Trip report from recent Bassmaster Elite Series Marshal experience on Guntersville.
Day 1 Pro Frank Talley
Got to admit, I had never heard of my day one assignment. A little research later in the night revealed Frank was in his first year on the Elite Series, and to his credit had qualified for the Classic last year fishing the opens. Frank is from Texas and can probably be characterized as a shallow water guy.
Prelaunch is normally the most entertaining portion of marshaling. All of the boats are gathered in one place and the guys hang out, prep gear and rag on each other. Lots of good stories are normally told at this time, but that is not the case today. One of the anglers, Brad Whatley stayed at a rental house on highway 79 and had all of his gear stolen. All of the anglers including Frank stopped by to offer rods, reels and tackle. Brad sat there on the deck frantically tying on baits from loaner equipment.
We start off the morning running down to Shirey’s cut across from Roseberry fishing backwater grass. Frank is throwing a white horny toad on braid and works the grass patches over for a couple of hundred yards, boating 3 fish. There is very little activity in the area, really only the few blow ups Frank got causing any disturbances. All three of the bites come from the same area. Noting this, Frank backs off the grass line and throws a jackhammer chatterbait, working back up to the cut.
Much of the morning bite has passed and Frank decides to run down river to a point he has found fish on in practice. He mentioned he caught one in practice and had five good ones follow it. The first fish he caught here this was again the case. He talked about allowing the fish time to make their way back to the grass and regroup. He worked this area over pretty well and boated pretty much his limit here. Caught a couple on a big worm (color grape) but nothing to speak of size wise.
Oddly enough one of his larger fish was flipping over in the livewell and he chose to put the fish back before it died in the livewell. This also explains the one pound over estimation of an otherwise accurate BASSTRACK weight report. Frank ended up with around 12-13 pounds. Not a lot to report here. He didn’t have a lot of spots on the lake and had endured a brutal practice.
Frank is rigged in a Triton boat; I am unsure of the model, but it has an incredibly wide deck and rides extremely smooth and dry. There again, the water was pretty flat for the day. Topped out speed I noticed was 62 MPH with the Mercury 4 stroke. He is outfitted with Lowrance graphs and Minn Kota Ultrax trolling motor. The TM seems to be consistent amongst all of the boats I saw. Topic of Lowrance came up and the poor support they got on the trail from them. He mentioned the Garmin guy probably having the fewest clients on the tour but always being the first one in the parking lot on tournament days. I notice this the following day.
We talked a little bit about color. Biggest pickup I got from him was the choice of using white in dirty water. Said he recognized the book says to throw dark colors, but proof to him was the classic where he caught around 50 fish in the muddiest water imaginable on a white chatterbait. Also Frank was big on dip dies and spray scents. He keeps a large spray bottle of homemade garlic spray and hits his baits over the side of the boat consistently (and his marshal if the wind is blowing). I smelled like an Italian restaurant when the day was over. All of you idiots that believe in using fabric softener sheets and the like to keep moss knats off you, forget it. Garlic works! Didn’t have one around all day.
The big take away from spending the day with Frank was a lesson in mapping fish on the ledge. He rode the green buoy ledge in front of Roseberry and located a couple of schools of fish on his Lowrance. He noted the bass are typically single file on the bottom, whereas trash fish will stack vertically. He used the way points to ID an area with a school and took a wide turn to come back and fish them. The fish never fired however. The picture below does not show the fish he had located, actually shows the dead water he was sitting in while casting to them. But gives you an idea of all the screen considerations used to find them. For this viewing, Lowrance is hard to beat.
We also ran up past BB Comer bridge and scanned some ledges and fished briefly but didn’t catch anything.
Frank was a real nice guy and was frustrated by not having more to run to. The following day however his fish on that point bit, and he ended up with big fish for the day (almost 7#) and nearly enough weight to recover from the first day weight. Conditions were sunny and hotter than the bricks of hell. TVA did briefly pull some current, but this really didn’t impact any of the water he was fishing.
Day 2
Well I got a new guy on day 1, had to get an old pro for day 2; wrong. This time I get a first year Cajun named Quentin Cappo. Never heard of him, but quick review of his profile and I realize this will be the first time I have ridden with a Bass Cat guy, in a Cougar as it turns out. Cappo had qualified out of the opens and being the owner of a couple of small businesses could afford the chance to do this (Gym and Restaurant). An LSU grad and straight up Cajun.
