Go Fish! Like a Pro: Lake Okeechobee

Two Lures, Two Pros, Two Top-10’s…

Chris Lane and JT Kenney Finish 1^st and 6^th on Okeechobee.

Two Gambler Lure Pro-Staff Members, Chris Lane and JT Kenney, made headlines January 14 – 16 crossing the Bassmaster stage on Lake Okeechobee. The event was a kickoff to the 2010 Southern Open tour. With the Big-O stuck in a bass-bite-debilitating cold front to start the tournament, anglers found themselves scrambling for even keeper-sized fish.

Kenny’s KO Pattern

Despite the difficult conditions, JT Kenney jumped out to a Day 1 lead by punching a Gambler Little Otter in June Bug color through shallow, matted vegetation in the southern end of the lake. To make his flipping presentation standout, Kenney added the new Gambler KO hangover skirt, 3/0 KO hook, and 1-1/2 ounce tungsten weight. To assure an adequate hookset and so as to prevent fish from coming loose, he flipped the Little Otter on 65-pound braid with an 8-foot heavy action rod.

The reason that Kenney selected the Little Otter was two-fold. The compact size of the Little Otter provided improved numbers of bites in the cold front conditions, and its unique features created reaction bites where other baits would not.

Kenney explains, “The thing I really like about the Little Otter is the paddletail appendages. It creates a lot of action. When you are flipping those mats in one spot, lifting it up and dropping it back down, lifting it up and dropping it back down, those two little appendages give it a good swimming action.”

To further improve the Otter’s penetrating characteristics, Kenney incorporated a KO hangover skirt.

“Honestly, the KO hangover skirt just gives the bait a cool look. The bass down here have seen so many baits, so it is important to give them a different look. It’s bulkier, yet it helps the bait slide through vegetation easier.”

To further customize the appearance, he trimmed the KO hangover skirt to half of the pre-packaged length. The Little Otter – hangover combo helped Kenney post his first Top-10 finish of 2010.

Chris’ Cane Toad

Not to be outdone by his Gambler teammate, Chris Lane also employed a small-lure flipping presentation early in the event. He used a Bowen’s Silver Shadow BB Cricket with a 1-1/2 ounce Gambler tungsten screw-in weight and KO hook.

Chris testifies, “I just have a ton of confidence in that rig. I love the new tungsten screw-in weight. And now Gambler has the KO hook that makes the entire rig the perfect setup.”

The BB Cricket put Chris in position to win going into the afternoon of Day 3. With just two hours left to go in the tournament, Chris decided to abandon his flipping pattern and pick up a Gambler Cane Toad in an effort to pursue heavier largemouth that he theorized had moved shallower with the high sun and warming water.

“I knew the fish wanted to go shallow; I just didn’t know when it would be. I didn’t think that it would happen during the tournament, but when I saw that the water temperature finally reached 60 degrees, I said, ‘It’s time to go!’ At that point I had somewhere around 10 pounds in the well – an average limit. So, I pulled out my Gambler Cane Toad and went to work. Sure enough, on my first cast, I got a 4-pounder. Then, a little while later, I caught two more chunks. And, the rest is history.”

Chris relied on his namesake “Lane Toad” color pattern, specifically designed to mimic the Florida Shiner, screwed onto a Double Trouble toad hook. He used 50-pound test braided line and a 7-foot, 2-inch heavy action rod to assemble the heaviest limit weighed by any competitor on Day 3. And he did so just in the nick of time.