MLF on Dale Hollow

[Crestliner2008]

This is the 4th. Select series of the MLF at Dale Hollow. Not sure if any of you saw it today. Nothing great. The top spot was a mere 13 pounds with the big fish at just over 4 lbs.. All were largemouths.

I'm wondering, why would anyone be fishing shallow for 1 - 2 lb. largemouths (majority were of this size group) on a lake considered to be the Smallmouth Bass Capital of the World!? No one fished deep with the drop shot (one guys fished down to 20' and picked up another 2 lb. LM). Most were flipping docks, cover and shallow points with frogs or buzzbaits. Amazing to me. What am I missing?

[Tim Kelly]

It takes time to find bass deep. That's the drawback of the MLF format. The percentage most of the time is to fish shallow visible cover.

[MFBAB]

I agree.  Dale Hollow in summer with no practice would be tough sledding.  If they had some practice days they would all scan every inch of structure and the deep bite would probably play pretty strong. 

It's a clear highland reservoir, they are deep and not really too active most of the day.  Night or even super early in the morning might be a little different story, but during normal tourney hours they've got it tough.

I think most of them have just been targeting max shade (Marinas and backs of creeks), bream beds, a couple of guys have found a few on structure but nothing to brag about. 

The thing about a clear lake like Dale, I think even that shallow bite takes a little time to refine-you're not going to just go crush them on a lot of moving baits that allow you to cover water in that clarity-not in the summer at least, you have to slow down and downsize a little and that is a huge killer in a 1 day no practice tourney!!

There have been 4 heats so far (6 guys per round), and each one has played out pretty much the same way so far.   I'm pretty sure each round has been won shallow to this point, right? 

[Team9nine]

1 hour ago, Crestliner2008 said:

This is the 4th. Select series of the MLF at Dale Hollow. Not sure if any of you saw it today. Nothing great. The top spot was a mere 13 pounds with the big fish at just over 4 lbs.. All were largemouths.

I'm wondering, why would anyone be fishing shallow for 1 - 2 lb. largemouths (majority were of this size group) on a lake considered to be the Smallmouth Bass Capital of the World!? No one fished deep with the drop shot (one guys fished down to 20' and picked up another 2 lb. LM). Most were flipping docks, cover and shallow points with frogs or buzzbaits. Amazing to me. What am I missing?

Several key points to keep in mind.

- Technically, none of the guys knew exactly where they were going until the night before they went. They are all huddled down to meet at a location, but then where they actually fish is at the discretion of the tourney directors. Any lake within a reasonable drive is fair game.

- They chose to fish Dale Hollow at a particularly tough time of the year for a highland event where smallmouth might be involved.

- They are not allowed to practice or pre-fish, and it is against the rules to solicit information from anybody, including other competitors to try and get an advantage. They can and are polygraphed in this regard. The only "practice" they get is the 15 minute "drive around" right before the start of competition that morning. Nobody has any waypoints stored in their unit. No one has spent 3 days of practice idling around with side imaging marking schools. They are going in as "cold" as they can possibly make it.

- In the case of Dale Hollow, competitors were broken up and then sent to fish different sections of the lake. In other words, they were restricted to where they could fish. Wheeler mentioned this in his Q&A after he won the 3rd Select event. They were launched and restricted to fishing a section of Dale Hollow well upriver which he stated wasn't conducive to catching or preferentially targeting smallmouth. Others were likely in better smallmouth waters during other days of competition. But the trade-off is that given no time to pre-fish and being against the rules to gather information (even looking at your hi-def map chips, I believe), it is a huge gamble to blindly start idling around and trying to find something deep when most guys are going to go straight to the visible stuff to try and start picking off fish. Since anything over 12" counts, a bank beater can get you down in a hurry. In hindsight to how tough the fishing was, I'm guessing some of the guys wish they would have taken the gamble, but that is not an easy decision to make when it has to be decided in the 15 minutes before take-off after looking around. The guys are even restricted from finding out who won and how much weight it took in any of the previous days event (s).

This format is about as fair as you can get in a modern day professional event. You should enjoy watching them struggle from time to time.  When a pro can't get help or insight  in any way before an event, and they aren't there fishing during a time of year when a major shallow water slugfest was going down because of planning by the event coordinator, and they didn't have several days of practice going in, they end up winging it to a large degree just like us regular folks  Kind of refreshing to see IMO. With a couple tweaks, this could/should be the future of professional bass fishing.