He admitted up front that he had never been to the lake before, the two practice days he had here were bad. He travels with a bunch of the young Cajuns and all had similar stories of struggling. I show up to the boat and he is having a problem with one of the console Lowrance units, eventually solving the issue by replacing a circuit breaker below the console. Another frustrated Lowrance guy, in this case more so for the lacking detail of the maps. Lowrance has a new map card out this year which is supposed to rival the Lakemaster card by Hummingbird. The pro is able to show me by structure scan and side image easily what he is fishing but doesn’t have the contour detail from the maps to fully study an area without riding over it.
Take away learned from yet a second angler: You do not ride over your fish with the big motor or trolling motor. Both guys were very careful to maintain a distance from the fish they were casting to.
This was an interesting draw because day one he wrecked them fishing a grass hump in Goose pond. Unfortunately, he had to share the area with Jason Williamson which cut into his fish a good bit. This hurt on the day I was with him, as he watched Jason catch a five pounder early in the morning. He caught a couple of decent keepers early in the morning, but the bite was much slower than the previous day. He had a very specific location for the boat to cast to them and often theorized the fish had relocated somewhere on the point around the grass patch he caught them in the day before.
https://www.bassmaster.com/slideshow/hour-1-cappo-and-williamson
He made cast after cast throwing a Strike King Rage Cut R Worm in Junebug, Texas rigged on a small pegged sinker. Slowly working the bait through the grass. Bottom line was Cappo had struggled in practice and this was all he had. Goal was to catch enough fish to make it to day 3, which would be the first time doing so.
I asked him about fishing June bug colors, as even the jigs on his deck had a purple tint to them. Is this an LSU homer thing? He told me the color was kind of universal in day and night to the color appearance of a bluegill. To prove his theory he would use an aquarium and turn the lights on and off to see the impact of light on the bait colors.
Cappo moved from the primary spot to a roadbed closer to the bridge in North Sauty and caught a keeper, but not big enough to draw his attention away from his primary grass patch. He quickly moves back to the original spot and fishes another 30 minutes without a bite. Now we are approaching mid-day. Getting hot and not much in the livewell. He runs down river to an island community hole past waterfront, a bank spot near some docks (catches a non-keeper), ledge spot in front of Boshart and the point at the mouth of Boshart. Nothing more than short fish caught. Without anything else, back to the grind of spot #1.
Man, if you tournament fish you fully understand what is going on in his mind. I have logged similar experiences in the past few years on the Coosa River lakes. You get five keepers but what do you do for an upgrade when you don’t know the lake very well? I guess the answer is you either learn the lake, luck up on a sack, or keep fishing and hope for an upgrade. There are a lot more people that think choose to keep fishing and hoping is the answer than I realized. Guntersville is a lake that many of us that fish it think there are obvious things you can do for five keepers. But to a guy traveling around to six bodies of water which are likely new to them I would imagine nothing is obvious. Experience on the lakes and making contacts with locals likely narrows this gap in learning.
So for the last three hours we go back to spot #1. Only to catch a small keeper. He has four fish in the livewell and is in jeopardy of wasting a good weight on day one. With 15 minutes left he decides to go back to the roadbed. The last cast, with 5 minutes left he catches a three pounder that puts his weight around 13#. Enough as it turns out for a day three appearance, which is a first in his short Elite Series career.
I suspect day three for him was executed much like day two with worse results. I slept in Sunday morning and went out to the mouth of Boshart where I have been on them recently fishing in seven-foot water with grass up to five. I didn’t have the Strike King bait he was using but did have a similar version made by Gambler (bought in the 90’s on a trip to Okeechobee!). I tried the set up in here and it works like a champ. Oddly enough I saw Cappo down here in the morning and he said he was struggling. I left the area to give him plenty of space but results later in the day show he was unable to put together a limit.
Final take away. Scottsboro dropped the ball hosting this event. They finished paving the parking lot the night before the tournament started. The boat ramp expansion did not happen. The wooden boat docks for a non-trailer tournament were horrible. Many of the guys had to launch at Mink or Roseberry creek and drive over. It was crazy hot and the only drinks I saw there were in the Goosepond tackle store which had 4 volunteer workers trying to fill orders.
Had the opportunity to ride with two new anglers. Not necessarily a bad thing given they have committed to doing this for a living for the time being. Cappo told me you need 100K to fish a season, and BASS credits you like 20K for tournament fees. Obviously, a hard way to make money and do something you enjoy. Both guys I rode with are small business owners and probably didn’t feel the pressure many of the other younger guys feel. Both guys are good for the sport, very respectful and accommodating. Both also spoke highly of the new BASS Elites tour and guys competing, maybe to the degree of some of the guys that left feeling entitled and demanding to have things done their way.
