Texas Pro Brings 13-7 Limit On Day 3 and Wins the Classic

 Story by Brent Conway - Photos by Mark Jeffreys 

Greenville, SC. – This is the one…the winner-take-all tournament where the only thing that matters is victory, and it all came down to the final pass across the weigh-in stage in the Bi-Lo center Sunday. Just being in the mix on the last day of the Classic is a common goal that each 50-man field shared when the event started. 

Unfortunately, unless you managed to make it to the top 25 Saturday you were most likely working a sponsor’s booth over at the Classic Expo. In reality, unless you were inside the top 10 at the conclusion of the second day of competition – actually more like the top five – your chances of being the last man standing were slim. 

The weather is always a factor in every tournament, and the Classic was no exception this week at South Carolina’s Lake Hartwell. Conditions flip-flopped every single day of the event making pattern fisherman wince in pain as they tried to make daily adjustments. 

Alton Jones was the guy the other 24 anglers were all chasing Sunday morning after the Waco, TX angler surged up from the 10th-place spot to claim the lead the day before. On his heals were some of the biggest names in the sport – one of them being the baddest man in the business.

Looking for his first Classic title in 11 attempts, Alton needed just over eight pounds to clinch the win by the time he reached the scales. With a five-fish limit weighing 13-7 Sunday, Alton’s dream was realized. His final combined weight of 49-7 gave him a five-pound cushion over second place and the title of Champion of the 38th Bassmaster Classic. 

Mississippi pro Cliff Pace opened the week with a limit weighing nearly 19 pounds, but like most, he saw his weights decline over the course of the next two days. He managed to scrape together a limit weighing 11-0 on the final day – enough to unseat VanDam from the lead, but with a total weight of 44-5 only enough for second place.

Kevin VanDam is rarely far from the top of any tournament he’s in, and his 18th Classic was no different. Starting the final day of competition in fourth place, he came to the stage needing just 10-7 to claim the lead. VanDam laid 11-7 on the scales instead giving him a momentary lead, but his combined weight of 43-8 over three days forced him to settle for a third-place finish.

Bobby Lane proved that the Open guys mean business as he remained in contention all three days. Lane brought a limit weighing 12-10 in his final effort, but lost four ounces due to a fish care penalty. His three-day combined weight of 42-7 was good enough to finish his first Classic in fourth place.

Greg “The Hack Attack” Hackney managed to remain consistent all week, regardless of the weather. By bringing 10-12 to the Bi-Lo center Sunday, Hackney managed to finish in fifth place with a three-day total weight of 41-7 for his best Classic appearance in five previous attempts.

Oklahoma pro Jeff Kreit showed up all week long in his fifth Classic appearance. Starting the day in fifth place, Kreit only managed three fish Sunday for 9-4, giving him three-day total weight of 40-15 and 6th place overall.

1st Place: Alton Jones
In 11 tries, bass fishing’s brass ring had eluded the affable pro from Waco-land…until today. “This is the fulfillment of a dream I’ve had since childhood,” Alton told The BASS ZONE. “Alton Jr. practiced with me all week long, so he really feels like this victory is partially his – and I think that’s just awesome!”

“Most of these bass at Hartwell spend the majority of their time chasing herring and suspending over the flooded timber. So what I did was find the outside edge of the timber adjacent to channel drops. I would literally position my boat parallel to the timber and make long casts to the edge. If they were there, I could call my shots.”

All week long Alton would use a one-two punch of the C.C. Spoon early and a combination of Booyah jigs as the spoon bite deteriorated. “I was just trying to stay focused all week, so I would set doable goals,” he said. “I would constantly remind myself to catch the next bass, or to make every cast count. In fact, I would actually say those things out loud all day throughout the event.”

“As poorly as I’d done today compared to the other days, I just never dreamed before lunch that I had a chance. But coming in with a limit – and two of them over three pounds – I started to think that just maybe it was my turn.”

With weather changing the bass’ feeding habits daily (if not hourly), had the deep timber bite eroded on the final day, Jones suggested that he didn’t have a back up in the wings – it was truly all or nothing. “I never really had a ‘plan b’,” he explained. “My game plan was simply do keep doing what I’d done all week. 

“My problem was that one of my deals – the C.C. spoon – was only working for 30 minutes early each day – and the window kept getting progressively smaller each day of competition. Once that bite was gone, I had to switch to the jigs. They wound up account for most of my meat this week.”

That statement is odd considering the fact that the spoon is a known fish dumper. “One of the problems with the spoon is that you lose a lot of fish,” Alton explained. “My philosophy is that spoon fish don’t get line shy, so when I hook one – to keep from losing it – I just winch it to the boat as fast as possible.”

Alton also added that being comfortable in his equipment allowed him to fish with complete confidence. “Being in your own boat is kind of like having a home field advantage,” he said. “I just knew exactly how everything was organized and how it was set up, so I just want to applaud BASS in allowing us to use our own equipment. It’s just a huge step forward.”