-T9

[MFBAB]

I really like this format.  I think it's pretty tough for anyone to fake it under these circumstances.  I also like the fact that they try to show the fish a little respect, no contact with the boat (no slinging them) and no throwing them back in the water either.  The fish handling on BASS is pretty horrible.  At least most of the FLW fish are netted, not slung,  but they could both do with some adjustments like what MLF is doing.  It sets a bad example IMO.  Having said that, I'm just a fun fisherman, I'm not against tourneys but I don't really love what tourneys do to fish either.  I'd rather see a marshall and scale system implemented for all of the national stuff.  It would help the coverage too, you would have real-time real weights as you watched it.  That would be a HUGE improvement to me.  Just look at how much more suspenseful MLF is than Bass or FLW, a lot of that is because you are seeing the actual fish weights in real time.  You would lose the weigh-in, but this is a lot better format for TV. 

Also, T9 I think you are right about the mapping stuff, I'm pretty sure Ike got a penalty one time for looking at the map b/w two periods, just during a break.  I think they can only use the maps during actual fishing time. 

 

teamnine, are you saying that this is actually all filmed on the same day but on different sections of the lake?  I always just assumed that they were going on separate days, I never really thought about it. 

[ward131]

I think they did great! A Smallmouth lake without time to find em...might as well go get small Largemouth. More then one said they will take 1 pounders all day

[Team9nine]

4 minutes ago, MFBAB said:

 

teamnine, are you saying that this is actually all filmed on the same day but on different sections of the lake?  I always just assumed that they were going on separate days, I never really thought about it. 

No, you're right, one group of anglers per day over a period of 4 days. Separate filming and marshaling each day. Guys not fishing that day just sit around and hang out. They send each group of 6 to a different lake, or a different section of the lake so that no information by competitors on later days could be utilized to an advantage (against the rules anyway, but a nice practice/precaution regardless).

-T9 

[Dwight Hottle]

There was a 2lb-14oz smallie caught.  It is surprising they didn't try deeper water. 

[Ohio Archer]

With limited time and the number/size restrictions on smallmouth, why wouldn't the competitors go for largemouth first?  It would really suck to setup on a group of smallies that were in 16"-21" that you couldn't keep.  Get a limit of 5  then go for the larger fish.  Having size restrictions with a slot can make it a bit difficult with no prior practice or scouting.

[Bluebasser86]

1 hour ago, Ohio Archer said:

With limited time and the number/size restrictions on smallmouth, why wouldn't the competitors go for largemouth first?  It would really suck to setup on a group of smallies that were in 16"-21" that you couldn't keep.  Get a limit of 5  then go for the larger fish.  Having size restrictions with a slot can make it a bit difficult with no prior practice or scouting.

They don't keep them in MLF, they weigh any bass over 12" regardless if it's a legal fish to keep or not, then it's released on the spot.

 

In stressful situations, people resort to something familiar or comfortable. Almost all of us learned to fish for bass in the shallows, beating the banks. It's easy to say that I would have targeted the deep smallmouth and feel I would have found them and and caught enough quality fish to make the cut, but when that clock is ticking away and I'm not getting bites, I'd be up there looking for those bankrunners with everyone else because at least I would feel like I knew what I was doing. 

[herbu]

This question is exactly why I like to watch the show.  It's not to watch them catch fish.  Rather, to hear them talk about their thought processes.  They are all much better fishermen than I, and it's interesting to hear the different ways they analyze their strategy.

I've always thought it would be great to spend a day or days fishing w/ a pro on my lake.  Not to watch them catch fish, but to understand their thinking about where, how and why.  That's what this show does for me.  Rather than challenge their thinking, I would try to learn from it.

[Oregon Native]

Just found out I can get the MLF on my TV for very reasonable according to wife.  I now have it and am looking forward to watching them all.  Got a sample of a couple a few months ago and they were awesome. 

[stkbassn]

I think Shryock fished deep with his spinning gear quite a bit and didn't get bit until he went shallow. I can't remember the other guy who also fished deep on the bridge but he really didn't do much either.  Just seems like it was a very off day at that lake for whatever reason and the other part is how much water they were limited to. No doubt not the most productive areas in the lake or at least not that day. It was kind of cool to see them struggle to be honest, makes me feel a lot better about my struggles ! LOL.

[Bluebasser86]

25 minutes ago, stkbassn said:

I think Shryock fished deep with his spinning gear quite a bit and didn't get bit until he went shallow. I can't remember the other guy who also fished deep on the bridge but he really didn't do much either.  Just seems like it was a very off day at that lake for whatever reason and the other part is how much water they were limited to. No doubt not the most productive areas in the lake or at least not that day. It was kind of cool to see them struggle to be honest, makes me feel a lot better about my struggles ! LOL.

Casey Scanlon squeaked into the last spot fishing deep and actually left the shallows even after he found the leaders fishing there. I think that was a good move because he wasn't going to beat them, barring a miracle, so he went back to what had sort of been working for him and it paid off. Scott Suggs is the only one that has fished deep and seemed to sort of be putting something together. He looked like he might have been able to catch Montgomery if he hadn't run out of time. That might be a big a big factor, there may not be enough of those shallow fish to make it through to the end if someone figures them out deep. That could especially be true with as many seem to be heading to the backs of those creeks. Those are small areas that probably have a limited amount of fish to give. 

