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Greenville, SC. –
Alton Jones left Greenville, South Carolina five hundred thousand dollars richer, thanks largely to a football jig. He's making the media rounds and scheduling White House visits as you read this and when his prototype jigs hit the market they're sure to be quite profitable for both Jones and his sponsors.
With the Super Bowl almost a month in the rear view mirror, it may not be the right time for play on the gridiron, but the fact that a football jig played a role in the Classic victory surprises no one who knows anything about fishing. Most competitors suspected that the deep bite would remain the most stable throughout the Classic competition and that a jig of some sort would be the best tool for seining those deep schools.
With that in mind, it's surprising to see both Mike McClelland and Derek Remitz near the bottom of the standings. Both are widely acknowledged as masters of deep structure fishing in general and the football head in specific.
"It's frustrating," McClelland said. "Derek and I talked about it during practice. We didn't discuss it in detail, but we were both fishing the key depth ranges and we were disgusted that we couldn't find a football head bite."
Remitz echoed those thoughts: "I was throwing it in just about the same type of areas and depths (as Alton Jones). I threw it all during practice and during the tournament. It just kind of sucks when you completely miss out on it."
Find the Fish
Both Remitz and McClelland stated that they never located the winning populations of fish, but their failure to do so resulted from different tactical errors.
"I was trying to push shallow patterns in less than 20 feet of water," McClelland said. "Alton won it in 25 to 40 feet. The blueback herring totally threw me off. They don't act like the threadfin shad and the gizzard shad that we have in the lakes back home."
Because he couldn't get attuned to the movements and actions of the herring, McClelland suffered from a crisis of confidence.
"Alton found the fish where they were active and he caught them with a jigging spoon, then when conditions got tougher he could use the jig. But you have to be confident they're there. He knew where they were and I had to wonder if I was even around them."
Remitz suffered from a similar lack of certainty. "What really gets me is that I still can't see why there are in certain places (on Hartwell). I'm sure there is a reason they are where they are, but it all looks the same to me. It's not like you can see a stump row. There are thousands of points and thousands of pockets and there are only fish in three of them."
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McClelland's Mistakes
McClelland's biggest regret is that the area he intended to focus on after pre-practice suffered as the result of the unstable weather conditions.
"On Day 1, I committed to an area where the water was dirtier," he said. "It was cold and muddy, which usually means you won't do well. The water temperature had dropped four or five degrees from practice the previous week. It was a relatively long run and I had committed to it."
The net result was a dismal catch of one fish that weighed only slightly more than two pounds. He rebounded on Day 2 with a limit that weighed 12-05, but it was too little too late and his improved catch was only good enough to push him up to 42nd place out of 50 anglers.
"I went to cleaner water and I caught a few on a jig and a couple of fish on a homemade fish head spin type deal. Then I did the old Jeff Kriet deal and caught my last fish on a shakey head with a Zoom finesse worm." |
The other mistake he made was to underestimate what kind of weight it would take to make the top ten, or even to the third day of competition. He had predicted that it would take 50 to 53 pounds to win the tournament, and Alton Jones ended up winning with a total creel just shy of the fifty pound mark, but McClelland was surprised that more anglers were not in that general range.
"I felt that 10 guys would be in the hunt, but the weights fell off strong. I didn't think 12 to 13 pounds a day would do anything and that's why I made the decision I did."
Regrets for Remitz
Like McClelland, Remitz suffered from a bad decision on the first day.
"They started schooling around me, two to three pound fish. I got hung up on them for a few hours and burned a few hours that way."
Unlike McClelland, his catch was roughly the same each of his two days on the water – two for 4-06 on Day 1, and two for 6-11 on Day 2. He ended up in 46th place. |
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His troubles started in practice. "The lake screamed jerkbait and football jig but it was probably just a matter of finding the right area. I was fishing the big coves with lots of drains and pockets, but I should've fished 40 to 50 of those a day in practice to figure out which ones held fish."
He refused to put down the football jig, believing that it was his best chance to catch a 15 or 20 pound bag. He dragged it in depths from 10 to 50 feet. "You would think that if you dragged it down those points all the way back you could get five good bites in a day, but I couldn’t. I tried to adjust, but I felt clueless."
Notes
• While McClelland claimed not to understand the bluebacks, he has had success on blueback lakes, most notably Clarks Hill, where he won at Elite Series event last year.
• Remitz is sponsored by Omega Custom Tackle and has a signature football head jig.
• McClelland is affiliated with Jewel Baits.
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