(Editor's note: The following is the latest installment in a series of fishing tips presented by The Bass University. Check back each Friday for a new tip.)
No two successful tournament pros attack the game exactly the same way, and that’s okay, said veteran Mike McClelland. KVD’s warp-speed approach might not work for him, and vice versa, and a key part of winning is developing a personal style. That might mean covering the whole lake every day, or just a very small piece of it.
“When I look back at my career, the fact of the matter is that the most successes – five of the eight wins I got – were a total grind,” McClelland explained. In the earliest portions of his career, he fished fast and aimed to cover tons of water, until a wise veteran recognized his inherent talent and told him that he’d have to slow down to make the most of it. A few years later, he won two B.A.S.S. Invitationals back-to-back, and while the TV coverage made it look like he was running and gunning, he was actually staying put. On the Arkansas River, all but two fish that he weighed in came from one 40-yard stretch of grass. At Ross Barnett, he spent the whole event “in one little bitty specific section.”
The result of those early successes was that he looks to “recognize what’s there and take advantage of it.”
If you have the grinder’s mentality and discipline, it can pay off for you, too.
During practice, it’s a different story. McClelland fishes fast, covering water and utilizing his senses of sight, smell and feel to figure things out. He doesn’t learn everything because he wants to remain open to changes that will occur during the event, but by the end of practice he wants to have two things figured out: (1) a game plan that he can stick to; and (2) whether he wants to focus on a pattern or a specific section of the lake.
He also spends a lot of practice – usually about 40 percent of the time – idling and graphing, only stopping to fish key targets. He’s highly aware of key feeding periods and wants to make sure that he’s casting rather than running the boat down the lake when they arise. Finally, he tries to mix up his bait choices, but keeps it simple by using confidence lures.
Once the tournament rolls around, he’s focused on the plan and sticks to it until he catches a decent bag. At that point, he’ll allow himself to try to expand it – that could mean different baits, different areas or different types of targets, among other things. For example, if he was only catching fish off of floats on the backside of docks, and ignoring the other parts of the docks prior to boxing a limit, once he has 12 or 14 pounds in the livewell he’ll try to figure out where else the bass reside on those same docks, or which lures will garner bigger bites.
Each grinder has his own set of preferred baits, and McClelland is no exception.
“Every day, no matter where I go, other than maybe Florida, I am always going to have a little finesse jig tied on,” he explained. “When I’m looking for bites, this is a key bait.” He’s also a big fan of the all-but-forgotten flipping tube. Among moving baits, he relies heavily on the SPRO Rock Crawler series of crankbaits, as well as a variety of spinnerbaits. When bigger fish are necessary to make the money, bigger football jigs and swimbaits come into play.
“Stick with what you have confidence in,” he said.
If you want to learn some of the additional elements of McClelland’s “grinder” style of tournament success, including the buzzbait that’s on his deck at least 10 months out of the year to tempt a kicker, check out his full video, available only by subscribing to The Bass University TV.
