Big Indiana Bass

 

One of the most recognized names in Indiana bass fishing circles, Bill McDonald has "been there, done that". In addition to his numerous local wins, along the way he has also won at the regional level (KY. Everstart) as well as competed successfully at the tour level (FLW Tour, FLW Series). We spoke with Bill to get some insight into how he approaches local waters, as well as what it takes to successfully compete at the higher levels of competition.

Q - How would you describe your style of fishing?

BM - I try to adjust to whatever the fish are telling me, but mostly I’m very slow and methodical, and very thorough.

Q - Would you classify yourself as a specialist or a generalist?

BM - I do a little bit of everything. My strengths definitely pitching and flipping and fishing a bottom bait, really picking targets apart.

Q - Have our Indiana waters made you fish that way or have you always been a thorough fisherman?

BM - I just like to be that methodical. For some unknown reason the Lord's blessed me with catching a lot of big fish and I think that’s the key. Being methodical with it and instead of just looking at it as a stump, or whatever it is as a one fish deal, I look at all different angles. And I use, it’s weird, people don’t understand it, but I go with my gut. If I feel that there’s fish there, I’ll beat it to death.  And 9 times out of 10 I’ll catch them doing that.

From doing goofy things, like getting hung up, going up to a stump to get your bait out and say that that stump is in just no water and you go bump it with your trolling motor or whatever, and all of a sudden a boil comes out from underneath it. Well that fish was there the whole time.  So by finding some of those things, I’ve learned you just have to really let the fish tell you what they’re doing, but if it’s that way, then you just got to slow down and really work it.

Q - In your 3 BFL wins you never had a limit. You won with 2, 3 and 4 fish bags. That means your quality was pretty darn good. Does your style just lend itself to catching quality bass?

BM - Yea, I target bigger fish. Like I say, we’re forced to live in a state where we’re not blessed with a lot of fish. And I’d rather catch 2 fish , 2 quality fish as opposed to catching 4 or 5 just 12-14” keepers.

Q - Do you spend much time fishing deeper water in our lakes?

BM - I like to fish deep water. I really do. But for the most part I’m a 10’ or less guy.

Q - What kinds of things do you look for when targeting better than average sized bass?

BM - I work hard to find isolated stuff. I don’t have a problem poling for a 100 yds. out onto a flat to fish one piece of cover. Everybody else would say well that’s too far, there’s no water up there, there’s no fish on that. I strongly feel you get out of it what you put into it. And my practice time, not so much here, my time restraints with work really hampers my practice time here, but when I do practice I’m usually first on the water and one of the last ones off. I feel I’m not a real good fisherman so I have to make up for it with extra time.

Q - In practice – stick’em or shake’em?

BM - Never set the hook . Never set the hook (laughs).

Q - Do you try and cover lots of water in practice or do you just go around and check specific spots?

BM - I look at seasonal patterns, and I try and pick an area and then...I’ve got a 250 and I like to run as fast as anybody, but I’ve never caught one with that motor running. So I take an area and then dissect it, just pick it apart and try to find an area within the area. I try to find any little depression, any little ditch or drain, something that’s different cause I don’t feel fish leave an area. They’ll change with the conditions but the whole thing is just knowing that area so that if they’re not there you’ve got some other options that you can go and scatter and try and put something together in that same area instead of vacating and running to the other end of the lake. I don’t think that’s smart tactics.

Q - What is your current outfit  for flipping and pitching?

BM - 7.5’ Kistler rod XH, Ardent reels, Gamma line 20-25# test. If grass is a factor then I’ll go with a braid. Gamma makes both a copolymer as well as a straight fluorocarbon line, and I’m just really starting to play with the fluorocarbon. I like it so far. I use it crankin’. I use it jerkin’. I love it for those applications. And I’ve got into it with flipping now. Four or 5 years ago I tried fluoro, another brand, and I didn’t like it. I snapped off on hooksets. So I’ve learned to adjust a little bit. That’s helped out. Back off the drag a little bit.