Regarding what he’d accomplished Sunday, Alton hadn’t really had enough time to digest the magnitude of it all. “I don’t really know how I feel right now,” he explained. “The biggest thing that I’m feeling right now is humility. I really don’t feel worthy to be in the same class of these guys who have one it before.”

Winning Baits:
¾ ounce C.C. Spoon in silver/17-lb Silverthread Fluorocarbon 
½ ounce Black and Purple Alton’s Go-To Jig and a Pig Skin Jig both tipped with a YUM 3.5 Inch Chunk in Black & Blue

“I would downgrade my line with the jigs because I was so far down into the trees that I wanted to be able to get bites, but still have the power to get them out of the rough stuff. The 14-pound Silverthread Fluorocarbon is a good combination of both of them.”

Rod/Reel:
Spoon: 6’6” Kistler Magnesium TX/ /Ardent SX1000. 
Jigs: 7’0” Kistler Med/Heavy/14-lb Silverthread Floro/Ardent SX1000.

Key to the win:
“Without a doubt, it was my side-imaging unit from Hummingbird. Without it, I would never have been able to find those outside edges of the timber. I had 30 feet of visibility on both side of the boat and it just put me on my game.

“Something else that was just real important was stealth. From my MinnKota trolling motor to the long casts I was making – both were just critical.”

“At the end of the day, it really all came down to just sticking with my plan. You could have the right bait and the right equipment, but without being in the right spot you would just beat yourself up. I found a plan and stuck with it.”

2nd Place: Cliff Pace
In his second Classic, Cliff’s goal was to make the most of every day and to make every opportunity count. In the hunt every day, Cliff was faced with his toughest day of the week Sunday. “Today was just a grind,” he said. “I thought we had the weather to really tear ‘em up, but it just never happened.

“When I left this morning, my goal was to use 100% of my day and not waste anytime. What happened to me today was that the majority of my fish pulled up to around 20 feet and just suspended.” 

“It got me off my plan a little bit because I found myself throwing a spoon trying to catch these suspending fish,” he added. “You can’t do that. I look back at my day, and can pinpoint a couple of times in the day where didn’t make my chances count.”

Coming in to competition this week, Pace’s plan was simple – get around bait and make every cast count. “This time of year, if you can get fish in a place where they chasing something you can sort of pen them up,” he explained. “For me, that was in the backs of pockets or channel swings.

“Early in the week, I was in the back of pockets in flooded timber. I moved from five feet deep the first day out to 46 feet today. It was all a matter of where the bait was. If the bait wasn’t there, you were wasting your time.”

Explaining his shallow-water bite, Cliff held no punches in saying that it wasn’t a magical pattern. Find the bait, and you find the fish. “The shallow water deal was just a no-brainer really,” he said. “I wasn’t around any particular type of cover. It was simply just a matter of being around the bait.”

Perhaps understating the ease of his shallow-water bite, Pace explained that his bait selection and presentation were both critical in his success. “When I was up shallow, the water was a little stained and the Buckeye Lures Su-Spin Blade has two blades that sort of click together,” he said. “The whole trick to it was to make long casts and just sort of slow roll it back.”

When the shallow bite died, Cliff had a deepwater bite working between a varied amount of plastics on a dropshot rig. Once again though the key was in his set up as he employed a 3/8-ounce Tungsten weight rigged 10 inches below his hook, which was tied to eight-pound 100% Berkley Flourocarbon.

“These fish here are just really finicky. It’s sort of like you have to force-feed them sometimes. Yesterday, I spent 20 minutes on one fish that I could see on my graph. I finally caught it, but you really had to work for every bite this week.”

On his second Classic appearance, and the upcoming Elite Series season, all things are good. “You can’t be disappointed when you finish second in the Classic,” he said. “Sure you want to win, but you have to put things in perspective – you’re fishing against 49 of the best.”

3rd Place: Kevin VanDam
If you spend a second around KVD, you know quickly that he’s one of the most competitive personalities in the world. Whatever the game, he wants to win. Anything short of that is disappointment. “It’s hard to take it all in right now, you know,” he said. 

“It was really hard this week to be consistent. It was probably the best practice I’ve ever had in a Classic. With the spectator boat traffic being light, and the pattern that I was on, I pretty much thought that I was bullet proof as a result.

“I’ve fished 18 Classics now, and if I’ve ever thought that I had a shot at winning it was this one.”

Being in the hunt out of the gate gave VanDam all the confidence that his practice had put him on the winning pattern. With the weather change, however, he had to find some stained water. “It was easy the first day,” he said. “I spent the day out on the main lake fishing little clay points. The second day, the sun popped out and it got a little tougher for me, but it was for everyone else too.”

Aside from being ultra-competitive, the other thing that makes KVD great is how quickly he can pull out key decisions that he made and decipher them into feedback. In this case, it was a late-day 180 that will give him heartburn. “I knew going out that I had to have a good bag before I left the launch this morning,” he said. 