Day 1 Pro Frank Talley
Got to admit, I had never heard of my day one assignment. A little research later in the night revealed Frank was in his first year on the Elite Series, and to his credit had qualified for the Classic last year fishing the opens. Frank is from Texas and can probably be characterized as a shallow water guy.
Prelaunch is normally the most entertaining portion of marshaling. All of the boats are gathered in one place and the guys hang out, prep gear and rag on each other. Lots of good stories are normally told at this time, but that is not the case today. One of the anglers, Brad Whatley stayed at a rental house on highway 79 and had all of his gear stolen. All of the anglers including Frank stopped by to offer rods, reels and tackle. Brad sat there on the deck frantically tying on baits from loaner equipment.
We start off the morning running down to Shirey’s cut across from Roseberry fishing backwater grass. Frank is throwing a white horny toad on braid and works the grass patches over for a couple of hundred yards, boating 3 fish. There is very little activity in the area, really only the few blow ups Frank got causing any disturbances. All three of the bites come from the same area. Noting this, Frank backs off the grass line and throws a jackhammer chatterbait, working back up to the cut.
Much of the morning bite has passed and Frank decides to run down river to a point he has found fish on in practice. He mentioned he caught one in practice and had five good ones follow it. The first fish he caught here this was again the case. He talked about allowing the fish time to make their way back to the grass and regroup. He worked this area over pretty well and boated pretty much his limit here. Caught a couple on a big worm (color grape) but nothing to speak of size wise.
Oddly enough one of his larger fish was flipping over in the livewell and he chose to put the fish back before it died in the livewell. This also explains the one pound over estimation of an otherwise accurate BASSTRACK weight report. Frank ended up with around 12-13 pounds. Not a lot to report here. He didn’t have a lot of spots on the lake and had endured a brutal practice.
Frank is rigged in a Triton boat; I am unsure of the model, but it has an incredibly wide deck and rides extremely smooth and dry. There again, the water was pretty flat for the day. Topped out speed I noticed was 62 MPH with the Mercury 4 stroke. He is outfitted with Lowrance graphs and Minn Kota Ultrax trolling motor. The TM seems to be consistent amongst all of the boats I saw. Topic of Lowrance came up and the poor support they got on the trail from them. He mentioned the Garmin guy probably having the fewest clients on the tour but always being the first one in the parking lot on tournament days. I notice this the following day.
We talked a little bit about color. Biggest pickup I got from him was the choice of using white in dirty water. Said he recognized the book says to throw dark colors, but proof to him was the classic where he caught around 50 fish in the muddiest water imaginable on a white chatterbait. Also Frank was big on dip dies and spray scents. He keeps a large spray bottle of homemade garlic spray and hits his baits over the side of the boat consistently (and his marshal if the wind is blowing). I smelled like an Italian restaurant when the day was over. All of you idiots that believe in using fabric softener sheets and the like to keep moss knats off you, forget it. Garlic works! Didn’t have one around all day.
The big take away from spending the day with Frank was a lesson in mapping fish on the ledge. He rode the green buoy ledge in front of Roseberry and located a couple of schools of fish on his Lowrance. He noted the bass are typically single file on the bottom, whereas trash fish will stack vertically. He used the way points to ID an area with a school and took a wide turn to come back and fish them. The fish never fired however. The picture below does not show the fish he had located, actually shows the dead water he was sitting in while casting to them. But gives you an idea of all the screen considerations used to find them. For this viewing, Lowrance is hard to beat.
We also ran up past BB Comer bridge and scanned some ledges and fished briefly but didn’t catch anything.
Frank was a real nice guy and was frustrated by not having more to run to. The following day however his fish on that point bit, and he ended up with big fish for the day (almost 7#) and nearly enough weight to recover from the first day weight. Conditions were sunny and hotter than the bricks of hell. TVA did briefly pull some current, but this really didn’t impact any of the water he was fishing.
Day 2
Well I got a new guy on day 1, had to get an old pro for day 2; wrong. This time I get a first year Cajun named Quentin Cappo. Never heard of him, but quick review of his profile and I realize this will be the first time I have ridden with a Bass Cat guy, in a Cougar as it turns out. Cappo had qualified out of the opens and being the owner of a couple of small businesses could afford the chance to do this (Gym and Restaurant). An LSU grad and straight up Cajun.