Q - And for baits?

BM - Jigs without a doubt. I’ll have my own jig out there in about 2 weeks, so looking forward to that. With plastics I throw a Tru-Tungsten weight and either, it depends. If I’m on the river I’m usually throwing a Zoom ultravibe speed craw up to a brush hog. I throw the big brush hog a lot.

Q - Do you downsize baits on waters with 12” limits?

BM - I catch a lot of 12” fish on 10” worms, so I don’t see the need. In fact, I think sometimes it helps me because so many people downsize and they’re (the bass) often looking for something different. They’re looking for a meal, too.

Q - As someone who has successfully competed at the national level, why don’t we see more Indiana guys on those circuits?

BM - The financial commitment is the biggest key. Not having the money. As for the fishing, you just have to look at that body of water as; I look at 100,000 acres just like I look at Monroe as 10,000 acres. I can’t fish 10,000 acres, nor do I want to practice on 10,000 acres. So I do the same thing.

There’s a lot of information on the Internet, and through fishing you meet a lot of people, too.  You get general information here and there. Then pick a creek arm. On a lot of reservoirs they’ve got creek arms bigger than Monroe. So you pick one of those type of areas and that’s where you go fish. Don’t try and fish the whole thing. Same deal, go spend your 3, 4 or 5 days of practice in that particular creek arm that’s got a little bit of all kinds of structure in it and eliminate it, learn it and go from there. I think that was the biggest key for me. When you try and fish 300 or 400,000 acres all you do is just burn a lot of gas.

Q - You mentioned the financial component. I don’t think people realize just how much money it takes to compete on a national level.

BM - The way I look at it, I fished the FLW Tour and the FLW Series, which is 10 tournaments. Say you’re lucky enough to finish in the Top-50 in all 10 and you make $100,000. To put it in perspective, by the time I come off the road I made $29,000 profit and I haven’t paid any bills, my own truck payments, insurance, mortgage on the house, nothing. So it’s tough to make a living doing it. And it’s harder work than any job you’ll ever have working one.

Q - What about the talk you hear of the pros using secret baits, or prototypes, or at least not the same stuff as the everyday angler buys right off the shelf?

BM - I roomed with Tommy Biffle, and I got to fish with quite a few of those guys in practice and what not. You just jump in one guys boat or the others and fish together. They’re no different that what we are right here.  They do nothing no different. The only deal is they’ve got more time to spend on the water. The biggest key is a lot of those guys don’t have the pressure of having to physically make a check to come back home or to go to the next one.  And that goes back to that financial commitment. They don’t do anything different. They don’t have special baits. I mean, yea, they might get prototype stuff here and there, but there are no secret baits.

Q - So your advice to someone wanting to move up from state level competition to regional or national competition would be?

BM - Put your family first (laughs), and if you can’t afford to do it, do not do it. Don’t chase a carrot. I love to compete more than anybody, but you can lose everything you’ve got real quick, too.. I know one guy for sure that won $100,000 and that put him back to $0. That was going to pay his credit cards off. There’s a lot of guys out there just trying to make a check to get even.

Q - What are you seeing within the industry given the current financial status of the economy?

BM - It’s as bad as what you’re hearing, and a lot of them (sponsors) have pulled back. For fishermen who are fortunate to have sponsors, it just means you’ve got to work harder for that sponsor to keep him. You’ve got to be willing to do a whole lot more than you’ve ever done before. It’s tough out there right now.

Q - Give us a few more details about your new jig coming out, and where people can find them.

BM - It will be called the B-Mac jig. You’ll probably be able to find it at the Outdoorsman first (Greenwood). We introduced a spinnerbait and a buzzbait at the Outdoorsman’s Open House and we headed out to the Boat Show and they sold very well. They’re the B-Mac Buzz and the B-Mac spin. D&S Lures is actually the one who’s manufacturing them for me.