“You have to trust your instincts, and I knew that my main lake fish wouldn’t bite in the sun, so I went up the river and caught a limit. The wind picked up and it started to rain a little bit, so I decided that my best chance was back where I was on the first day. By the time I got down lake, it had slicked off and the sun was out. 

“That was a bad decision because by the time I got down there, I didn’t have enough time to go back.”

Kevin caught all of his fish on one of two baits – either a StrikeKing Series Five in Blue Gizzard Shad or a Flat Shad in Sexy Shad. “When I was down lake fishing the herring, they were just bombing the Series Five,” he said. “I had to leave that deal today and go up river and pick up the Flat Shad.”

Ultimately, KVD the competitor emerges again and through the process of summarizing his tournament, it’s clear that third place doesn’t sit well. “I’m not real happy with my decision making this week,” he explained. “Hartwell is a tricky lake because of the blue back herring. They move around a lot and the fish follow them. 

“I can go back now and pick out places that I made mental mistakes, but I really thought that I had them wired here this week.”

4th Place: Bobby Lane
Making the jump from FLW to BASS, Bobby Lane joined brother Chris in the Classic this week. He made the switch for two reasons – the schedule, and the Classic. He made the most of his first Classic by spending time the final day in the Skeeter Hot seat. “When I first started out, of course – the Classic is always the goal,” he said, “but when I sat down on the Skeeter Hot Seat, reality sort of sunk in. 

“The week was just outstanding and was just an awesome, awesome experience.”

Alternating between a Crawfish colored Flicker Shad that he would drop shot on the deep sides of pockets and a Shad Rap #8, Bobby stayed in the mid-to-back of primary pockets off the main lake all week. I tried to fish the deeper pockets staying on a kind of Carolina pre-spawn deal,” he said. “I would concentrate on the deep site of the pockets up to around 36 foot.” 

Most of his weight the first two days came off the drop shot, or a spoon. Fortunately, he’d established a cranking bite earlier in the week. “Every morning I would start with the jigging spoon and drop shot,” he said. “Thank God for the crankbait because when I got to my first spot they just weren’t there. 

“I made a good decision and left them for my cranking fish,” he said. “I managed to put together a pretty good limit cranking today after only catching one other fish all week on a crankbait.”

5th Place: Greg Hackney
Greg Hackney finally got the Classic monkey off his back. Sure, he didn’t win, but in five previous attempts his best showing was 19th. “Maybe I kind of got out of the Classic jinx,” he said. “I thought about that coming in to the week because I’d had a good practice, but then I always have a good practice in the Classic. The Classic just sort of bites me every time, so I’m hoping that with this finish it got it all out of my system.” 

It all started with practice for The Hack Attack. Feeling sure that it would be won up shallow with the promise for warmer weather, he ran 20 minutes up river where the water had a little more color and tended to be on the warmer side found stained water in the backs of creeks and milked it for all he could. 

“I suck with two patterns all week,” he said. “One was fishing flats in certain creek arms where herring was present with a StrikeKing Flat Shad, and the other was quick tapering channel bends where bass were migrating back to the flats.

“When I was around the channel swings, I would switch up to a Series 3 which ran down to about seven feet. It would dig down the quick-tapering sides of the ditch and that seemed to trigger a lot of my strikes.”

The warmer water Greg was seeking was a veritable boil – both in temperature and feeding activity – during practice. “I actually found some 66-degree water during practice, and was actually throwing a buzz bait some,” he said. 

“There was a couple of times where they were feeding so aggressively that they came up on top, but when the cold front came in the water dropped down to 51 degrees during competition. As a result the deepwater thing for me was never really a factor. About the deepest I got out to was about 15 feet.”

Execution is everything, and this week Hackney lost two fish that, while not guaranteeing victory, would have at least made things more interesting. “I lost two bites this week that hurt me, and would have maybe put me up as high as second place I think,” he said. “I lost one yesterday that bit me three times in the same cast that finally hooked up and just came off at the boat.”

6th Place: Jeff Kreit
Jeff Kreit is a rising star. More and more he’s in a position to win. At the Classic this week, he was around the right fish, but execution cost him dearly. “I was around some big ones all week long, but today I only got three of them,” he said. “All that I needed today really was two more bites. That’s the difference between first place and sixth place. 

Kreit alternated throughout the week between a drop shot and soft plastics around docks. On the final day, in fact, he picked up a Rogues and caught a four pounder. “I stayed in there all day long because I knew that all that I needed was two bites and I could get right,” he said. “That’s really the key to this deal though – you have to swing for the fences all day, everyday.”

At the end though, Kreit feels that the fish he lost or missed are more important that how he caught the fish he weight. “I missed two jig fish today, and one on a drop shot,” he said. “I don’t know what the deal was really, but the bite was off a little bite. You can’t beat yourself up too bad because it’s the Classic – you have to fish to win.

“I had some opportunities today, and this week really, that I should have been able to capitalize on,” Kreit added, “that’s what it comes down to. I wish that I would have caught the other two bites that I had, but I just flat missed them.”
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FINAL STANDINGS

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