Wired regular John Green had the opportunity to ride with Aaron Martens in his recent win at Guntersville in the Southern Challenge. He also drew Skeet Reese in this event. Below is his account in blog format of how it went and his experience as a BASS Marshall. Good stuff John and great hoodie too!
SOUTHERN CHALLENGE
Ever wondered how one of those tournaments you see on television every Saturday works? How the anglers in the multi-colored shirts and wrapped boats fish? How a professional bass fisherman would approach your home lake? I have. For several years I’ve wanted to see a professional bass fishing event up close, and the Marshall program has allowed me the opportunity to do just that. In years past, I’ve put in to fish as a co-angler in similar type events, but was never fortunate enough to get drawn. It seems that your chances to fish as a co-angler are greater if you sign up for all the events, and I’ve never had the time, or the money, to do that. With the Marshal program, I was able to sign up for two events close to home, spend a minimal amount of money, and most important to me - I could participate on lakes that I fish, and not have to be concerned with any off-limits periods.
The BASS Southern Challenge on Lake Guntersville was my second Elite Series event to marshal. In April, I had participated in the Dixie Duel event on Wheeler Lake and enjoyed it immensely. I was looking forward to seeing how the pros approached the lake that I fish regularly. I knew there would be some good stringers caught, but had no idea they would catch them like they did. The numbers and quality were amazing. I kept thinking they would eventually run out of fish, but, with a few exceptions, they never did.
On Wednesday, I made the short drive from work to Lake Guntersville State Park Lodge to register. After several days of heavy rain, the sun was finally starting to shine thru. The previous rains had lots of chocolate colored water pouring into the lake. I wondered what effect that would have on the tournament. BASS staff had several signs along the way which were a help to me since I am somewhat directionally challenged. I arrived about thirty minutes prior and found no one in the registration line. Registration took all of five minutes. I was given a “goody bag” that included tournament information, directions on using the BassTrak phone, two sample packs of Berkley worms, a hat, a shirt, and a $25 Bass Pro Shops gift card. Didn’t care much for the hat, but the shirt was nice. I had to wait a little bit for the briefing to start. Marshals were briefed in one conference room and the pros in another.
Unlike the Wheeler event, this time there seemed to be plenty of marshals. Later, I heard they were short seven or eight, but these spots were quickly filled from the waiting list. I had called several friends to see if they were interested, but by the time they called the tournament director, the field was already full. During the briefing, BASS officials asked for six volunteers to marshal on Sunday. I had to decline due to church. I didn’t feel right about taking away the one day of the week set aside to worship our Lord. Some say he would understand, but I wanted to praise him for all the wonderful blessings he has bestowed on me. After a short briefing, they sent us over to the pros’ conference room and started the pairings. Anticipation was high.
Several of the top names went by, Alton Jones, Rick Clunn, Edwin Evers, Gary Klein, .… then finally my name was called. I drew Aaron Martens of Alabama. I met up with him, and we agreed to meet in front of the ranger station at the ramp. We were boat number 47, second flight. We agreed to meet at 5:30 for the 6:00 takeoff. For some reason BASS had decided to move the start time to safe daylight. Now the state park is about an hour and fifteen minutes from my house. I was counting on a 7:15 launch and a little more sleep. That wasn’t the case though. Sleep was a scarce commodity this tournament.
Thursday morning I got up and made my way to Guntersville State Park. I met up with Aaron and put my snacks and gear in a storage compartment. Aaron dropped me in the water, parked the truck, and we idled over to the launch site. While waiting, BASS gave weather updates, played music, and did some interviews. After the playing of the National Anthem, we lined up and took off. Aaron runs a Triton. Great riding boat. Aaron stopped just outside Town Creek where he had located some schooling fish. What happened over the next 9-1/2 hours was unbelievable. Aaron picked up a cranking rod and began working some shell beds with scattered rocks and stumps. His second cast produced a 2-3/4 pound keeper. In less than 10 minutes he had an 18-1/2 pound limit in the livewell. We left his first spot at 6:40 (after fishing for 25 minutes) with 19-3/4 pounds and 17 total fish.
The second stop would produce four fish in eight minutes upgrading his catch to 21-1/2 pounds. The most amazing thing to me – not another Elite boat in sight. No tournament boats, but Aaron noticed some local boats. To me, he seemed overly concerned about the locals. He made several comments throughout the day about them. I thought it affected his concentration a bit. Little did I know at the time that they would nearly change the outcome of the tournament. On his third stop he added a 4-1/2 pound spotted bass to bring his total weight to 22-1/2 pounds. We revisited each of the first three points, and, by the time we left, he had caught nearly 50 fish and had over 24 pounds in the livewell. It had taken him just over two hours. We headed upriver and stopped along a riprap shoreline. A 4-3/4 pounder engulfs his crankbait and is bleeding bad. Aaron decides to release it rather than take a chance on it losing it and incurring an eight ounce penalty. The rest of the fish here are small, and we head to his fifth spot. Another bass engulfs his crankbait and is bleeding. This time it’s a 5-1/2 pounder making the decision more difficult. Aaron works with the fish, and the chemicals and ice he’s using seem to revive her.
