ANATOMY OF A GAME PLAN
ANATOMY OF A GAME PLAN

To quote B.A.S.S. Top 150 pro, Mike Iacconeli of New Jersey, Formulating a workable game plan is perhaps the most important factor in determining your overall approach to fishing. When you look at the picture as a whole however, you can see that it's not just bass fishing where a game plan figures into ones success. Professional sports teams utilize game plans to exploit an opponents weakness, or to take advantage of their own teams strengths. Marketing firms use game plans to identify particular sales factors, targeting areas that their research has shown to be ideal candidates for new products. Even the newspaper boy has a plan on how his route should be delivered to earn the gratitude of his customers.

Formulating a game plan is based on many factors, all of them necessary for that game plan to succeed. In fact, they are more than necessary, they are "critical." For the pupose of illustration I will use a tournament I recently fished on Bantam Lake in Connecticut, showing how I arrived at my particular game plan and how I followed, modified, tweaked and revisited that plan over the course of the tournament day.

Gathering information is the primary building block of the workable game plan. Prior to the tournament, I did some homework. I reviewed my map, highlighting those areas I intend to fish. After checking past tournament results and sorting through some notes I had made on the lake, I made a few calls to ascertain the lakes current conditions. Ten days prior to the tournament I made a trip to the lake to pre-fish and fine tune the information I had collected. These "on-sight inspections," are extremely important to a good game plan. They take the term "guess work" out of the equation. Once you've completed your homework, it's just a matter of factoring in weather conditions and seasonal patterns to arrive at your tournament game plan. Simple isn't it? Not exactly.

A game plan should be simple, in my opinion, the simpler the better. I chose five baits for this tournament, with three of them forming the "centerpiece" of the plan. First, a 3/16 & 5/16 jig and pig combination (Stanley), with a Cobra Pro-Craw june bug plastic trailer threaded on to the hook. I paired the lighter jig with a 6'6 Team Daiwa worm/jiggin rod and a Shimano Curado reel spooled with 14 pound test. This is an excellent set up for swimming the jig. The 5/8 oz. jig I tied on to a 7' Team Daiwa worm/jiggin rod, again using a Curado baitcaster, spooled with heavier 17 pound test line for flipping and pitching isolated pieces of cover.

Second, the hair jigs, ideal cold water baits especially after cold fronts. Their subtle action makes them a very productive bait early in the year. I use black, or black/brown in various sizes depending on water depth and wind conditions. As a rule of thumb, I will use the lightest jigs I possible can. Nothing special, just your average home tied variety will do nicely. For this tournament, the 1/8 and 1/4 oz. sizes proved to be the order of the day. My partner, Paul Barello, who by the way was fishing in his first bass tournament, was set up with a 6' spinning reel combination using 6 pound test line. I opted for a similar set up, although I scaled down to 4 pound test line in size. The difference that downsizing the line diameter will make at times can be surprising. This is especially true in clear or heavily pressured bodies of water.

My third choice is what I call the "belief bait". That's a bait thats been effective for you under similar conditions and your "belief" is that it may be effective again. My brother, Dennis Scully, hit upon this bait a while back. Over the past five years he has caught some quality fish on Bantam utilizing this bait and a technique he calls "strolling." The bait I am referring to is a 4" black ring worm made by Berkley that he "slip shots", fishing it horizontally on the break. He is literally dragging this bait behind the boat. At times this technique can be the "cats pajamas". It works with many types of baits and can be fished year round, ice out to ice up.

Last but not the least are baits four and five, the reaction baits. A 1/2 oz. Bill Lewis Rattle Trap, chartreuse/craw, fished on a 6'6 medium Falcon rod paired with a Shimano Curado reel and spooled with 17 pound test. A 3/8 oz Storm Wiggle Wart, red craw, fished on a 6'6 medium light Falcon rod paired with a Team Daiwa TDIPI baitcaster and 10 pound test line. These are my "hunch" baits and have on occasion caught some real hogs for me on Bantam over the years. On one particular outing here in 1996, while pre-fishing with Dominic Lomanno (drdj4), I had a 20 pound plus bag just using those two baits. Too bad it was only practice.

Saturday, tournament day arrives and its time to test the plan. The conditions are somewhat less than perfect. The air tempereature over the past few days have sent the water temps plummeting some 18 degrees since our vist here, some ten days ago. I know these are only surface temperatures, but it still weighs heavily on my mind. Two fronts have passed through the region during the past week including a brutal cold front that came through just yesterday. Add to that a full moon and a high sky, and my guess is the reaction bite is history. There should be a few fish shallow in the morning, but that bite wont last long. The bass I feel will only pull back as far as the first break, in this case 8 to 10 feet. I keep my fingers crossed (an excellent idea during any tournament), and hope that the sun stays out long enough to bring a few bass shallow later in the day.

Our first spot is my "go to spot". I have been fortunate enough to catch a bass here the first thing in the morning during the previous two club tournaments. Both of those were in the early spring. I start with the 3/16 oz jig & pig and on my third cast boat a small largemouth from an isolated rock pile in three feet of water. That's number #1. We continue to target shallow cover for the better part of two hours but with no success. I notice that there is little if any life visible on the bank. There are no sunfish or perch, there's seems to be no life shallow, period. Its time for the first adjustment to the game plan. We talk things over and decide we should move off and fish the breaks in the 8 to 10 foot zone. He picks up the ring worm set up and I opt for the 5/16 oz jig and pig. I change rods however and I tie the jig on a 6'6 rod spooled with 14 pound test. The water is crystal clear and with the bite being tough we are going to need every trick in the book if we are going to be successful today. Thats "tweaking" the plan a bit.

