TW_Staff
Administrator
Ish Monroe:
With such a diverse ecosystem around the Sabine River, Ish Monroe was hoping he could find an area that 1) he could have mostly to himself, and 2) would have all the fish-holding features he was looking for (grass, wood, mats, etc.). He connected on both fronts as he uncovered a narrow dead-end canal that he said, "had a ton of fish in it." Catching limits was not a problem for him, but he never encountered a specimen over 2 1/2 pounds.
During a 3-day scouting trip, he looked around the well-known bayous and other rivers that flowed into the area south of Orange. He was keyed in on a flipping bite, but wanted options to work a frog and a spinnerbait as well.
"I wasn't wanting to flip just cypress trees or just hyacinth," he said. "I was looking for a place that had a mixture of everything and this area had it. It had hyacinth and duckweed and when you have duckweed in an area that means there's very little salt in that area. It also had gator grass and cypress stumps and cypress trees that weren't so dead-looking from the salt. They didn't have a bunch of barnacles on them so I knew I had some really good fresh water and usually when you have that in a place like that, it's a good fishery area."
The water was much cleaner (2 feet visibility) than elsewhere in the system and that helped him track his baits better. His area bottomed out at 4 feet at high tide and wouldn't get below 2 feet when the tide was out.
"I got to flip and frog and throw a spinnerbait," he added. "Those are the things I love to do best. The best part of my bayou was it was a mile-long stretch that you couldn't turn a boat around until you got to the end. You'd get in there and you could flip both sides and throw a spinnerbait in the middle of it or a frog down the middle or on both sides."
Frog gear: 7'4" extra-heavy Daiwa Steez XBD frog rod, Daiwa Zillion Type R casting reel (7.3:1 ratio), 65-pound Maxima braided line (ultra green), Snag Proof Ish's Phat Frog (papa midnight).
Spinnerbait gear: 7' medium-action Daiwa Cielo spinnerbait rod, Daiwa Lexa casting reel (6.3:1 ratio), 15-pound Maxima Ultragreen monofilament line, 3/8-oz. River2Sea Bling spinnerbait (lemonade twist). The spinnerbait had a gold Indiana blade on top of a red kicker blade. He threaded a trailer hook on the bait, but every fish he caught with it was on the main hook.
Flipping gear (craw): 8' Daiwa Steez punch rod, same reel as frog, same line as frog, 1-oz. River2Sea Trash Bomb tungsten flipping weight, 4/0 Paychex Baits punch hook, Missile Baits Missile Craw (California love).
He'd throw the craw when flipping gator grass and hyacinth.
Flipping gear (creature): Same rod, Daiwa Steez casting reel (7.9:1 ratio), 25-Maxima fluorocarbon line, 1/4-oz. River2Sea tungsten weight, 5/0 Paychex Baits punch hook, Missile Baits D-Bomb (California love).
When he'd see fish follow his frog, he'd come back through with the D-Bomb near cypress stumps.
Main factor: "I found an area with a ton of fish in it. I literally, over the course of 4 days, caught at least 50 keepers and probably another 50-plus shorts. I don't think anybody else did that."
Performance edge: "My Yamaha (motor) ran excellent. I'm loving this new Ranger 520Z. I got 73.7 mph out of my boat. It was amazing. I ran around a lot and never burned a full tank of gas in 4 days."
Bill Lowen:
Unlike a number of his competitors, Bill Lowen didn't get an in-person look at the Sabine River in advance of the opener. Instead, he relied upon map study and the word of a friend, who told him that while the rest of the field would likely scatter across a couple hundred miles, the 4-mile radius around the City Launch Ramp in Orange was good, fishable water. "I just focused my time on that," he said.
He struggled in practice with fewer than 10 keeper bites across 3 days, but he didn't punt. He used the same tank of gas the entire tournament and caught the majority of his fish flipping in and around spawning areas.
"I probably had a lot more cleaner water than a lot of the guys did," he added. "I was able to see them on beds once the tide got low enough to do it. During practice, the water was a lot more stained, but as the week progressed it got cleaner and cleaner. I don't know how all of that tide stuff works. Everybody says, Chase the tide, it's better when it does this or does that. I have no clue. I just fish and fish and fish and hope it works out."
