Entry 203-2

James Niggemeyer’s $62,500 Payday

Part 2: What We Learned in Practice

Question: At the end of your two days of practice, what had you and your teammates learned?

Niggemeyer: We had learned that a few bass were on the beds, but that the conditions were tough. Rain and thunderstorms were forecast to come our way. We realized that sooner or later when that rain hit, the weather would take away the bedding-bass pattern. We also learned that a good number of bass were holding offshore on offshore structure, especially on secondary points in about 10-20 feet of water. We also learned that the bass included pre-spawn, spawn and post-spawn bass.

During practice, Terry Scroggins found an offshore bite on a secondary point where he caught bass on a deep-diving crankbait. I had learned in practice that I could catch bass on Strike King’s Pure Poison. My partner, Frank Ippoliti, caught some bass on shallow-running crankbaits. Although we had three-different patterns that were working, we realized we needed to define which pattern was working best.

Question: James, why did you decide to use the Pure Poison?

Niggemeyer: I’ve had success with this new bait since last fall and have been experimenting with it at Lake Fork where I guide. I’ve learned that bass really like this lure when they’re holding around grass or any type of cover. Therefore, I was fishing the Pure Poison shallow, attempting to take bass that were relating to the bank – either pre-spawn or post-spawn fish. Also some of the bass were guarding fry, and some of the bass actually were sitting on their beds.

Question: What color of Pure Poison were you using?

Niggemeyer: I was fishing with the bluegill color along the edges of grass, wood and underwater fencelines in the lake. I simply cast to the bank and then reeled it out away from the bank, relatively slowly while using a stop-and-go retrieve. On a bait like the Pure Poison, most people don’t use the stop-and-go retrieve. However, I don’t believe that’s necesssarily the best way to generate strikes. When you stop the bait and twitch the end of the rod, the bait has a strong erratic action that really triggers strikes, especially if a bass is following the bait, and you stop the lure, twitch the rod, and the bait darts to either the left or the right.

Question: How many bass were you catching in practice?

Niggemeyer: I wasn’t catching a whole lot of bass in practice. I’d caught several on deep-running crankbaits as well as on the Pure Poison. But I wasn’t catching the size or the quantity of bass that Terry or Chris Daves were catching on the spot they’d found. On that first day of practice, Terry called me on his cell phone and asked, “How’s your fishing going?” I answered that it was o.k., but I wasn’t catching a lot of fish. “Come over to this point I’ve found,” Terry told me. “I’ll show you what I’m doing.”

When I saw the type of water Terry was fishing with that deep-diving crankbait, Frank and I went to look for that same kind of water in other areas of the lake. Although we caught a couple of 5 pounders, we didn’t catch near as many or as big bass that Terry and Chris did. Terry was casting along the edges of the creek channel with a deep-running crankbait and bumping it off the standing timber. He was catching bass quite regularly that weighed from 3- to 11-pounds each.

Next: First Day of Competition

Contents:

• Part 1: How the PAA Texas/Toyota Tournament Was Set Up
• Part 2: What We Learned in Practice
• Part 3: First Day of Competition
• Part 4: Disaster Strikes
• Part 5: How Four of Us Won $250,000