09/23/04

"The first thing you might think is duh, I always want to catch big fish.  This is not always possible.  When I won the BASS Central Open on Sam Rayburn, I had several areas where I kid you not, I could literally catch a keeper bass every cast.  In fact, that was my strategy each day, go out and get a limit, then try to get a better fish.  It's tough to leave keepers that are biting, but to win, you have to do some things that are unconventional sometimes.  At this same tournament, I had some spots that I had caught big ones on before, but all of my pre fish, I only had two bites, but again, they were big.  I weighed in 15 keepers in the three day event, 9 were the best of the small ones I could catch, and six came from the big fish spot.  I could not have won on the big fish spot, because there simply were not enough of those big bites to do."

"While my keepers would bite a top water or Carolina Rigged worm, I opted to go with a big fish approach while fishing my big fish waters.  Again, it takes a lot of discipline to leave biters to fish for one or two bites each day.  To target the big fish, I resolved to through big, deep diving crank baits around deeper stumps and trees.  I wanted only to get the attention of big fish, it fact, it was kind of like I was daring them to bite."

"I don't believe that most tournaments can be won targeting only big fish.  Sam Rayburn was a good example of this.  On day one, I struggled to get an early limit, so that by the time I reached my big fish spot, I had a couple of hours to fish there.  The one bite I got was about a three and half pounder.  On day two, I had about one extra hour to fish the spot and was able to weigh in two five pounders.  On the third day, I caught a limit by 9:30 AM and was able to fish the rest of the day for big fish only.  I had three big bites that day.  Six bites, but they were all big ones."

"It was agonizing to fish for so few bites.  It was a little bit easier knowing that I already had five in the live well."