In another 25 minutes his 82nd fish comes aboard, another 5-1/2 pounder. He’s really building the weight now. By 11:00 we’ve moved to some flats and he’s ripping a lipless crankbait thru scattered grass. Fish number 96 is a chunky 4-1/2 pounder that offers no help. Five minutes later he hooks into and lands his largest of the day, a 6-1/2 pounder that pushes his total to over 29 pounds. It takes him right at five hours to catch 100 fish. That equates to a fish every three minutes. Aaron spends the rest of the day searching for new water. On one point he catches (or loses) a fish on 25 straight casts, and all the casts are to the exact same spot. Amazing. We both wondered just how many fish were down there. He finished the day with 137 fish and over 29 pounds. He also culled two 20 pound plus stringers. We both were anticipating some good weights on the first day, but never thought it would be as good as it was. Aaron’s weight tied him with for fourth with Ken Cook. I thanked him for the day and head home tired, dehydrated, and sunburned. Did I mention I forgot to pack enough drinks and sunscreen? A mistake I would pay for the next two days.
Friday I struggle out of beds with sunburned legs and feet. I had drawn Skeet Reese for day two and agreed to meet him at the dock at 5:30. He launched across the lake and drove the boat to the launch site. I was running about ten minutes behind, but we were boat number 97, in the fourth flight, so I wasn’t worried. When I walked up to the dock, Keith Alan was interviewing Skeet, and he was wondering why his marshal was late. To top it off, my wife and several friends (along with a few thousand others) heard the interview over the internet. Turns out I was bumped out of Skeet’s boat by a camera man that morning anyway. I was to ride with a camera boat driver, Charlie Bertus, until the camera man got enough footage. Charlie wanted to get ahead of the field, so we headed upriver to wait for Skeet. Skeet was fishing in South Sauty Creek, and we waited just below it on the backside of the river channel. Charlie pointed out the place that produced the lake record, a 14-1/2 pound giant. Seems Charlie knew where it was caught because he was the one who caught it! Skeet soon passed by us and we followed him to a point on a bend in the creek channel. He was cranking a ledge that dropped from five to twenty feet.
As I climbed (and with sunburned legs that’s exactly what I did) to the back of the boat, I noticed some water sloshing up thru the drain in the deck. Uh, Charlie, we seem to be taking on water. A surprised Charlie then informed me that the bilge pump wasn’t working. Great, fifteen miles from the launch and we’re sinking. Tinkering in the bilge area, Charlie soon surmised that no more water was coming in. Must have been some backwash from when we stopped. Skeet’s catching them pretty good, but not as good as yesterday. It takes two whole hours to get his limit at 16 pounds. By then, the camera man had left and I’m in the boat with the reigning classic champion. Pretty cool. Skeet’s had several big fish pull off, enough that he could have had a 20 pound sack. Around 9:00 we pull up on a long grass point just downstream from where we started. Denny Brauer had been there all morning and said he had about the same weight as Skeet. Skeet immediately caught several shorts on the same crankbait he had been using all morning.
Similar to Aaron, he threw a crankbait designed to run six to eight feet deeper than he’s fishing. Also similar to Aaron, he fished shell beds surrounded by stumps and scattered grass. Within ten minutes, Skeet put a 4-1/2 and 5 pounder in the boat pushing his limit to over 21 pounds. It’s then that I noticed Denny had put down his spinnerbait and was now cranking. By 9:30 we’re back to his starting spot and he quickly landed a 4-1/2 pounder. For a day that I thought would see smaller weights, Skeet’s really put them in the boat. An hour and a half later we’re sitting on a main river ledge that Skeet had found loaded with big fish in practice. This spot failed to produce the first day and only yielded short fish for him the second. A move slightly downstream produced a nice 4-1/2 pounder. It now takes a fish around 5 pounds to cull anything in the livewell. At 12:30 we headed to Pine Island where we found five other boats. Not much room, no bites, and plenty of tension as we get near Alton Jones’ primary spot. The lake fished small in some areas as several anglers found the same fish. Most spots had one particular “spot within a spot” that produced the larger fish. Alton wasn’t happy, but Skeet did no damage to his spot.
