How a Bass Legend Tackles Tough Conditions
Larry Nixon’s Murky-Water Tactics
by Ned Kehde
Larry Nixon of Bee Branch, Arkansas, ranks among the top tournament bass anglers of all time. In his storied career, the former guide on Greers Ferry and Toledo Bend has placed in the Top Ten 94 times and won 19 major tournaments, with total winnings around $2.5 million.
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Like any angler, though, he’s often faced with difficult fishing conditions, and he’d be the first to tell you he doesn’t always figure out the fish. But his vast experience in dissecting reservoirs was on display the day I joined him, as he prefished for the 2008 Wal-Mart Open on Beaver Lake last May.
A Look at Beaver Lake
The past spring went on record for odd weather happenings, and Arkansas didn’t escape Mother Nature’s shenanigans, which included tornadoes, torrential rains, and hail, with cold fronts tossed in for spite. Usually clear Beaver Lake was 71⁄2 feet above normal level, with visibility barely a foot or two along much of its 449 miles of shoreline.
Conditions facing Nixon and the other 199 FLW Tour pros included water in the prespawn to spawning range of 61°F to 65°F on the surface, light southerly winds, and a steady barometer. Nixon, now 57 years old with 31 years of professional fishing under his belt, often limits his prefishing regime to 8 or 9 hours, unlike some of the young guns who try to be the first to launch and persist until dusk drives them home. He set forth at 7 a.m. on May 12.
In his previous two days on Beaver, he’d found a fair bite for medium-sized spotted bass that are Beaver’s most common bass species. The lake also houses a modest population of largemouths and increasing numbers of smallmouth bass. He didn’t include smallies in his fishing plan, since their numbers seem sparse in the section of the lake he planned to fish, though he didn’t rule out an inadvertent catch while targeting spots. To build a winning bag, anglers at Beaver feel they must include at least one good largemouth in the daily creel, to boost them over 12 pounds.
Picking Presentations
During our day on the water, Nixon relied mostly on a spinnerbait, which he fished on a 7-foot Fenwick Techna AV rod (AVC70MHF) with an Abu Garcia Revo STX and 17-pound-test Trilene Maxx mono. His lure of choice was a 3/8-ounce tandem willowleaf, with two gold blades and a skirt of white and chartreuse.
He worked with a vintage Eagle flasher on the bow, which he feels is the best sonar option in shallow, murky water and around beds of thick aquatic vegetation. He warned me that bass were generally scattered, with many of the newly flooded shorelines undoubtedly housing many of the largemouths, making them difficult to pinpoint.
Nixon retrieved his spinnerbait briskly, keeping it running from an inch to 8 inches below the surface. If he allowed it to run deeper, he couldn’t elicit a strike. Boat docks were his primary target, as he’d determined that spotted bass were holding on the docks, just a foot or two below the surface.
He made short casts to all corners, gaps, and shady spots, and even pitched the bait past ropes and cables. He readily admitted that dock fishing isn’t his forte but, through 40 years of guiding and tournament fishing, he’s become quite proficient at it.
Nixon also fished the spinnerbait parallel to steep rocky banks. The best ones were bluffs along the main lake that contained a significant ledge, and he kept the lure within a foot of the flooded bank. Similar to the dock situation, bass held just a foot or two below the surface.
His back-up plan was pitching a tube into thickets of partially flooded grass, flotsam, laydowns, and around trunks of flooded hardwoods in 1 to 3 feet of water. He impaled a black/red-flake 4-inch Berkley PowerBait Flippin’ Tube on a 5/0 Gamakatsu EWG hook and added a black 5/16-ounce Tru-Tungsten sinker, held in place with a red Tru-Tungsten Smart Peg. He flipped and pitched the tube on a 61⁄2-foot Fenwick Techna AV rod (AVC66MF), Abu Revo STX reel, and 17-pound Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon line.
In the shallow cover, Nixon worked the tube by slowly pumping it up and down several times, moving his rod between the 2 o’clock and 1 o’clock positions. On occasion, he also swam it near the surface around docks. He noted that the 5/0 hook limits the tube’s action but is needed to securely hook and hold a bass.
During the morning hours, he also made many short casts with a white jig and PowerBait Chigger Craw, ­swimming it speedily from a couple inches to 2 feet below the surface. He swam the jig through flooded vegetation, buckbrush, and around docks, but bites were scarce and he gradually eliminated that pattern.