He and Monroe were the only two anglers who weighed limits each day of the event, but that's all he was fishing for - five bites a day. "The biggest key for me was I would never get discouraged or never felt like I was out it," he said. "I'm used to fishing for, literally, five bites a day. When you're used to that and you only have three in the livewell, it doesn't bother you. I know a lot of guys get spun out and they start panicking. To me, it's just another day. I get spun out when I'm getting 30 bites."
Another key element to Lowen's performance was being thorough in his areas due to the volume of local anglers on the water. "I tried to fish a lot of different angles on things and places where I thought some of the guys were missing," he said. "There were a lot of locals fishing on the river system, probably the most I've ever had to deal with. That doesn't bother me, but I always figure that I need to get into the nooks and crannies where the other guys aren't making casts. That was a big key for me."
Flipping gear: 7'6" heavy action CastAway Skeleton flipping rod, Abu Garcia Revo Premier casting reel (ratio), 17- and 20-pound Berkley Trilene 100% fluorocarbon line, Reins 3/16- and 1/4-oz. tungsten flipping weights, 4/0 Mustad Big Mouth tube hook, 4" Tightlines UV tube (green-pumpkin).
He also flipped a 4" Berkley PowerBait Power Hawg (green-pumpkin).
In the dirtier water in practice, he flipped a black neon and black/blue tube. "Those helped me locate the fish because I couldn't get bit on anything else," he said.
ChatterBait gear: 7' medium-heavy CastAway Skeleton casting rod, same reel, 15-pound Berkley Trilene 100% fluorocarbon line, 1/4-oz. Z-Man ChatterBait (black/blue), unnamed straight-legged trailer.
Main factor: "Keeping my head and not getting down and knowing that any cast could be the right bite. Keeping 100 percent confidence in what I was doing was probably the biggest key. It was so easy to get on the big motor and take off somewhere, but I just tried to keep myself in the high-percentage areas."
Performance edge: "I've been wearing a pair of prototype polarized sunglasses from Vicious Fishing since the (Bassmaster) Classic. The water (on day 4) was a tanicky, dirty color and it was really cool to have a pair of glasses on that allowed me to see those fish. For whatever reason, it made the bellies of the fish really jump out. To know that I'm the only guy out there with this pair of sunglasses is pretty awesome."
Sabine River 2-5 Patterns Bassfan 3/20/13 (Todd Ceisner)
TW Staff
With such a diverse ecosystem around the Sabine River, Ish Monroe was hoping he could find an area that 1) he could have mostly to himself, and 2) would have all the fish-holding features he was looking for (grass, wood, mats, etc.). He connected on both fronts as he uncovered a narrow dead-end canal that he said, "had a ton of fish in it." Catching limits was not a problem for him, but he never encountered a specimen over 2 1/2 pounds.
During a 3-day scouting trip, he looked around the well-known bayous and other rivers that flowed into the area south of Orange. He was keyed in on a flipping bite, but wanted options to work a frog and a spinnerbait as well.
"I wasn't wanting to flip just cypress trees or just hyacinth," he said. "I was looking for a place that had a mixture of everything and this area had it. It had hyacinth and duckweed and when you have duckweed in an area that means there's very little salt in that area. It also had gator grass and cypress stumps and cypress trees that weren't so dead-looking from the salt. They didn't have a bunch of barnacles on them so I knew I had some really good fresh water and usually when you have that in a place like that, it's a good fishery area."
The water was much cleaner (2 feet visibility) than elsewhere in the system and that helped him track his baits better. His area bottomed out at 4 feet at high tide and wouldn't get below 2 feet when the tide was out.
"I got to flip and frog and throw a spinnerbait," he added. "Those are the things I love to do best. The best part of my bayou was it was a mile-long stretch that you couldn't turn a boat around until you got to the end. You'd get in there and you could flip both sides and throw a spinnerbait in the middle of it or a frog down the middle or on both sides."
Frog gear: 7'4" extra-heavy Daiwa Steez XBD frog rod, Daiwa Zillion Type R casting reel (7.3:1 ratio), 65-pound Maxima braided line (ultra green), Snag Proof Ish's Phat Frog (papa midnight).
Spinnerbait gear: 7' medium-action Daiwa Cielo spinnerbait rod, Daiwa Lexa casting reel (6.3:1 ratio), 15-pound Maxima Ultragreen monofilament line, 3/8-oz. River2Sea Bling spinnerbait (lemonade twist). The spinnerbait had a gold Indiana blade on top of a red kicker blade. He threaded a trailer hook on the bait, but every fish he caught with it was on the main hook.
