Story by Ken Duke | Photos by Tanner & Travis Lyons
Lunker: 6-13 smallmouth bass on Day 1 (about 9:00 a.m.)
Angler: Kevin Martin (Crown City, Ohio)
Lure: 1/2-ounce Z-Man ChatterBait Jackhammer (green pumpkin) with Rapala Crush City Freeloader trailer (green pumpkin)
Rod: G. Loomis 7-foot-4 bladed jig casting rod
Reel: Shimano DC (6.3:1)
Line: 17-pound Seaguar Tatsu fluorocarbon
Method: While fishing earlier NPFL events on Saginaw Bay, Martin located some isolated boulders (two to five feet in diameter) in five to six feet of water on a sandy bottom with scattered vegetation. He marked them with his electronics and, although he did not visit them in practice, they were his first stop on Day 1. Making a long cast with his bladed jig, he let the bait sink to the bottom before starting a medium retrieve that kept the bait three to four feet deep and occasionally banging into rocks and vegetation.
The Cast: The giant smallmouth struck Martin’s ChatterBait just 10 feet off his rod tip, knocking so much slack into his line that he thought it had been cut at first. Fortunately, he managed a solid hook-set and the fish came to the surface. Martin punched the thumb bar and gave the fish a little line to better fight it, leading it around the boat to wear it down before landing it.
Lesson: “Every smallmouth bass weighing better than 6 pounds that I’ve ever caught came in six feet of water or less,” says Martin. And even though his Saginaw Bay leviathan is not his personal best smallmouth (he has a 7-3 from Lake Erie), it is his biggest bronzeback in competition and the biggest in NPFL history.
“This is a pattern I look for in a lot of smallmouth waters—Erie, the St. Lawrence River, Saginaw Bay. It’s not a numbers pattern, but it’s been really good for big fish.”
“I like to ride around and look for boulders in shallow water with some scattered vegetation and sand. If I find them, I’ll mark them on my electronics and come back. Although I found this spot several years ago, I never visited it during practice for this event because I didn’t want to be seen fishing there. “On Day 1, four of the five bass I took to the scales came from this area. Although I went back, I never caught another fish there during the tournament. The wind and other conditions weren’t right after the first day.”