Bill's Sponsors: Ranger Boats, Toyota Trucks, Lucas Oil

More from Bill McDonald:

• Gnarly Crankin'
• Frog Video Tip
• Angler Profile (FLW)

Hank Parker, 2-time Bassmaster's Classic winner and host of "Hank Parker's Outdoor Magazine" made a stop here in Indy at Ted's Open House. We caught up with him and captured his thoughts on some of the new technologies including Side Imaging, fluorocarbon and E/TECH cranking sticks.

ON SIDE IMAGING UNITS:

There’s been a lot of changes in the 18 or 19 years since I retired from tournament fishing. There’s been a tremendous amount of change for the better. If you use the technology right, it could be a real benefit to you. About 3 years ago, Anthony Gagliardi from South Carolina won the Lake Murray tournament. And when he won that tournament… I fish that lake a lot, and I said, “Where did that kid win that tournament?”

“He won it in Clouds Cr. on the left hand side”, and I said, “No, he might of won it out of Clouds Cr., but he didn’t win it out of the left hand side cause that’s a bare nothing bank.” I’ve never caught  fish on that bank, never seen anybody fish it.

There is no structure on that bank. And he said “I’m telling ya, that’s where he won it.  Clouds Cr, left hand side, going in.”

OK, I knew better. So when I saw him about 3 or 4 weeks later, I said, “Anthony, did you win that tournament in Clouds Creek?”

He said “I did.”

I said, “Did you win it on the right hand side going in?”

He said, “Nope, I won it on the left hand side.”

I said “You’re kidding, there ain’t nothing there”.

He said “I know it, nothing there.”

I said, “How in the heck did you win that tournament then?”

He said, “I fished hard all week, and I established a pattern. I was catching my fish on a brown/black jig in 20-30’ of water on isolated rocks. If I could find a big rock, I could catch a fish.” And he said, “so I was fixin’ to go in Clouds Creek and fish a couple of points in there and on my way in I thought well I’ll go ahead and tie some baits on cause I had taken all my baits off. So I’m going to retie and put some baits on for when I go in.”

And he said, “I got my Hummingbird Side imaging unit …”

Never used a side imaging unit. I hate technology. I hate computers. I hate all that stuff. You know, so I’m very resistant on new innovative ideas. So he said, “I have my side imaging unit on and I’m going through there and ‘boom’ there’s a rock.”

And this is slick. You can take your little cursor and run it over there and mark that rock. Never go to it and you’ve got a waypoint. He said, “I just marked it as a waypoint.”  He said, “I’m just going on up in there and again, in about 25 foot of water, there’s another rock.”  ‘Boom’, mark it, went on. So he goes and goes and goes and ‘boom’, marks another rock.  He marked 4 rocks. He won the tournament off those 4 rocks. He said when he got through he turned around and went back to that first waypoint and caught about a 9-pounder. Went to the next waypoint, dropped, caught about a 7-pounder and then shook off 3 or 4 and left. First day of the tournament he goes in there, going to fish those 4 rocks first, and he catches 2 off the first rock, biggest one about 8, smallest one about 6. To make a long story short, when he left there he had 5 bass weighed 33 pounds. Pretty sporty. There is no possible way he, or anyone else would have ever known those rocks were there without that side imaging unit. You wouldn’t have known.

So that changed the way I thought about side imaging. I said I’m going to get one. I’m going to get one. Now when I first got it, it wasn’t the miracle unit that I thought it would be. It wasn’t quit as simple to read as I thought it would be. But the more I played with it, and the more I started to understand it, the more I liked it. And the more simple it became and the more beneficial it became to me.

ON FLUOROCARBON:

When I fished, we didn’t know what fluorocarbon was. The only people who knew anything at all about fluorocarbon 25 years ago were people that fished for tarpon and bonefish. That’s how it kind of got evolved into freshwater. Let me tell you what I’ve learned about fluorocarbon.