On the Waterfront
Nixon, in fact, spends substantial time eliminating patterns and areas of a lake. When the swim-jig failed to produce, he expressed relief that it wouldn’t be a factor in the tournament, as he’s often missed and lost fish using that technique. Similarly, he tested a 6-inch lizard, thinking it might attract a few big bites from largemouths. But this, too, he laid aside, feeling that high water had created so much extra territory for Beaver’s meager largemouth population to hide in that he’d need a fast approach to find fish.
He primarily targeted shorelines, reasoning that rising water would lure bass shallower, and that a firm bank would stop their progress, ­making them more catchable. He did test some shallow gravel flats with flooded willow trees, fence rows, and brush, working a spinnerbait and swimming a jig through the cover. But he didn’t find action there, commenting that expert flippers might be able to pick apart the cover and draw some bites, but this wasn’t his forte. Also, he noted that if conditions were clear, he would have tested a Zara Spook across these flats to draw strikes from prespawn bass.
A look at his chunky fish told Nixon that the spotted bass had yet to spawn, though he suspected the largemouths might be in all phases surrounding their reproductive cycle. His surmise was verified in late morning, when his tube fooled a 4-pound largemouth that was dropping eggs as he hauled her across the gunnels. This fish was in a patch of flooded grass in a foot of water, and he had another big largemouth swirl on the tube at the base of a hickory tree nearby.
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He also caught a 4-pounder and had another strike while working a spinnerbait along a bluff with an underwater ledge, a key feature at this time of year. To work the ledges, he alternated between short, perpendicular casts to the bank and long ones parallel to shore and above the ledge. He retrieved rapidly to keep the lure inches below the surface.
This action buoyed his spirits, and he said his dock pattern for suspended spots, combined with bluff areas on the main lake where he found largemouth, should provide him enough sizeable bass to do well in the tournament.
Still, he persisted in checking massive brushy flats, just to make certain he was not missing anything. He also showed a knack for emphasizing the positive. When many prime-looking docks failed to produce a strike, he rejoiced that this bite wasn’t strong today, saying, “It’ll keep other anglers from discovering this pattern.”
As we fished, it was clear that years of professional fishing had honed his abilities to quickly analyze lake structure and characteristics. “Beaver has always been a time-of-the-day lake,” he noted, meaning certain spots tend to produce only at certain times. At last year’s FLW event here, for example, he caught most of his bass during the first two hours in the morning. He told me later that one shallow cove with brush, grass, and docks we visited fruitlessly was fished the following afternoon by his traveling companion, Tommy Martin of Texas, who scored some fine bass.
As Nixon worked along the inside of a main-lake cove, he also noted that a little wind would enhance this shoreline. Though Beaver’s water was murky, he’d found on previous days that wind or shade helped his spinnerbait bite. Sure enough, once he reached the mouth of the pocket and some light chop reached the bank, he hauled a 21⁄2-pound spot aboard. Shortly thereafter, at 3:30, he called it quits.
While he readied his tackle for the ride to the dock, he reflected on his day, concluding that while the dock bite was not as strong as it had been on May 10 and 11, he’d learned that shallow docks were holding bass just as well as deeper ones. He’d have to fish all docks in a chosen stretch, since it seemed impossible to determine which ones would yield a spotted bass.
On his last practice day, Nixon hoped to further refine his dock pattern. He felt that if the weather remained unstable, docks would produce for the entire week. And he expressed relief that most competitors were avoiding the murky sections of the lake where he’d fished, spending their time instead in confined sections of clear water near the dam. He’d have plenty of areas to himself. He noted that he was ready for the tournament to start, and in fact, wished it had begun that day, as his pair of 4-pounders would have placed him high on the leaderboard.
Postscript
To Nixon’s chagrin, his 2-day total was 10 bass weighing only 19 pounds 15 ounces, excluding him from the last two days of competition and placing him 28th for an $11,500 payout. His Day One limit was just shy of 12 pounds, but he could manage just small spots on Day Two, weighing 8 pounds.
His primary pattern of spinnerbaiting docks and bluff banks held up, but his secondary plan to pitch a tube in flooded grass and brush failed, and he never managed a 3-pound largemouth. His buddy, George Cochran of Arkansas, finished in second place. In the final rounds, Nixon joined a crowd of spectators to watch him fish.
He noted that Cochran ran a pattern similar to his own, also observing that his spinnerbait presentation around docks was extremely precise and methodical. Cochran spent fully 20 minutes on one such structure, accurately casting, pitching, and even flipping the lure into every nook and cranny. After watching his mastery, Nixon concluded that proper presentation made the difference between his 28th-place finish and Cochran’s runner-up position.
