Mike Iaconelli Talks About Fishing Deep Water at Clear Lake

Mike Iaconelli, here to talk about the second regular BASS event, another one out in California. This one at Clear Lake. Everyone's heard of Clear Lake, what an awesome lake. I really went there expecting to throw a swimbait the entire tournament, and have giant fish following this thing.

It really, for me, turned into a deep-water tournament. I found a lot of fish, that were more on the pre-spawn side than on the actual spawn side. In the event, I targeted isolated boulders in deeper water. Areas that were the last stopping place, as the fish got to the bank. These were rocks about the size of a boat, or even smaller, that were in 12-14' of water. I found a lot of those in practice with my Lowrance unit, especially using the new downscan. These new units are awesome, that downscan really helped me key on the actual little rocks, I could put a waypoint on it and get back to it in the tournament.

The bait I used, is the bait I used a lot the last couple of of years with a lot of success. Again, it was a football head jig. This is the Berkley Gripper jig. I used a 1/2oz. Ike's finesse jig in a green pumpkin color, and I put on a Berkley Power Grub, just a regular double-tail Berkley Power Grub.

Let me show you how I take this out of the pack and modify it. I basically get this bait out of the pack, and the first thing I do is trim, is I trim that fiber guard down. I want that guard to be a little bit longer than the point of the hook. Second thing I do, a lot of times, when I want a less bulky bait, I'll trim some of that skirt down, so I'll grab the skirt, clip off a little bit of that skirt material, and I make a little bit smaller package.

Then I'm going to get my Berkley Power Grub, just a pumpkin seed color grub, thread that thing on there. Then the last thing a lot of times I'll put in is just a little rattle. Just a little glass 8mm rattle, and I'll jam it right into the body of the grub. That's the bait I fished along those rocks. The fish were feeding on crawfish, it was the perfect bait for those pre-spawn fish.

I fished it on a 7' medium-heavy Veritas Abu Garcia rod, the new white rods. I fished it on 17 lb. Trilene fluorocarbon, I also used the new Revo SX reel in a 6.4:1 gear ratio.

3rd tournament of the year, I left there with a 25 place finish, 5th in points going into the next one. Really excited about my start, Mike Iaconelli, Clear Lake bass, the gripper jig.