Entry 175-3
Bass Fishing with Greg Hackney
Editor’s Note: In August 2006, Greg Hackney of Gonzales, Louisiana, placed 2nd in the 4-Day Bassmaster Legends tournament, held on the Arkansas River near Little Rock, Arkansas, and won $36,000. In the hot weather with tough fishing, many of the top anglers had days when they didn’t even bring in one weighable fish. But Hackney, who has really been hot on the circuit this year, earning more than $200,000, has hot-weather fishing secrets, which he’ll share this week.
Part 3: How and Why to Give Up a Goody
I changed from the crankbait to plastics in the Legends Tournament because the color dictated that the plastics were better grass baits than the crankbaits. I looked for grass in the places we fished, and I knew crankbaits wouldn’t work in grass. I fished only vegetation when we moved into the holes. There were also plenty of boat docks that were low to the water where I couldn’t cast the crankbait. But I could skip the 3X Finesse Worm up under those docks and fish areas the crankbait couldn’t reach. I was flipping the mats of grass with a 1-1/2-ounce tungsten weight and a Strike King soft-plastic tube in green pumpkin.
I’ve often been asked, “How do you skip a finesse worm?” I use a 1/8-ounce skipping head made of true tungsten in front of my finesse worm. Then, I use the 4-inch Strike King 3X Finesse Worm in the green-pumpkin color. I’ve had a lot of success in the last couple of years using this worm and skipping tactic. I’ll fish with 8-pound-test GAMMA Fluorocarbon Line and a 7-foot medium-action Quantum spinning rod. 
I’ll get well away from the dock I want to skip under, cast that worm out with a skipping head and skip it just like I will if I’m tossing a flat rock and trying to skip it across a smooth rock. When the skipping head comes in contact with the water, it skips low to the water and goes back up under the dock. I can usually skip a finesse worm 25- or 30-feet back under a dock using this technique.
In this tournament, I’d only have to skip the worm 15 feet, depending on how the boat was positioned and what kind of dock I was skipping under. Most of the time, the bass weren’t too deep under the dock. They’d usually be 1 or 2 feet from the edge of the dock, holding in the shade. The real trick was getting the worm into the shade. I was catching the bass on the fall. After I skipped the worm under the dock, I’d let it free fall to the bottom. If the bass didn’t take the worm on the fall, I’d reel the worm in and skip it again. Most of the fish I was catching weighed 2- to 2-1/2-pounds each. Most of the docks I was skipping under were floating, so I didn’t have any trouble getting the fish out from under the docks.
After the first day of fishing the holes, I was in 4th place with only two keepers. I caught one of my keepers on the finesse worm and the other keeper on the tube. I was fishing the Strike King 4-inch tube in the pumpkin-green color through matted vegetation. I was using a 1-1/2-ounce true tungsten weight on 65-pound-test braided line. Most of the time, the bass took the bait on the initial fall when it fell through the mat. I had to put a lot of pressure on the bass to get them out of the mat, which I could do with a flipping stick.
On the second day of hole fishing, which was the last day of the tournament, I fished the same way I did the first day. By that time, I’d already had experience on each one of the holes, and I moved a lot better. I knew exactly where I wanted to fish, and I didn’t have any wasted motion. I caught three bass on the tube and one bass on the Z Too. I was fishing the Z Too on sand bar ledges with a 3/16-ounce jighead. 
The Z Too would fall to the bottom nose first, and then I’d jerk it up off the bottom and let it fall again, much like jerking a spoon. I was fishing the Z Too like it was a dying shad. Not many people fished the Z Too like this, but I’d learned to rig it this way when fishing for speckled trout on the Upper Gulf Coast in Louisiana. I caught one of my key fish fishing the Z Too with a lead-headed jig.
I was also using the Strike King Flats Jighead, a salt-water jighead, like you’d fish a big grub for speckled trout. On the last day, I weighed in an 8-1/2-pound bass. My river-fishing experience and tactics that I’d learned while fishing on the tour came together to allow me fish well on this tournament.