Larry Nixon’s Murky-Water Tactics
by Ned Kehde
Larry Nixon of Bee Branch, Arkansas, ranks among the top tournament bass anglers of all time. In his storied career, the former guide on Greers Ferry and Toledo Bend has placed in the Top Ten 94 times and won 19 major tournaments, with total winnings around $2.5 million.
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Like any angler, though, he’s often faced with difficult fishing conditions, and he’d be the first to tell you he doesn’t always figure out the fish. But his vast experience in dissecting reservoirs was on display the day I joined him, as he prefished for the 2008 Wal-Mart Open on Beaver Lake last May.
A Look at Beaver Lake
The past spring went on record for odd weather happenings, and Arkansas didn’t escape Mother Nature’s shenanigans, which included tornadoes, torrential rains, and hail, with cold fronts tossed in for spite. Usually clear Beaver Lake was 71⁄2 feet above normal level, with visibility barely a foot or two along much of its 449 miles of shoreline.
Conditions facing Nixon and the other 199 FLW Tour pros included water in the prespawn to spawning range of 61°F to 65°F on the surface, light southerly winds, and a steady barometer. Nixon, now 57 years old with 31 years of professional fishing under his belt, often limits his prefishing regime to 8 or 9 hours, unlike some of the young guns who try to be the first to launch and persist until dusk drives them home. He set forth at 7 a.m. on May 12.
In his previous two days on Beaver, he’d found a fair bite for medium-sized spotted bass that are Beaver’s most common bass species. The lake also houses a modest population of largemouths and increasing numbers of smallmouth bass. He didn’t include smallies in his fishing plan, since their numbers seem sparse in the section of the lake he planned to fish, though he didn’t rule out an inadvertent catch while targeting spots. To build a winning bag, anglers at Beaver feel they must include at least one good largemouth in the daily creel, to boost them over 12 pounds.
Picking Presentations
During our day on the water, Nixon relied mostly on a spinnerbait, which he fished on a 7-foot Fenwick Techna AV rod (AVC70MHF) with an Abu Garcia Revo STX and 17-pound-test Trilene Maxx mono. His lure of choice was a 3/8-ounce tandem willowleaf, with two gold blades and a skirt of white and chartreuse.
He worked with a vintage Eagle flasher on the bow, which he feels is the best sonar option in shallow, murky water and around beds of thick aquatic vegetation. He warned me that bass were generally scattered, with many of the newly flooded shorelines undoubtedly housing many of the largemouths, making them difficult to pinpoint.
Nixon retrieved his spinnerbait briskly, keeping it running from an inch to 8 inches below the surface. If he allowed it to run deeper, he couldn’t elicit a strike. Boat docks were his primary target, as he’d determined that spotted bass were holding on the docks, just a foot or two below the surface.
He made short casts to all corners, gaps, and shady spots, and even pitched the bait past ropes and cables. He readily admitted that dock fishing isn’t his forte but, through 40 years of guiding and tournament fishing, he’s become quite proficient at it.
Nixon also fished the spinnerbait parallel to steep rocky banks. The best ones were bluffs along the main lake that contained a significant ledge, and he kept the lure within a foot of the flooded bank. Similar to the dock situation, bass held just a foot or two below the surface.
His back-up plan was pitching a tube into thickets of partially flooded grass, flotsam, laydowns, and around trunks of flooded hardwoods in 1 to 3 feet of water. He impaled a black/red-flake 4-inch Berkley PowerBait Flippin’ Tube on a 5/0 Gamakatsu EWG hook and added a black 5/16-ounce Tru-Tungsten sinker, held in place with a red Tru-Tungsten Smart Peg. He flipped and pitched the tube on a 61⁄2-foot Fenwick Techna AV rod (AVC66MF), Abu Revo STX reel, and 17-pound Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon line.
In the shallow cover, Nixon worked the tube by slowly pumping it up and down several times, moving his rod between the 2 o’clock and 1 o’clock positions. On occasion, he also swam it near the surface around docks. He noted that the 5/0 hook limits the tube’s action but is needed to securely hook and hold a bass.
During the morning hours, he also made many short casts with a white jig and PowerBait Chigger Craw, ­swimming it speedily from a couple inches to 2 feet below the surface. He swam the jig through flooded vegetation, buckbrush, and around docks, but bites were scarce and he gradually eliminated that pattern.