It's now a little past 10 o'clock, some three hours into the tournament. Besides the one small bass we've gone fishless. We speak to another team who tell us they caught three small keepers early, but since then they have not had a bite. Glancing over I notice they are both throwing "Cabin Creek" creature jigs. I make a mental note of the color for future reference. We watch as another pair of competitors boat a bass just a few yards away from us. They say the fish barely measures but they put it in the live well just the same. It's their first fish of the day and with things as tough as they are, its huge. We notice they are both throwing the jig. More fuel for the fire. What little action there is, it seems to be centered around the jig.

The tournament clock now reads 11:15 am. We decide its time to change gears a bit. Out come the hair jigs. The shoreline we have chosen is my favorite. It offers a defined break with medium size boulders and plenty of chunk rock on the top. There are scattered small boulders and rock continuing down the break that stops at about 12 feet. Putting the trolling motor down, my partner joins me on the front deck and we quarter the structure for the better part of a half a mile. With the exception of a few rock bass and perch, there is no bite to speak of. Things begin to look grim.

Lady luck is the "X" factor in any game plan and she just took "center stage". Paul was in the midst of a huge wind knot in his spinning gear. I told him to forget trying to un-tangle that mess, just cut it off and re-tie. While he was retrieving his hair jig, hand over hand, a chunky 1 and 3/4 pound smallmouth jumped on for the ride. "Ray...he yelled, I've got one." Boy did he ever. I almost fell overboard in my excitement, rushing to get the net. After a bit of "hand to hand" combat, the little bronzeback was on its way to the live well. That's number #2. High five time!

It's now almost 12:30 in the afternoon. The sun has been out all day and I see that the surface temperature has gone up a few degrees in the past few hours. We move to the shallow side of the break, but continue fishing the break, just from a different direction. Another tweak. After each cast I scan the shallows looking for any signs that the bass may have moved up, but so far nothing. Suddenly I drop what feels to be a good fish and I scold myself (colorful words) for loosing focus. My mind was on the shallows and not the business at hand. I do notice however, that the fish hit on top of the break. A few casts later, another signal. As I retrieve the jig to the boat a 2 pound plus smallie charges it but misses the bait. That was an aggressive fish. The bass are beginning to talk to me.

We pass another team of anglers moving in the opposite direction. A bit of tae-to-tae elicits a sobering piece of information. They have a limit, in fact they have been culling since 10 am. There is no indication what bait they may have been using (what a surprise). It's too late in our day for guess work, we need to stay with our game plan. It's difficult for me however to get their success out of my mind. Minutes later we are back in the hunt. I watch as a small largemouth follows my jig back from the shallows and it slams the bait the minute I "kill" it next to the boat. It measures 11 & 7/8 inches, a short, but I get the message.

We immediately move up shallow. I now notice there are sunfish as well as perch everywhere. They are extremely shallow and tight to cover. We begin to cast to every piece of cover, regardless of how insignificant it may seem. All the while I am talking to myself, much to the amusement of my partner. It seems I have this habit of talking my way through each cast, kind of like a "play by play" of what's going on. I flip to a small piece of a bush that has fallen into the water just a few feet from shore. Immediately I have a fish on, not big, a largemouth just a shade under two pounds. Quickly its in the boat and into the live well. That's number #3. My adrenalin is pumping and its pure high test. There is only an hour left, but I am sure it's enough time to catch at least one more and hopefully two.

We make a move and its a confidence move. I return to the area where we began the day, and for a split second I can't believe what I am seeing. Directly in front of me, approximately 10 feet in front of the boat is a largemouth I estimate at over three pounds. It's half under an old piece of plywood that has been attached by electrical wire to a pair of cinder blocks. God I love those cinder blocks. It seems incredible that this fish doesn't see me. My first cast is a bit past the cover. I swim the jig along the bottom till the bait is about two feet away from the bass. She's spotted it and slowly moves out, rolls as if to take the jig then to my chagrin has some second thoughts. I almost feint. Time to collect my compsure and back off. I need to settle down and figure out my next presentation, one thats different from the last one.

Somehow, I give the bass what seems like an hour to settle down (probably two or three minutes at most). Hopefully she returns to the same piece of cover where I can get a second shot. As I approach the plywood, I can't see her. Is she under there, or did she move out under the dock, positioned a bit off in deeper water? This time I cast the jig a good ten feet past the cover, and slowly begin to move the jig, a foot at a time. With each pause in my retrieve, I shake the jig gently. I still don't see her. I mumble a silent prayer, hoping I did'nt spook her off. The jig is now just two feet from the wood. Just as I am about to give up, out she comes, rolls and "inhales" the jig. "Got her, I yelled," no time for the net I swing her in the boat, hitting my partner square in the chest. That's number #4 and shes a beauty. I notice she is blind in one eye as well.

With little time left we move to a shallow group of docks close by the ramp and try as we may, our day ends there. We stuck to our game plan. We kept it simple, tweaked it, revisited it and it rewarded us with a second place finish, just 4 ounces from winning the tournament.
Too many anglers feel the need to throw a "tackle store" worth of baits looking for that "mircale" one that will catch them a monster bag of bass. Sometimes, you just may hit on something, but most of the time the percentages are with those anglers who make and stay with a game plan. Do they always work,...of course not. Even Roland Martin doesn't catch fish all the time. You can be sure of one thing though...old Roland always has a game plan, and it's worked for him more often than not.

Ray Scully