed colors during the week I was actually throwing a more brown and a little bit of red crawfish pattern with a brown body I mean with a bright orange belly but this right here is just a flat-sided crankbait this one is actually the SPRO little jar that's about what I was throwing in the tournament was just a flat-sided bait like this really important deal I found one crankbait that I felt like I could get the most bites on this one because it seemed to thump the hardest so I was actually changing hooks every single day I was putting a new set of number five Gamakatsu treble hooks on the same crankbait every single day and what I was really doing with this is I was trying to find isolated drops on the flattest banks that I could find and I was like like if I could find a super flat bank that might have had one little place where it dropped off just a little bit deeper a little bit faster I would really throw this bait and make multiple casts to the same place and I would get this bait down in three three and a half four feet and I would reel this bait as slow as I possibly can and just you know retain that bottom contact and I could feel this bait thumping coming back to me and I was fishing it as slow as I possibly can in these high percentage areas and the rod I was throwing this on this is actually a seven foot crank and blank custom built this myself this is a seven to one Shimano reel and 10 pound sunline shooter line that's the exact setup that I was throwing like I said this is not the exact crank that I was throwing because I have put this one on later to imitate more shad whereas up there in the Knoxville area I was imitating crayfish primarily so I had on a brown and red one but still a flat-sided crankbait nonetheless nonetheless and then I had you know like I said 10 pound line so that's the main deals that I was trying to to use to cover the water that I was covering the biggest thing that I found that week fishing on the Tennessee River is there was a major biting window every single day and on day one I missed both of the major biting windows and then on day two I kind of figured out when the major biting window was and I caught them all late in the day and then on day three I realized that was the major biting window and then at the end of the day I went and I tried to implement the same exact patterns that I had put at the correct time of the day and I just happened to lose a couple fish on the last day which is fine you're going to lose a few every once in a while on days one and two I never lost a fish that would have helped me on day three I definitely did I lost one pretty dang big largemouth and then a couple more small ones that would have really helped me a ton but that's all right that's going to happen from time to time day one the issue was I missed the major biting windows but it really didn't seem to matter the baits that I used and I felt like on day one I just went a hair too slow so only weighed in like four pounds on day one then we caught two big smallmouth on day two both of those were on the flat side of crankbait and I think on day two four or maybe all five of my fish came on the flat side of crankbait and on day three one came on the flat side of crankbait and all the other ones came on the chatterbait so it just kind of changed you just had to cover as much water as you could and whenever you got a bite on something just pray that it was at least 14 inches so that's what I did on the Tennessee River hope y'all enjoyed that I really do apologize about the camera problems that we had that that week we couldn't get it together this whole year so far we have not gotten it together as far as YouTube goes in the tournaments St. John's I cracked my lens somehow got water in the lens ruined like two and a half days of footage on Tennessee River day two for whatever reason the camera froze and we missed the last half of the day whenever I caught all the fish somehow we missed it so we just haven't gotten it together yet but we're gonna work harder do better we'll have at least two or three cameras running all day long so we'll have some footage no matter what from now on but we had some camera issues so didn't have that so far but we're gonna do better I promise you so if you want to see the videos we do a little better on hit the subscribe button turn the notification bell on so you don't miss anything and we will see y'all in the next video I'm about to go film one right now because I know what's happening let's go catch them in Alabama but we'll see y'all pick week is coming up one week from now so check back you don't want to miss those videos