Entry 259-2

Fishing One Tournament after Another with Shaw Grigsby

Part 2: Practice Lessons

Question: Shaw, what did you learn in practice at Wheeler?

Grigsby: I started fishing the bank with the Pure Poison and caught a nice-sized limit of bass on the bank. At about 1:00 pm, I moved off the Decatur flats where the water was high, so my boat was up on a plane. As I came off the flats, my Lowrance 113 lit up like a Christmas tree. I knew immediately that this was underwater grass, and I hadn’t found any underwater grass all day. As soon as I saw the grass, I shut off the boat, started fishing that underwater grass line with a 3/4-ounce Red Eye Shad and really started ripping the bass.

I’d catch a 1 pounder, a 1 pounder, a 2 pounder, a 1 pounder, a 2-1/2-pounder and then a 4-pounder. This was the way the rest of my day went. I’d catch a number of little bass, and then I’d catch a pretty-good one. I caught plenty of little bass, but I took some big bass in the mix, too. I felt that if I fished the grass, I could catch from 8 to 20 pounds of bass.

Question: How big was that patch of grass you found?

Grigsby: That grass line was 4-miles long.

Question: Was there anyone else fishing that patch of grass on the first day of practice?

Grigsby: There were probably only eight or 10 boats fishing that grass on the first day, but on the second day, there probably were 50 boats working that grass line. I decided that every time I caught a keeper bass, I’d mark that spot as a waypoint with my Lowrance depth finder and GPS. If I caught a 3 pounder or better, I’d mark that waypoint and write waypoint 27-3, noting the name of the waypoint as 27 and the weight of the bass as 3 pounds. At the end of practice, I probably had 60 waypoints marked.

Some of the waypoints were where I’d caught really-big bass, and others were where I’d just caught keeper bass. I used that same system every day. So, the memory of my GPS had all the locations marked where I caught all my fish.I caught most of my bass on a 3/4-ounce Red Eye Shad. With my waypoints marked, during the tournament, all I had to do was pick up that Red Eye Shad and fish where I’d caught big bass.

Question: What color Red Eye Shad did you fish?

Grigsby: I fished white with a green back. This is a prototype color on the new prototype 3/4-ounce Red Eye Shad. The 3/4-ounce Red Eye Shad is an awesome bait because it gets down quicker than the 1/2-ounce Red Eye Shad and has all the action of the 1/2-ounce bait, but in a bigger size. After practice, the worst I could do was catch a 6- or a 7-pound stringer every day, and the best I could do was catch a 20-pound-plus stringer every day. I felt that I’d get a really-big bite every day, so I could at least get a 9-pound stringer and then cull up to about a 20-pound-plus stringer, if I could get five big bites.

Next: The First Day of the Tournament

Contents:

• Part 1: A Level Playing Field
• Part 2: Practice Lessons
• Part 3: The First Day of the Tournament
• Part 4: The Second Day of the Tournament
• Part 5: The Third and the Final Day of the Competition