Summer 2023
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and on a similar non-slot limit lake enough to win most tournaments. In addition to the shell on the bottom, he’s looking for fairly clear water.
That requires him to make long casts and to use his Minn Kota Raptors frequently and judiciously. Electronics, on the other hand, don’t play a huge role at this time, whereas they were his bread and butter just weeks, days or hours earlier.
Livesay’s favorite tool for getting these fish to react is a 6th Sense Catwalk topwater walking bait in bone, a three-
hooked version that allows him to cover water quickly. He throws it on 40-pound test Sunline braid, and a Halo HFX 7-foot medium-heavy cranking rod paired with a high- speed reel. One key modification is to make sure that the lure has EWG trebles.
“Catching a big fish with a walking bait like that is different than using it to catch smallmouths or spots,,” he explained. “They’re not slashing at it, and they have such big lips. If you can get it around those lips you can catch them just about every time.”
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PATRICK PREFERS WARP SPEED DOCK FISHING
Bassmaster Opens Elite Qualifier angler Kyle Patrick learned to fish on northern smallmouths, and still loves to pinpoint them in the summertime, but when the finicky brown fish get weird on him, he’ll “go back to the stupid basics of dock fishing,” chasing largemouths.
“In places like Maines and New York and New Hampshire, it’s pretty untapped,” he said. “I mean, look at what Brock Mosley did at the St. Lawrence with a Jack Hammer. You don’t necessarily have to be locked in to make it work.”
It’s not the
Missile Chunky D
patient soaking-a-bait approach that he prefers. Instead, it’s “full-on KVD style.” He’ll often hit 25 docks in 40 minutes. “If he’s going to bite, he’s going to bite quickly, so if he doesn’t pull out and move on to the next one.
He likes a 1/2-ounce Missile Mini Flip in some sort of green pumpkin for much of this, noting that it skips better than the 3/8-ounce version and provides exceptional versatility, and adds a matching bulky trailer like a Chunky D if he’s skipping the lure or a Mini D Chunk If the bass are a bit spooky. He fishes it on a Douglas 745F casting rod, paired with a Shimano Curado (8.5:1) spooled with 20-pound-test P-Line 100% Fluorocarbon.
Patrick said that “if you don’t have a jig on your deck at all times, you’re dumb,” but he supplements it with a Senko. Sometimes he’ll draw the fish out with it and then follow up with a Senko to tempt them. Sometimes in between docks he’ll see a small grass patch where the sudden intrusion of
Kyle Patrick Photo: Bassmaster
Missile Mini Flip
the jig would spook a shallow bass, so he’ll throw the Senko there too. “Sometimes subtlety guarantees the bite.”
When he sees an obvious piece of cover – likely a small grass clump or mat – in the distance, he’ll fire a frog out, too. That’s his three rod solution. Keep it simple, keep your foot on the trolling motor.”
As with the two other pros, what Patrick was hesitant to say is that while the deeper bite can be more reliable for longer periods of time, on occasion the summertime shallow approach can be preferable, and even more effective.
“Sometimes I’ll even choose to do it,” he concluded. When everyone else is looking away from the bank, sometimes it pays to take the road less traveled. •