By John Johnson
BassFan Senior Editor
If lots of variables are your thing for top-level bass tournaments, you probably couldn't find a better place to hold an event this week than Alabama's Lay Lake. The Coosa River impoundment will be the site of the MLF REDCREST Championship, which gets under way Thursday.
The 12,000-acre lake is no stranger to championship derbies, having hosted three Bassmaster Classics from 2002 to 2010. However, this will be the first one in which competitors will receive credit for every scorable fish they catch (2 pounds or heavier), and that makes things really interesting when you consider that Lay is chock-full of spotted bass that meet that standard.
Joey Nania, a veteran Bassmaster Opens angler who won last year's event at Lake Eufaula, runs a guide service on the Coosa lakes. He says the 50 REDCREST competitors will face a myriad of decisions, including which species to focus on, whether to ply their offerings in deep or shallow water, etc. Forward-facing sonar could play a big role, but it won't be mandatory if an angler can find consistent action near the banks.
"There's just a lot of options," Nania said. "The reason I love the Coosa is there's just so many ways to catch them. With the water temperature in the high 50s to low 60s, it's hard to say that it favors one type of guy.
"It's been a good winter, with everyone capitalizing on the suspended fish more and more. There've been a lot of big bags caught 'Scoping with both a soft-plastic minnow and a jerkbait, but also with the warmup we've had, a lot are being caught shallow. You've got backwaters that could reach 65 degrees or warmer this week and we've got a full moon coming, so I think spawning largemouth will definitely play a role."
Quite a few big largemouths will be caught, but the format and the present conditions might favor the spots. They tend to school up in moving water and catching 15 to 20 of them per day is far from out of the question. The best of those specimens will weigh 4 1/2 to 5 pounds.
"I think it's going to take consistency and some mixed bags to win," Nania said. "It could happen from dam to dam. I'd guess that most of the fish will come from the mid-lake down, but there's tons of big ones in the river and tons of current places with big spots on them.
"Current and color are the keys to catching the big spots this time of year – and really year-round. There'll be lots of opportunities to find them schooled up shallow and they're usually pretty dang hungry."
Various types of jigs (conventional, bladed, swimming) will be effective for the shallower fish. Ned/Damiki rigs and jighead minnows will be predominant for numbers-chasers on the lower end of the lake.
"Some big (largemouth) will be caught in the grass, but catching enough weight will be hard to do with not as many numbers," Nania concluded.
