Entry 206-5

Mike Wurm Turns on Clear-Water Bass Fishing

Part 5: Last Day of the Tournament

Question: What did you decide to do first thing in the morning on the final day?

Wurm: I was really trying to get a top-water bite going early. So, I went to an area where I’d seen some lay downs and thought maybe I could pull a bass out of a treetop early in the morning. But I cast and cast, and couldn’t get a bite. In retrospect, if I’d slowed down my Spit-N-King, I might have caught some bass on that top-water bite. After I couldn’t catch a bass on the Spit-N-King, I put that lure down and decided I’d either win or lose the tournament with the shaky-head jig and the Strike King finesse worm. I was betting on that 3/16-ounce jighead in the watermelon candy finesse worm that had got me into the top 12 to pull me through the tournament and possibly produce a win. However, I learned once again how hard it was to leave a bait that was working for you to try and fish another lure you think might work. By 9:00 am, I still didn’t have a bass in the boat and decided to run my milk run. I started off on my hidden point and caught my first bass that weighed about 2-3/4-pounds. That’s when I started feeling better. At least I had a bass in the live well now. I fished that point really hard but never got another bite. So, I ran to another point and started fishing it. I caught my second keeper there.

During the entire tournament, I found that catching more than one bass off each point I was fishing was difficult. I would catch a bass off a point and continue to fish that point for a long time and more than likely, I wouldn’t catch another fish off that point. Only by changing points could I consistently catch more bass. I could come back to a point after I’d left it alone for awhile and maybe catch a second bass. And that’s what happened on the last day. I was only catching one bass at each one of the places I decided to fish. Finally, I caught my fifth bass in that little deep-water bay that I’d found on the second day. I didn’t catch my fifth bass until about 12:30 pm.

Once I had my fifth fish in the boat, I went back to that hidden point where I’d consistently caught every big bass I’d caught in the tournament. But I couldn’t catch any bass. I returned to that point two or three different times during the last hours of the tournament, but I couldn’t get a bite. However, I was fishing a dock and got a good bite, set the hook and started trying to reel in the bass. But I could never get the bass closer than about 10 feet from the boat. So, I decided that the bass must be hung up on something.

As I began to look around, I could see that there was a line coming from the boat dock out in the water I was fishing. Apparently, when I hooked this bass, he wrapped my line around the line from the boat dock. As I got over close to the spot where the bass was hung, I could see that the line from the boat dock was wrapped around my shaky-head worm in the bass’s mouth, three or four times, and I still don’t know why my line didn’t break.

The thing that helped me the most was that the bass couldn’t come to the surface and jump and shake the jig. After the bass figured out it couldn’t move or jump, it just sat still. I was able to get my hand in its mouth and put it in the boat. It weighed about 3-1/2-pounds. I was able to cull my smallest bass and replace it with the bass that was tangled in the other line. I got a couple more bass before the tournament was over that were keeper fish. But neither of those two fish would add weight to my stringer, so I released them.

I went back toward the weigh-in spot at about 2:20 pm, since I was to check in about 3:00 pm. There was a little bay by the weigh in that I wanted to fish, and I was hoping that maybe one of those released bass from the tournament would come out of the bay and around the point and be in this pocket. I did catch one good keeper, but it wasn’t big enough to increase the weight of my stringer. So, I finished the tournament with 11 pounds, 11 ounces. I was hoping to get in the top 10, and I felt fortunate to have enough weight to finish 9th. There is only $2,000 or $3,000 difference between 9th and 12th place. I won about $14,000, which is a pretty good payday. But to me, the points were more important than the money. I had a slow start to my year, so I needed a rebound tournament to get back in respectable contention to making the Classic. Because of this tournament, I have a really-good chance of making the Classic this year.

Question: What’s your next tournament, Mike?

Wurm: Grand Lake, which is a recreational lake, but it doesn’t have nearly the number of houses and boats on it as Smith Mountain Lake does. This area has had a lot of rain, so the water won’t be as clear as it was at Smith Mountain. There’s a good chance the water may be high and in the willows, which makes it an ideal lake for flipping. There’s some deep water in this lake, but there’s also some flat water. So, I’ll have to wait until I get to the lake to find a game plan.

Question: Mike, what did you learn at the Smith Mountain Lake tournament?

Wurm: I’ve learned to keep trusting my instincts. Sometimes, you develop a game plan, and you decide that no matter what, you’re going to stick to that game plan. You’ll see a place you think you need to fish, but you won’t go to that spot because it’s not a part of your game plan. In this tournament, I re-learned that I could trust the intuitive side of my fishing. If I saw a point or a boat dock that I felt I needed to fish, I’d go fish it, even if that location wasn’t a part of my milk run. Several times, those hunches paid off. When these spots did pay off, they really boosted my confidence in my ability to rely on my instincts. Although I had my game plan with the lures I would fish at the milk run I would make, I still stayed open to the intuitive side of my fishing. I fished where I felt I needed to fish when I had one of those strong feelings.

Contents:

• Part 1: What I Learned in Practice
• Part 2: Tournament – Day 1
• Part 3: Tournament – Day 2
• Part 4: Tournament – Day 3
• Part 5: Last Day of the Tournament