[stkbassn]

1 hour ago, Bluebasser86 said:

Casey Scanlon squeaked into the last spot fishing deep and actually left the shallows even after he found the leaders fishing there. I think that was a good move because he wasn't going to beat them, barring a miracle, so he went back to what had sort of been working for him and it paid off. Scott Suggs is the only one that has fished deep and seemed to sort of be putting something together. He looked like he might have been able to catch Montgomery if he hadn't run out of time. That might be a big a big factor, there may not be enough of those shallow fish to make it through to the end if someone figures them out deep. That could especially be true with as many seem to be heading to the backs of those creeks. Those are small areas that probably have a limited amount of fish to give. 

That's right. I forgot about Suggs. And Scanlon was the name I wasn't as familiar with and forgot. They both did catch some deep fish but it was slow for sure. With more time that could have been a winning pattern. I think everyone there had a shot being that Montgomery had a slim lead. It did appear that Montgomery was giving them something they liked because he definitely got the bites. I really like Suggs. I felt bad for Roumbanis but he was a good sport about it !

[MFBAB]

In the first qualifier Pauliniak (sp) got into a deep school and wore them out on topwater of all things (brown and green fish).  He got a big lead early, but almost got run down by a couple of guys fishing shallow and/or marinas.  He did hold on though, and turned in the best weight of the 4 qualifiers so far - close to 30 lbs., but 2nd that day was mid 20's too (Brent Chapman), both by far the best weights of the tourney so far. 

[Bluebasser86]

15 hours ago, MFBAB said:

In the first qualifier Pauliniak (sp) got into a deep school and wore them out on topwater of all things (brown and green fish).  He got a big lead early, but almost got run down by a couple of guys fishing shallow and/or marinas.  He did hold on though, and turned in the best weight of the 4 qualifiers so far - close to 30 lbs., but 2nd that day was mid 20's too (Brent Chapman), both by far the best weights of the tourney so far. 

Brent lives on a clear lake that is loaded with docks (Lake Quivira,KS), so I wasn't real surprised to see him fishing the docks. I was surprised that he has been the only one so far that has been able (or stuck with it long enough), to power fish and catch fish off those docks. Maybe they were just in a feeding mode that day, or maybe he really figured something out. If BP hadn't hit that school early, it would have been a much different outcome I believe.

[Fishes in trees]

Next time you post a topic to your post, spell it out - please.   Let me explain.   The title to your post was MLF on Dale Hollow.  I read it as MILF on Dale Hollow.   Not the same thing.  I was all at once disappointed about the content of the posts and deeply shamed when I realized what I expected the content to be about.   My mind is in a gutter.   I just got home from work.   I'm going to get another beer now.

[Ohio Archer]

^^^  Something smells fishy about your post...

[buzzed bait]

i watched 3 of them so far and enjoyed them all, i love watching them struggle...

i laughed until i cried the other night while watching the one with Andy Montgomery...  i think it was around the end of the first period when he says "boys i think it would be just as easy for me to get pregnant right now as to catch a bass"  

i about lost it

[FrogFreak]

MLF is the future of bass fishing on TV. I love watching how the guys figure out how to catch them. I think I would have went shallow as well, finding them deep takes time, something they really don't have. Much like most of us fun fisherman on a weekend, time is a precious commodity.

Just a side note, if you like multi-species fishing shows, check out 39 hours on YouTube. It's a hoot!!

[WRB]

Haven't watched the 4 round, will later today.

What I noticed during the first round was a good bite on outside major points,the problem is the contestants were not allowed to fish outside of the creek arm, restricting that bite.

The main lake outside structure zones is exactly where you would expect a mid summer deep structured bite to occur. When the anglers get to fish main lake areas, the deep bite should prevail. The Dale Hollow bass may be feeding at night in mid summer.

Tom

[herbu]

On 1/26/2016 at 8:53 AM, Oregon Native said:

Just found out I can get the MLF on my TV for very reasonable according to wife.

Be afraid... be very afraid!  "Very reasonable" may not mean the same thing to your wife as it means to you.  She may think "very reasonable" is a kitchen remodel, new paint, new carpet, and having her mother come live with you.  Suggest you get some specifics quickly.

[Paul Roberts]

I like the MLF format. Intuitive, intimate, and fun to watch. The immediate release and mindful fish-handling regulations set a great precedent as well -one most of us non-tournament anglers apply already.

[Oregon Native]

18 hours ago, herbu said:

Be afraid... be very afraid!  "Very reasonable" may not mean the same thing to your wife as it means to you.  She may think "very reasonable" is a kitchen remodel, new paint, new carpet, and having her mother come live with you.  Suggest you get some specifics quickly.

Thanks.....after 43 years its all good.

Tight Lines