Entry 159-4
February Bass Fishing At Its Best
Top-water Under-water
Editor’s Note: $65,000 and the title, Angler-of-the-Year on the Forest L. Woods (FLW) tour, prove that Greg Hackney knows how to catch bass. One of the newest members of the Strike King Pro Staff, Hackney from Gonzalez, Louisiana, has been fishing professional tournament circuits for 5 years. However, he’s been competing in bass-fishing tournaments since he was 11 years old.
Question: What’s your number-four lure this time of year?
Hackney: If I’m fishing at home in Louisiana, I’ll often be fishing a top-water lure just under the water because I’m fishing in extremely-shallow water. But, if I’m fishing a deeper lake, I’ll be fishing the Wild Shiner, which is a suspend bait. One of the real keys to fishing a suspend bait like the Wild Shiner is to let it hang. The Wild Shiner is one of the few crankbaits that the less you move it, the more bass you catch. That bait is deadly effective when it sits still in the water. I like to fish it around rock piles and wood.
Question: What type of retrieve are you using on this jerkbait?
Hackney: Once I get the jerkbait to the depth I want to fish, I let the lure sit for a 10 count, and then I jerk-jerk-sweep the bait. I use a sweeping-type motion with my rod after I’ve twitched the bait twice because I want the Wild Shiner to have a swimming action just before it stops. After it swims 1 or 2 feet, I want the bait to appear as if it’s tired and resting, and many times that’s when the bass will usually bite. Most of the time a bass will swim up to a jerkbait when it’s stopped dead in the water, and if the bass don’t eat the bait then, he will attack when the bait starts moving away.
Question: What kind of Wild Shiner do you like?
Hackney: If the water’s real clear, I like the smokey joe clear color. Clown or chrome with a black back are my favorite colors.
Question: What pound-test line do you fish a jerkbait?
Hackney: If I’m fishing at home in Louisiana, I like to fish it on a 20-pound-test line because I want that jerkbait to stay just under the surface, and that line will help float it up high in the water. In other lakes where I’m fishing deeper water, I’ll fish 12-pound-test Sensation Line. I don’t use fluorocarbon line because the fluorocarbon has a tendency to sink the bait because it’s heavier than monofilament. Also, I don’t get the action out of fluorocarbon that I do when I’m fishing a monofilament line.
Question: What’s the best day of jerkbait fishing you’ve ever had during the month of February?
HACKNEY: I caught and released more than 100 bass one day using a jerkbait at this time of the year. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a day that good since then.
Question: What made that day so special, and those bass bite so well?
Hackney: I don’t really know. The day was freaky. The weather had been extremely cold for a long time, and then we had two or three days of warm weather. This happened on the first of February, and it was the first day that the bass decided to feed heavily to get ready for the spawn. That was one of those freak days where you hit everything right, and all of the bass become active at one time.
Question: How big were the fish you were catching?
HACKNEY: Most of the bass would weigh from 3 to 5 pounds. I remember sitting on two little grass points and catching a bass on every cast for 30 minutes, and never having a cast where I didn’t catch a bass.
Next: The Kiss of Katrina
Contents:
- Part 1: Punch Them Out
- Part 2: Diamonds In The Grass
- Part 3: Go Slow-Rolling
- Part 4: Top-water Under-water
- Part 5: The Kiss of Katrina
