Entry 352-1
How Greg Hackney Made Decisions on the Water at Smith Mountain Lakey
Editor’s Note: With Greg Hackney’s recent 10th-place finish at Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia, he moved into second place in the race for the BASS Angler-of-the-Year title. By interviewing the Strike King pros after they’ve fished a major tournament, you can learn how their minds work at different times of the year, under various weather and water conditions, and how they adjust to changing conditions. This week, we’ll show you how Hackney of Gonzales, Louisiana, made the tough decisions that earned him $11,500 for 4 days of bass fishing at Smith Mountain Lake. You also will see how you can learn to make these same types of decisions when conditions change and you can’t find the bass.
Part 1: I Found the Bass from My Motel Room Window at Smith Mountain Lake
Question: Greg, when did you figure out the pattern for the bass at Smith Mountain Lake?
Hackney: I was staying at a motel right on the lake bank. I arrived at the lake on Sunday afternoon, and in front of the motel, I could see bass on their beds. So, I knew before I ever started practice that the bass on the lake were spawning, and this tournament would probably be primarily sight-fishing.
Question: What did you do in practice?
Hackney: I got up early, before daylight, and went out to look for the shad spawn since often the bass spawn and the shad spawn occur at the same time - generally in mid- to late-April in that section of the country. So, I was hoping to find an early-morning bite targeted around the shad spawn. Many times if you can find the early-morning bite on the shad spawn, you can get a limit of bass really quickly.
Then the remainder of the day, you can spend your time trying to cull-up. But the weather was a little cold, and the shad spawn was sporadic. The shad wouldn’t stay up very long, and most of the time the shad were finished spawning before take-off time at the ramp. So, I decided to abandon that strategy, and I began looking for bedding bass. I tried to mark as many big bass as I could locate.
Question: How did you mark those bedding bass?
Hackney: I’d mark their location with my Lowrance High-Def System HDS-8 and HDS-10 GPS systems. If you don’t mark those spots where you find the bass as waypoints, you easily can forget where you’ve found the bass you want to target, especially if you’re running a lot of water and trying to locate as many bedding bass as you can during practice.
Question: Did you fish for those bass you marked on your GPS, or did you leave them alone?
Hackney: I left the bass alone. A turkey hunter told me a long time ago that you don’t call the turkey up before the season and not shoot it. So, I use that same principle when I’m fishing for bass. I don’t like to shake bass off the hook, and I don’t like to aggravate the bass. The first time a bass sees my lure, I’m intending to catch it. I’m a pretty-good judge about what bass will do when I see them on the bed. I can tell whether the bass are catchable by the way they act when the boat is near their beds.
Question: How do you determine if a bedding bass is catchable or not?
Hackney: When bass are on the bed and see you, some of them will leave the bed and never return as long as you’re there. Some of these bass are still catchable, but you can’t look at them and catch them. You have to blind-fish for them (stay far enough away from the bed that the bass can’t see you and make long casts, not knowing exactly where or how the bass are positioned). 
So, when I’m looking at bedding bass, I want to know if the female bass is locked-down on the bed. Then I can get close to try to make the bass bite the bait. I also want to know when I get close, if the female bass will move off the bed and go somewhere else down the bank.
If I think that the bass will run off the bed when I get close, then I’ll know to stay well away from the bed, make long casts and use light line and little baits. But if the bass is locked-down on the bed, I know I can look at the bass and try to put lures in front of it that the bass will eat. Because I have a really-good memory, I generally can keep up with which bass at each waypoint will be locked-down on the bed or will move away from the bed when I get near. The really-big bass I find will stick out in my mind, and I’ll know how I should fish for them.
Question: What lures did you decide in practice you’d need to fish?
Hackney: Last year, when we came to Smith Mountain Lake, I was sight-fishing and finished fourth. Kevin VanDam won that tournament. I caught every bass in that tournament on a Rage Baby Craw. So, this year, I decided to change tactics. I used a Denny Brauer Flip-N-Tube, a Strike King Rodent and a Rage Baby Craw. 
I made the first cast to every bass I could see with a Rodent rigged with a 3/8-ounce Tru-Tungsten slip sinker on 40-pound-test fluorocarbon line and a 7-foot, 11-inch Quantum Tour Greg Hackney flipping stick.
Within one or two casts, I could tell if the bass would bite the Rodent. I had the lures on the rods I fished in the entire tournament rigged three-different ways. I had the Rage Baby Craw rigged with a 1/4-ounce Tru-Tungsten slip sinker and 15-pound-test fluorocarbon line. I had the green-pumpkin-colored Denny Brauer Flip-N-Tube rigged with 1/2-ounce Tru-Tungsten slip sinker and the green-pumpkin-colored Rodent on a 3/8-ounce Tru-Tungsten slip sinker, both on 20-pound-test fluorocarbon line.
Contents:
- Part 1: I Found the Bass from My Motel Room Window at Smith Mountain Lake
- Part 2: The First Day of the Smith Mountain Lake Tournament - The Bass Left
- Part 3: The Second Day of the Smith Mountain Lake Bass Tournament
- Part 4: The Third Day of the Smith Mountain Lake Tournament - My Biggest Catch of Bass
- Part 5: How I Finished in the Smith Mountain Lake Tournament, and What I Expect for the Next One - Pickwick Lake in Alabama