If you’re using monofilament fishing line, and let’s just say you’re fishing a jig in 20 foot of water. And that ledge that you’re fishing is right out in front of you a ways. You cast and you let that jig fall to the bottom. When you start to fish it…monofilament line floats, so you’re going to have, if you could have an underwater camera, you’re going to have your line trying to float and its going to taper down to your jig. And that’s the way it’s going to look. And when you hop it, you’re stretching that line out and moving that jig and letting it fall back and immediately again it tries to float. If you set the hook, you have to get that loop out of your line. You’ve got to take up all of that slack from that line floating. If you get a bite, that signal has to be transferred through that slop in that line. People say, ‘man, fluorocarbon is a hundred times more sensitive than monofilament’. No doubt - That’s why. If you ‘re using fluorocarbon line, it sinks. It’s very dense, so you’ve got a direct link straight to your jig. You don’t have that loop, so you feel the bite more readily, and then you don’t have all that slack to take up and set the hook.  So your hook-up ratio and your detection in feeling a bite has just improved about 100 percent. It’s going to make a lot of difference at the end of the day on how many fish you realize you have a bite on and how many you catch.

Now, what’s the trade-off?  The trade-off is you feel that fish way more proficient than if you’re using monofilament, but he feels you way more than if you were using monofilament, too. So you have to be a little quicker on the hookset, or quicker to drop slack the second you feel that bite. You can’t be as slow and as deliberate as when using monofilament …you know, going on point…’there he is’ and let him pull your rod down. When you pull it up there with fluorocarbon and he hits it, you have to immediately drop some slack or he’s going to feel you. That’s why a lot of people miss fish with fluorocarbon, because that fish is in the process of spitting the bait out before you ever get the hook set.  But if you’ll do it and use it to your advantage, you will be able to catch fish that you are not going to be able to catch on monofilament fishing line.

A lot of people say I don’t like to fish fluorocarbon exclusively because I like for my line to float when I’m fishing topwater. I do to. I definitely want my line to float when I’m fishing topwater. If you’re fishing fluorocarbon and you want your line to float while you’re fishing topwater, take about the last 20 feet, 25 feet and put some Chap Stick on it. It will float just as good as monofilament.

ON CRANKBAIT RODS:

On a crankbait, I don’t know, David Fritts has got the reputation as being one of the greatest crankbait fishermen ever, and he probably is. Ricky Clunn is another guy that has a great reputation as a crankbait fisherman. Both of those guys use fiberglass rods. Absolutely will not throw a crankbait on a graphite rod. Why?

Graphite responds about two or three times quicker than fiberglass. Fiberglass is real lazy to respond. Well, that’s bad if you’re fishing a shakey head or a jig. That’s good when you’re fishing a crankbait. Two things happen. It gives you a better hookup because it’s softer and you don’t have to jerk. You just keep winding and that fish doesn’t feel resistance until that rod is already loaded and then you just tug it and you’ve got a great hookup. He ate the bait. Whereas with a graphite rod it’s really easy to take that crankbait away from him. So that is a big benefit. But the biggest benefit of all is the fact that it is lazy to respond when that fish jumps.

I don’t know how many people in here fish lipless crankbaits, but if you’re a Christian that will really give you a test on how long you can fish it before you curse.  I will lose about every third fish. It just won’t leave me.  Drives me nuts. I hate  losing fish, ya’ know. But a lipless crankbait is world famous for losing fish.  You put it on a fiberglass rod you’ll cut that down and you’ll start losing one out of ten instead of every third fish. So you’ll greatly reduce the number of fish you’ll cull. That fish uses that fast reacting fishing rod to his advantage when he jumps. He will jump and load that rod up and make that bait shoot out of his mouth. That fiberglass rod won’t load up, it’s just lazy to respond.

You can take a fiberglass rod and you can’t hardly cast a big crankbait. It’s very difficult because the rod itself is too limber. It absorbs, it really…it takes a lot of talent, and if you watch Fritts and how he casts , it’s almost like he’s underhand casting. If you take a big crankbait and load your rod, your rod is going to absorb about ¾ of the energy and your crankbait is going to go about 40 feet instead of a hundred feet. So you want to take that rod, come all the way back here (behind you), and you want to heave it.