From what I heard, this wasn’t the only time two anglers were positioning for the same area. Skeet ran several more spots with only short fish to show for his efforts. Just before 3:00 he stops along the river channel and soon hooks up with his biggest fish of the day, a fat 6-1/4 pounder. He’s now matched his day one weight with over 25 pounds. I was sure he would move up into the top twelve. The rest of the day is spent looking for new water, but it’s hard for Skeet to get motivated with that kind of weight in the livewell. Back to the dock by 4:40 and the weights are once again huge. Skeet only moves up one place. Over 50 pounds in two days and he’s still not in the top twelve. Since I’m on the list to marshal the third day, I hang around for all of the weigh-in. About twenty minutes after it’s over, the remaining marshals and top 50 anglers gather for the day three pairings. My name is the first called and I’m paired with – what are the odds – Aaron Martens, the day two leader. Aaron said he had found a new spot that produced several five and six pound fish. I’m excited even though I’m pretty sure a camera man would bump me out again.
Day Three – Aaron Martens
I got up a little earlier since I didn’t want to be late two mornings in a row. I expected Aaron to be a little nervousabout running out of fish, boats following him, or the local fishing pressure the lake sees every weekend. I couldn’t tell any difference from the first day though. Same as before, he dropped me in, parked the truck, and we idled over to the launch site. As I expected I got bumped temporarily to the camera boat. I suggested to the camera boat driver that we head on over to Aaron’s first stop so we wouldn’t have to fight the boat traffic. Aaron soon arrived and began casting his crankbait to the subtle point where he had hammered them the day before. This was a different day though – no current. TVA is notorious for shutting the water down on the weekends making the bite a lot tougher. Surely this would be the day when the weights would drop. It didn’t take long for Aaron to put the first keeper in the boat, but the quality of the previous days wasn’t there. By 7:00 he had moved to stop number 2 and by 7:30 he put down the crankbait in favor of a jig. The jig quickly produced one over 10 pounds, but it was the wrong kind, a drum. In another thirty minutes Aaron’s on stop number three, a long point with scattered grass on top. Back to the crankbait and soon a big fish was on the line. It wouldn’t go to the weigh-in though, as it straightened out his trebles and pulled off. It took Aaron nearly two hours to get a limit today and it was a small one – only twelve pounds.
The lack of current was definitely affecting the bite. All of the fish were hooked on the back treble. Aaron remarked that the fish were biting funny. I wondered why he wasn’t trying another color when he swung a 4-1/2 pound fish into the boat. Fishing slowed again and one lone boat was left watching by 9:00. It was time to move. We headed to Town Creek where the wind was now howling with a storm on the horizon. A couple of stops produced nothing but shorts. The next move was a turning point in the day. Aaron pulls up on his first stop from day one. In less than thirty minutes he culled everything in the livewell and was up to 24 pounds. We would spend the next two hours graphing points with Aaron catching only short fish. At 12:10 we were back on the grass point where he had lost a couple of big fish earlier the day. After thirty minutes of cranking, Aaron decided to change from a shad pattern to a bream pattern. In the next twenty casts he would put a 4-3/4 and 6-1/2 pound fish in the livewell and was now over 27 pounds with his best five. After throwing back a 4-1/2 pounder, he decided to leave the spot for the final day. We watched a local tournament boat catch a couple of good fish near us on a spot several of the Elite anglers (including Aaron) had fished previously. After the boat leaves, we ease over to check it out and Aaron searched for the “spot within the spot”. Nothing doing, so we graphed some more points on the way back to the weigh-in. Nothing on them either.
Aaron was now cranking near his day one starting spot looking for another school. With only ten minutes before check-in, his rod bowed with the weight of a good fish. A few seconds later another 6 pounder is in the boat. The very next cast produced a 4 pounder; he had found another school for the final day. Aaron ended the day with over 60 fish and over 28 pounds in the livewell. I thanked him for the day and wished him luck tomorrow. As I made my way off the dock, a reporter asked what I thought about his chances tomorrow. Was his pattern bullet-proof? Yes I said. Current, clouds, sun, rain, wind…nothing seemed to affect him. Little did I know that local fishermen would be the silver bullet that nearly brought him down.
FINAL THOUGHTS
What did I take away from the tournament? Any secret lures or techniques? No. Any secret locations to catch fish? No. What I did learn -
1) The Elite Series anglers are very, very good. Most will figure out the fish within a couple days.
2) Factoring in the pressure, Guntersville Lake is the best bass fishery in the world.
3) Humminbird 1197c is an awesome unit. The one-foot contour intervals provide way more detail than any other unit I’ve seen. It shows a lot of subtleties that you miss with four or five-foot intervals. Unless my fantasy fishing teams bring in some serious cash though, I don’t see one in my near future.
4) Shell beds equal bass on the Tennessee River system.
5) Always remember the sunscreen.
6) That Clunn guy must know a thing or two about designing crankbaits.
7) Aaron Martens and Skeet Reese are class acts. Both were very intense about fishing, but took the time to make me feel welcome in their boats.
Would I do it again? Yep. Hope they come back to Guntersville next year.
