Andy Crawford just relayed this info to me about Bryan New, who is second place on the Wednesday leaderboard.
New has four small keepers in the livewell and his co-angler just added one to his side of the box. They are fishing what seems to be a prespawn area running parallel to a channel.
New is wisely fishing a reaction bait to trigger strikes by the male largemouth. It’s kind of hit and miss.
Why is that?
I can somewhat validate it by the feedback I got yesterday. The bass are in prespawn transition, but they are not as aggressive as you would expect.
“They are just kind of rolling around, not really active as you might think,” explained Scott Martin. “They need that trigger to make them bite, that cold front that kicks them into high gear.”
He added, “I had a lot of males strike my bait, but the strikes were soft, I couldn’t get a hook set.”
Andy’s observations mirror the comment. New swings and misses short-striking bass.
But that’s neither here nor there, especially for New. The good news is that as I write this, Andy continues texting me that he keeps adding keepers (in the 2-pound class) to the livewell. That’s a good start, but it won’t cut it at the weigh-in. For him to fish tomorrow will require at least one or more good kicker bass in the livewell.