Today was an easy one for me. The drive to Lake Hartwell from my brother Doug’s home in Atlanta only took me about an hour and a half. I had not made a room reservation so I wanted to get there fairly early to scope out the hotels before the bulk of the other competitors came rolling in.
Joe Thomas Blog

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Today was a great day on Dale Hollow! I shot an episode of Stihl’s Reel in the Outdoors today with my buddy Ronnie Grant who is a Dale Hollow Lake expert! He and the Smallies were both on their game today. The hot bait was a vintage Lucky Craft flat CB MR in a chartreuse and red craw pattern.
Joe Thomas Blog

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Brent Ehlrer Blog
Pre-fishing was tough. On the first day of practice we had crazy weather. It was overacast and raining, but still like 70 degrees and they were biting good. I didn’t get a whole lot of bites in the morning, but in the afternoon they started biting like crazy. I ran around and caught quite a few. I was throwing a Lucky Craft 2.5 DD and just running the bank. I ended up with about 12 pounds in a little over 45 minutes.

Then I switched to my signature series Phenix Casting jig. Beaver Lake fish like finesse jigs so I trimmed it up a little and used a YamamotoFlappin’ hog for a trailer. I casted that around and got quite a few bites. I started to think this was going to be a fun tournament. I had at least 15 bites that day and things were looking up.

The next day it was really windy and raining in the morning and then it cleared up. I kid you not, I didn’t have a single bite until about 1:00 and then I caught a short fish. I went until about 5:30 PM before I caught a keeper. Which changed my thinking to “this is going to be a bad one.”

On day three, I went out and fished all day and caught just 1 keeper. My practice was a real struggle. I threw the Slender Pointer 112, the Pointer 100 DD and the Pointer 78. I caught quite a few fish, but they were all small. It was not easy and left me feeling I only had a couple areas where I could catch fish.

On day one I ran to an area where I thought I could catch fish with the crankbait. That wasn’t working, so I switched to a fish head spin with a Yamamoto grub. I was able to catch two, a three-pound smallmouth and a pound and a half spotted bass. I had four good opportunities to catch fish and I was only able to put two in theboat. After day one I sat in 85th place with about four and a half pounds.

I fished a lot smarter on day two. On day one I didn’t fish smart, I wasn’t focused on how and where I was just going through the motions and not thinking about what I really needed to do to catch fish. I figured out on day 2 that I needed to fish a lot faster, which is not typical for this time of year there. I covered a lot more water and I bounced around a ton. I threw the same baits, a grub on a fish head spin.

Right off the bat, I caught a three-pound largemouth. Then I started getting bites and I’d miss them. I had a shakey head with a Yamamoto 4” Senko tied on. When I’d miss a fish or I’d see one come out of the deep trees and boil on the fish head, I was able to throw back on it with the shakey head and they’d bite it on the sink.

I weighed eleven and change on day two jumped up a little over forty places to get a check. I really put myself in a hole the first day, with the bites I had I should have been up at least another fifteen to twenty places from where I finished. You never know and I just didn’t give myself very many opportunities.

My day began with a 4:45 wake up! I left my house with my boat in tow at at 5:15 headed south to Pickwick Lake in southwest Tennessee. After meeting up with my producer Jim Kramer, in Northern Kentucky, we set out to shoot another episode on Stihl’s Reel in the Outdoors.
Joe Thomas Blog

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G-Man Blog
It’s kind of weird that winning the event is more of a feeling of relief than the excitement about winning. You always think you have the potential to win, but Florida has been tough for me. It’s taken a while for it to soak in but, I’ve gotten that monkey off of my back and now I am qualified for next year’s Classic…

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Skeet’s Beat – With Captain Blair Wiggins
The day after I did my appearance at Bass Pro Shops, I played around on Lake Toho for a day while I was waiting to head to Titusville, Fla. to film with my Wright & McGill Co. teammate Captain Blair Wiggins. Our plan for the day was to go after some really big redfish. We were hoping to go out there and catch enough big fish to film one of Blair’s television shows.
skeetreeseinc.com