On the Waterfront
Nixon, in fact, spends substantial time eliminating patterns and areas of a lake. When the swim-jig failed to produce, he expressed relief that it wouldn’t be a factor in the tournament, as he’s often missed and lost fish using that technique. Similarly, he tested a 6-inch lizard, thinking it might attract a few big bites from largemouths. But this, too, he laid aside, feeling that high water had created so much extra territory for Beaver’s meager largemouth population to hide in that he’d need a fast approach to find fish.
He primarily targeted shorelines, reasoning that rising water would lure bass shallower, and that a firm bank would stop their progress, ­making them more catchable. He did test some shallow gravel flats with flooded willow trees, fence rows, and brush, working a spinnerbait and swimming a jig through the cover. But he didn’t find action there, commenting that expert flippers might be able to pick apart the cover and draw some bites, but this wasn’t his forte. Also, he noted that if conditions were clear, he would have tested a Zara Spook across these flats to draw strikes from prespawn bass.
A look at his chunky fish told Nixon that the spotted bass had yet to spawn, though he suspected the largemouths might be in all phases surrounding their reproductive cycle. His surmise was verified in late morning, when his tube fooled a 4-pound largemouth that was dropping eggs as he hauled her across the gunnels. This fish was in a patch of flooded grass in a foot of water, and he had another big largemouth swirl on the tube at the base of a hickory tree nearby.
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He also caught a 4-pounder and had another strike while working a spinnerbait along a bluff with an underwater ledge, a key feature at this time of year. To work the ledges, he alternated between short, perpendicular casts to the bank and long ones parallel to shore and above the ledge. He retrieved rapidly to keep the lure inches below the surface.
This action buoyed his spirits, and he said his dock pattern for suspended spots, combined with bluff areas on the main lake where he found largemouth, should provide him enough sizeable bass to do well in the tournament.
Still, he persisted in checking massive brushy flats, just to make certain he was not missing anything. He also showed a knack for emphasizing the positive. When many prime-looking docks failed to produce a strike, he rejoiced that this bite wasn’t strong today, saying, “It’ll keep other anglers from discovering this pattern.”
As we fished, it was clear that years of professional fishing had honed his abilities to quickly analyze lake structure and characteristics. “Beaver has always been a time-of-the-day lake,” he noted, meaning certain spots tend to produce only at certain times. At last year’s FLW event here, for example, he caught most of his bass during the first two hours in the morning. He told me later that one shallow cove with brush, grass, and docks we visited fruitlessly was fished the following afternoon by his traveling companion, Tommy Martin of Texas, who scored some fine bass.
As Nixon worked along the inside of a main-lake cove, he also noted that a little wind would enhance this shoreline. Though Beaver’s water was murky, he’d found on previous days that wind or shade helped his spinnerbait bite. Sure enough, once he reached the mouth of the pocket and some light chop reached the bank, he hauled a 21⁄2-pound spot aboard. Shortly thereafter, at 3:30, he called it quits.
While he readied his tackle for the ride to the dock, he reflected on his day, concluding that while the dock bite was not as strong as it had been on May 10 and 11, he’d learned that shallow docks were holding bass just as well as deeper ones. He’d have to fish all docks in a chosen stretch, since it seemed impossible to determine which ones would yield a spotted bass.
On his last practice day, Nixon hoped to further refine his dock pattern. He felt that if the weather remained unstable, docks would produce for the entire week. And he expressed relief that most competitors were avoiding the murky sections of the lake where he’d fished, spending their time instead in confined sections of clear water near the dam. He’d have plenty of areas to himself. He noted that he was ready for the tournament to start, and in fact, wished it had begun that day, as his pair of 4-pounders would have placed him high on the leaderboard.
Postscript
To Nixon’s chagrin, his 2-day total was 10 bass weighing only 19 pounds 15 ounces, excluding him from the last two days of competition and placing him 28th for an $11,500 payout. His Day One limit was just shy of 12 pounds, but he could manage just small spots on Day Two, weighing 8 pounds.
His primary pattern of spinnerbaiting docks and bluff banks held up, but his secondary plan to pitch a tube in flooded grass and brush failed, and he never managed a 3-pound largemouth. His buddy, George Cochran of Arkansas, finished in second place. In the final rounds, Nixon joined a crowd of spectators to watch him fish.
He noted that Cochran ran a pattern similar to his own, also observing that his spinnerbait presentation around docks was extremely precise and methodical. Cochran spent fully 20 minutes on one such structure, accurately casting, pitching, and even flipping the lure into every nook and cranny. After watching his mastery, Nixon concluded that proper presentation made the difference between his 28th-place finish and Cochran’s runner-up position.