Flipping gear (craw): 8' Daiwa Steez punch rod, same reel as frog, same line as frog, 1-oz. River2Sea Trash Bomb tungsten flipping weight, 4/0 Paychex Baits punch hook, Missile Baits Missile Craw (California love).
He'd throw the craw when flipping gator grass and hyacinth.
Flipping gear (creature): Same rod, Daiwa Steez casting reel (7.9:1 ratio), 25-Maxima fluorocarbon line, 1/4-oz. River2Sea tungsten weight, 5/0 Paychex Baits punch hook, Missile Baits D-Bomb (California love).
When he'd see fish follow his frog, he'd come back through with the D-Bomb near cypress stumps.
Main factor: "I found an area with a ton of fish in it. I literally, over the course of 4 days, caught at least 50 keepers and probably another 50-plus shorts. I don't think anybody else did that."
Performance edge: "My Yamaha (motor) ran excellent. I'm loving this new Ranger 520Z. I got 73.7 mph out of my boat. It was amazing. I ran around a lot and never burned a full tank of gas in 4 days."
Bill Lowen:
Unlike a number of his competitors, Bill Lowen didn't get an in-person look at the Sabine River in advance of the opener. Instead, he relied upon map study and the word of a friend, who told him that while the rest of the field would likely scatter across a couple hundred miles, the 4-mile radius around the City Launch Ramp in Orange was good, fishable water. "I just focused my time on that," he said.
He struggled in practice with fewer than 10 keeper bites across 3 days, but he didn't punt. He used the same tank of gas the entire tournament and caught the majority of his fish flipping in and around spawning areas.
"I probably had a lot more cleaner water than a lot of the guys did," he added. "I was able to see them on beds once the tide got low enough to do it. During practice, the water was a lot more stained, but as the week progressed it got cleaner and cleaner. I don't know how all of that tide stuff works. Everybody says, Chase the tide, it's better when it does this or does that. I have no clue. I just fish and fish and fish and hope it works out."
He and Monroe were the only two anglers who weighed limits each day of the event, but that's all he was fishing for - five bites a day. "The biggest key for me was I would never get discouraged or never felt like I was out it," he said. "I'm used to fishing for, literally, five bites a day. When you're used to that and you only have three in the livewell, it doesn't bother you. I know a lot of guys get spun out and they start panicking. To me, it's just another day. I get spun out when I'm getting 30 bites."
Another key element to Lowen's performance was being thorough in his areas due to the volume of local anglers on the water. "I tried to fish a lot of different angles on things and places where I thought some of the guys were missing," he said. "There were a lot of locals fishing on the river system, probably the most I've ever had to deal with. That doesn't bother me, but I always figure that I need to get into the nooks and crannies where the other guys aren't making casts. That was a big key for me."
Flipping gear: 7'6" heavy action CastAway Skeleton flipping rod, Abu Garcia Revo Premier casting reel (ratio), 17- and 20-pound Berkley Trilene 100% fluorocarbon line, Reins 3/16- and 1/4-oz. tungsten flipping weights, 4/0 Mustad Big Mouth tube hook, 4" Tightlines UV tube (green-pumpkin).
He also flipped a 4" Berkley PowerBait Power Hawg (green-pumpkin).
In the dirtier water in practice, he flipped a black neon and black/blue tube. "Those helped me locate the fish because I couldn't get bit on anything else," he said.
ChatterBait gear: 7' medium-heavy CastAway Skeleton casting rod, same reel, 15-pound Berkley Trilene 100% fluorocarbon line, 1/4-oz. Z-Man ChatterBait (black/blue), unnamed straight-legged trailer.
Main factor: "Keeping my head and not getting down and knowing that any cast could be the right bite. Keeping 100 percent confidence in what I was doing was probably the biggest key. It was so easy to get on the big motor and take off somewhere, but I just tried to keep myself in the high-percentage areas."
Performance edge: "I've been wearing a pair of prototype polarized sunglasses from Vicious Fishing since the (Bassmaster) Classic. The water (on day 4) was a tanicky, dirty color and it was really cool to have a pair of glasses on that allowed me to see those fish. For whatever reason, it made the bellies of the fish really jump out. To know that I'm the only guy out there with this pair of sunglasses is pretty awesome."
Sabine River 2-5 Patterns Bassfan 3/20/13 (Todd Ceisner)
TW Staff