After finishing third in 2015 and 2016, Jay Wallen broke through to a win at the 2017 Hobie Bass Open. Here he breaks down his victory for Hobie Fishing.
I think about this tournament in the winter time. When no one else is thinking about it, I’m thinking about dragging a jig across Kentucky Lake.
The pattern was post spawn, the water temperature was 80 degrees. There was still a little shad spawn going on but for the most part they were pulling out to the ledges looking for cooler, more oxygenated water. The hard rock ledges grow mussels and those mussels grow algae, the algae feeds the shad and of course the shad feed the bass. If you can find all that you can usually make it work for you.
I honestly struggled in practice. I knew I’d found some fish but also knew I wasn’t able to catch many of the fish I had found. I threw a little gamble in when I went way down south on day one. I knew there were fish down there but I didn’t know if I’d be able to catch them or not. I lucked out some and kind of figured my luck had run out so I loaded up and headed back north, then got a few hours on the water around a productive ledge that I ended up sitting on all day on the final day of the tournament.
On day one a 12-inch worm was working. On day two a football jig was working best and I couldn’t get them to eat the worm. The past couple of years it’s been a jig, a three-quarter-ounce football jig with just a little craw trailer dipped in some Garlic Spike-It and that’s really been the ticket. My boat’s sitting in maybe 30 feet of water, I’m throwing it into 13-15 feet and just dragging it off the top of that ledge to the bottom.
If they’re up on top sometimes they’ll hit it on the fall. Sometimes you’ve got to drag it all the way down to 20-25 feet and fish just really, really slow. It’s a painstaking way to fish but sometimes when you get them going the bite can turn on and it can get quick. You can get into flurries. I didn’t have much of that. Day two was a real grind, one fish every two hours maybe. It was slow and it was tough. However, the fish I was catching were good ones. This ledge technique, it’s a real thing here in June, that’s the way to catch them.
I didn’t miss many bites. I landed everything I hooked. That’s the most important thing. I fished clean, I didn’t lose fish, I didn’t break any fish off. You’ve got to make them pay when they bite.
Winning takes a lot of luck. A lot of preparation. I’ve been fishing Kentucky Lake for over ten years. The number one thing that prepared me for it was fishing BASS Federation trail events. I would fish as a co-angler, fishing out of the back of the boat while I was in college. Sometimes you get with someone who knows what they’re doing and they teach you some things, you get to see some places, how they catch fish, what they catch them on. I really credit that for helping me learn Kentucky Lake.
I spent a lot of hours here sitting in the back of someone else’s boat. You’re at the boater’s mercy, you go where they go. And that’s the good thing about kayak fishing. It’s all up to you. You don’t have to be a co-angler in the back of somebody’s boat. You can get in your own boat and you can do what you want to do. Years of sitting in somebody else’s boat, I’d often sit there and think I’d do that differently. Now I have an opportunity to do those things different. I get in my boat and I do what I want, I execute my game plan. There are pros and cons to it but it taught me a lot about Kentucky lake.
Preparation for me is all about map play. There’s tons of time leading up to this tournament and Kentucky Lake is almost 200 miles long. It goes on for days and one of the best ways to break it down is to study a good lake map. Traditionally I like the north end of the lake and when I say the north end, I mean from Ken Lake on up. It just seems to produce better in the summertime. The south end of the lake can also be good, but I prefer the north.
You just have to break it down. I’m looking for real specific things. I’m looking for channels, I’m looking for ledge and structure all coming together. If I can find those things, get it narrowed down to a few ledges, then spend practice days going to just those ledges and seeing if bass are there, if they are active, what’s going on… You really have to put the time in. There’s no substitute for putting your time in on the water. That’s the only way to do it.