He admitted up front that he had never been to the lake before, the two practice days he had here were bad. He travels with a bunch of the young Cajuns and all had similar stories of struggling. I show up to the boat and he is having a problem with one of the console Lowrance units, eventually solving the issue by replacing a circuit breaker below the console. Another frustrated Lowrance guy, in this case more so for the lacking detail of the maps. Lowrance has a new map card out this year which is supposed to rival the Lakemaster card by Hummingbird. The pro is able to show me by structure scan and side image easily what he is fishing but doesn’t have the contour detail from the maps to fully study an area without riding over it.
Take away learned from yet a second angler: You do not ride over your fish with the big motor or trolling motor. Both guys were very careful to maintain a distance from the fish they were casting to.
This was an interesting draw because day one he wrecked them fishing a grass hump in Goose pond. Unfortunately, he had to share the area with Jason Williamson which cut into his fish a good bit. This hurt on the day I was with him, as he watched Jason catch a five pounder early in the morning. He caught a couple of decent keepers early in the morning, but the bite was much slower than the previous day. He had a very specific location for the boat to cast to them and often theorized the fish had relocated somewhere on the point around the grass patch he caught them in the day before.
https://www.bassmaster.com/slideshow/hour-1-cappo-and-williamson
He made cast after cast throwing a Strike King Rage Cut R Worm in Junebug, Texas rigged on a small pegged sinker. Slowly working the bait through the grass. Bottom line was Cappo had struggled in practice and this was all he had. Goal was to catch enough fish to make it to day 3, which would be the first time doing so.
I asked him about fishing June bug colors, as even the jigs on his deck had a purple tint to them. Is this an LSU homer thing? He told me the color was kind of universal in day and night to the color appearance of a bluegill. To prove his theory he would use an aquarium and turn the lights on and off to see the impact of light on the bait colors.
Cappo moved from the primary spot to a roadbed closer to the bridge in North Sauty and caught a keeper, but not big enough to draw his attention away from his primary grass patch. He quickly moves back to the original spot and fishes another 30 minutes without a bite. Now we are approaching mid-day. Getting hot and not much in the livewell. He runs down river to an island community hole past waterfront, a bank spot near some docks (catches a non-keeper), ledge spot in front of Boshart and the point at the mouth of Boshart. Nothing more than short fish caught. Without anything else, back to the grind of spot #1.
Man, if you tournament fish you fully understand what is going on in his mind. I have logged similar experiences in the past few years on the Coosa River lakes. You get five keepers but what do you do for an upgrade when you don’t know the lake very well? I guess the answer is you either learn the lake, luck up on a sack, or keep fishing and hope for an upgrade. There are a lot more people that think choose to keep fishing and hoping is the answer than I realized. Guntersville is a lake that many of us that fish it think there are obvious things you can do for five keepers. But to a guy traveling around to six bodies of water which are likely new to them I would imagine nothing is obvious. Experience on the lakes and making contacts with locals likely narrows this gap in learning.
So for the last three hours we go back to spot #1. Only to catch a small keeper. He has four fish in the livewell and is in jeopardy of wasting a good weight on day one. With 15 minutes left he decides to go back to the roadbed. The last cast, with 5 minutes left he catches a three pounder that puts his weight around 13#. Enough as it turns out for a day three appearance, which is a first in his short Elite Series career.
I suspect day three for him was executed much like day two with worse results. I slept in Sunday morning and went out to the mouth of Boshart where I have been on them recently fishing in seven-foot water with grass up to five. I didn’t have the Strike King bait he was using but did have a similar version made by Gambler (bought in the 90’s on a trip to Okeechobee!). I tried the set up in here and it works like a champ. Oddly enough I saw Cappo down here in the morning and he said he was struggling. I left the area to give him plenty of space but results later in the day show he was unable to put together a limit.
Final take away. Scottsboro dropped the ball hosting this event. They finished paving the parking lot the night before the tournament started. The boat ramp expansion did not happen. The wooden boat docks for a non-trailer tournament were horrible. Many of the guys had to launch at Mink or Roseberry creek and drive over. It was crazy hot and the only drinks I saw there were in the Goosepond tackle store which had 4 volunteer workers trying to fill orders.
Had the opportunity to ride with two new anglers. Not necessarily a bad thing given they have committed to doing this for a living for the time being. Cappo told me you need 100K to fish a season, and BASS credits you like 20K for tournament fees. Obviously, a hard way to make money and do something you enjoy. Both guys I rode with are small business owners and probably didn’t feel the pressure many of the other younger guys feel. Both guys are good for the sport, very respectful and accommodating. Both also spoke highly of the new BASS Elites tour and guys competing, maybe to the degree of some of the guys that left feeling entitled and demanding to have things done their way.