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He used to carry soft drinks and junk food on his boat; now it’s protein bars and homemade sports drinks. That’s Takahiro Omori — a man who realizes that what he puts into his body affects what he pulls from the water. Since enrolling in IMG Academies seven years ago, Tak has invested much time and effort in a broad range of physical and mental conditioning designed to optimize his performance and put him in contention to add another Bassmaster Classic trophy to his 2004 prize.
takahiroomori.com

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Brent Ehler Blog
The last couple of weeks have been pretty busy ones getting ready for the second stop on the FLW Tour and doing a few seminars.
Following the Okeechobee event I dropped the rig off near Beaver Lake in Arkansas and flew home. Last week I headed up to a boat show in Illinois where I did a couple of seminars and supported the Ranger dealer in the area. The Ranger dealer, Belleville Sport Sales in Belleville Illinois, is the oldest Ranger dealer in the world, they’ve been selling Ranger boats since 1969!

From there I flew to Phoenix where I stopped at Cabelas for Abu. Phoenix is a great place and there are lots of good anglers in the area that come up with some great questions. It’s always great to share fishing information with people who are as passionate about the sport as I am.
Last week was the Bassmaster Classic and Kevin VanDam did it again. It’s hard to believe in a field of angler that could that one person can be so dominant. It looked like a fun tournament with lots of different fishing styles available. I would have liked to have been there mixing it up with my Lucky Craft 1.5 square bill crankbaits. I hear from others often how they think I am a finesse angler. Sure I like to finesse fish when its necessary, but my favorite technique is the shallow running square bills and that seemed to be the ticket at theclassic. Could have been fun!

For me its of to Arkansas and Beaver Lake. Beaver Lake is an interesting place to fish because the fishing can be great in bad weather and horrible in good weather. Which might be a problem this week as its supposed to rain during prefish and be nice during the tournament. This one could be tough. In 2009 I had some success on Beaver Lake and finished in 10th, but in 2008 I finished in 54th place and back to 2007 I finished in 50th exactly. All three tournaments I made the check line and that’ll be the goal again this week.

One interesting note about fishing Beaver Lake is the smallmouth rule there. It’s actually against the rules to weigh in a full 5 fish limit of smallmouth. This really shouldn’t be a problem as there aren’t many smallmouth in the lake, but should an angler find a smallmouth bite they would also have to find a way to catch 2 spotted bass or largemouth each day to fill their limit. I know that played into the tournament when Andre Moore won the event in 2005 he would catch 3 smallmouth and then run and catch a couple of smaller spotted bass in order to fill the limit. No matter how it works out it’s fishing so it will be fun!

Here’s a quick look at the new bait colors Skeet Reese unveiled in his booth here at the NOLA Classic. That’s blue crack [chartreuse belly /blue back] on the left, T rock [chartreuse belly/purple back in the middle and black crack [white belly/black back] on the right. (Posted on www.bassparade.com)

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LAKE IRVINE, CA
DATE: FEB 5, 2011

February 5th 2011 was the final day for local anglers to qualify for a seat on the 2011 Bassmaster Federation Nation State Team. Four seats remained on the twelve man team going into the tournament.

The main pattern most anglers used involved fishing small plastics or jigs in deep water (15 to 30 feet) and fishing slow…normal wintertime fishing techniques. James Smiley pulled up onto his first spot in the morning and quickly landed a fish over 4lbs which would eventually take Big Fish honors at the weigh in.

By 9:30am the bite really slowed down and most anglers reported the fishing was extremely tough the rest of the day. James had three fish in the livewell at this point and didn’t catch another fish until 1:45pm when he changed patterns and moved to shallow water to fish flooded bushes being warmed by the afternoon sun. He fished a Lucky Craft Slender Pointer MR 97 in Ghost Minnow and a senko. In the last hour, James and his co-angler scored more than 12 bass working the shallow water. He and his co-angler both filled out their limited before weigh in.

At the weigh in, James weighed 11.92lbs to take the winning check ($1200 total) and Big Fish honors.
James now advances to the Bassmaster Federation Western Divisional at Lake Navajo, New Mexico in May of this year. If James beats the 12 anglers in his division at that tournament, he’ll advance to his second Bassmaster National Championship in a row.

http://www.jamessmileyfishing.com/