Entry 319-3

How I won a $1/2-Million in One Weekend with Greg Hackney

Part 3: The Second Day of Competition: From 36th Place to 1st Place in 1 Day

Question: On the second competition day, where did you go, and where did you fish?

Hackney: I took off and ran to my best water. I had to go through three locks and dams and run up the Allegheny River. Just to get to the place I wanted to fish took 2 hours off my fishing time, since I had to travel about 35 to 40 miles to get there.

Question: Greg, why were you willing to give up 4 hours of fishing time to make that long run?

Hackney: I had found a place where in the first 10 minutes of the first day of practice I had nine keeper bites. A couple of those fish would have weighed 1-1/2-pounds each, which was a huge bass for the Allegheny River.

Question: What happened when you reached your No. 1 spot?

Hackney: The water had changed a lot. It had come-up about 2 feet, however, the water was still clean. There was a mayfly hatch that had really kicked-in too. Even though the area had changed, it actually had gotten better. In practice, I had caught the bass on the Strike King spinner bait and the little shad-bodied lure I was fishing. The spinner bait weighed 3/16-ounce and had one tiny gold willow-leaf blade.

My best spot was on the Kiskiminetas River, which drains into the Allegheny River, where I’d been catching the bass shallow. But when I got to my primary spot, I couldn’t get a bite. Therefore I started fishing the drop-shot rig and moved out to deeper water. I actually only caught two keepers out of my number-one spot before I had to leave and start heading back. But one of those keeper bass weighed 3 pounds.

Question: What drop-shot worm were you using?

Hackney: I was using a Strike King 3X Finesse Worm in the green-pumpkin color and fishing it around channel swings in the bends of the river. This river didn’t have much current in it, but on these channel swings, the current was hitting the hardest. I think the bass were sitting up there because the current was stronger than in other places in the river. I caught the biggest stringer of the tournament on that day. I had five bass weighing 11-pounds, 13-ounces. Then after I caught those two bass on the Kiskiminetas River, I went back out on the Allegheny River and found out that the bass were living behind the buoys where you couldn’t fish.

The current had pushed those bass to the first little stretch of bank behind the dam. So I picked-up my spinner bait and went to work. Not only did I catch my other three bass that I weighed in there, but I also caught a 4 pounder. I had my limit of bass by 1 pm. The 4 pounder was my fifth fish, and I came back to the Pittsburgh pool and just milled-around there because I knew I’d made the cut.

Question: What color spinner bait were you using, and how were you using it to catch that 4 pounder and the other bass you took?

Hackney: The spinner bait that I was fishing was small, and I couldn’t reel it very fast – which was fine, since I didn’t need to reel it fast because it was so small. That small Strike King spinner bait really looked like the baitfish the bass were eating. Since I was targeting big-rock current breaks, I would cast the spinner bait upstream of those rocks and let the current drift it into those eddy pools. Those smallmouths would be waiting behind those big rocks to dart out into the current and eat that spinner bait. This was a textbook pattern of how to catch smallmouths in the current. The spinner bait had a pearl skirt and was a 3/16-ounce Strike King Mini King.

Question: Did you feel you would be in good shape when you went to the weigh-in?

Hackney: Yeah, I knew I would be in good shape. I went from 36th place to 1st place in one day. That’s the good news. The bad news was that after the first 2 days of the tournament, the FLW people zeroed-out our weights. Seventy-seven competitors fished the first 2 days, and then the top 10 would compete after having their weights of bass zeroed-out.

Next: From Leading the Tournament to Middle of the Pack with 1 Day Left and $1/2-Million in the Balance

Contents:

• Part 1: A $25,000 Win for a Ticket to Compete for $1/2-Million
• Part 2: The First Day of Competition: Three Bass - 3-Pounds Plus - and I’m Still in the Hunt for the $1/2-Million
• Part 3: The Second Day of Competition: From 36th Place to 1st Place in 1 Day
• Part 4: From Leading the Tournament to Middle of the Pack with 1 Day Left and $1/2-Million in the Balance
• Part 5: Three Ounces for $1/2-Million