CAPE FAIR, Mo. — At one point in the
final round of the recent FLW Stren Series
Championship on Table Rock Lake, Greg
Bohannan of Rogers found himself in the focus of a camera crew and had a premonition. Eyeing a floating log between his boat and another carrying the camera crew, the 37-year-old pro yelled out “Get ready guys !” Bohannan zinged a buzz bait past the log and as he brought it churning back toward the structure, a big largemouth of 4 pounds or better hit it ferociously to produce a video highlight. “It was just one of those things that couldn’t have worked out better,” Bohannan recalled with a chuckle Friday morning during a return trip to Table Rock.
It was also one of those things to further gloss the reputation of a relative newcomer to professional bass fishing whose achievements over the past two years have put him on the fast track toward joining Mike McClelland of Bella Vista as one of the top pros in Northwest Arkansas.
Bohannan’s five-bass limit on the final day of the Stren season finale weighed a whopping 20 pounds, 6 ounces, and pushed him into second place with a total of 30-6 in the two-day finals. For his efforts, he won $ 49, 000 and a berth in the 2009 Forrest Wood Cup, worth $ 1 million to the winner.
The runner-up finish also boosted the second-year pro’s 2008 earnings to $ 130, 000, virtually matching his winnings during his rookie season.
He credited his performance in the Stren event partly to its location on Table Rock, a lake he rates as his personal favorite and one where he has had much success in the past. He also rates November and December as two of the best months to fish the lake.
“Table Rock is loaded with good fish; it’s like Beaver Lake on steroids,” Bohannan said. “On any given day, you have a good chance of catching a 4-pound bass of all three species — largemouth, smallmouth and spotted.”
Nevertheless, he gave more credit for his success to taking a gamble on the final day of the Stren tourney.
Before and during the four-day event, he had established a hot pattern of casting a Wiggle Wart crank bait along bluffs, catching upward of 50 bass a day with the best five totaling 10-12 pounds. Two 12-pound strings qualified him for the final two days, but a mere 10-pound catch the third day called for a bold move.
“I decided if it was cloudy, I would throw a buzz bait in the shallows all day,” Bohannan said. “If you need a big string, it’s one of the best baits to do it when the water is warm.”
With the skies cloudy and water temperatures in the shallows in the mid-60 s, the buzz bait was just the ticket for the 20-pound string.
“It was one of those times when you swing for the fences and hit a home run,” Bohannan said.
He hoped a return to the lake Friday during similar weather conditions would provide a repeat performance.
From my perspective, the impromptu trip was like hitting a trifecta — going to a lake known to produce big bass, fishing in pre-front conditions when the bite is apt to be best and being with a pro with a hot hand.
COMPETITIVE SPIRIT On the way to fish the James River arm of the lake, Bohannan made it known that next to fishing, his passion is bowhunting for deer and elk and that he has claimed some impressive animals over the past decade. “If I hadn’t already got a good buck this year, it would be tough to take time to go fishing when the rut is on,” he said. Serious bowhunting is perhaps the most demanding of hunting sports in terms of physical prowess, but athleticism and a competitive spirit have long been among Bohannan’s distinguishing characteristics. Although not notably large in size and stature, he was an all-state linebacker at Springdale High School and an all-conference offensive guard at Arkansas Tech University in Russellville. He is still obviously fit and credits fitness as a major factor for being able to compete long and strong on the bass tournament circuits.
After earning a degree in agricultural management, he began a 13-year stint with Tyson Foods Inc., working his way up to being the youngest plant manager in the company before taking the gamble of becoming a full-time professional angler.
As a part-time tournament fisherman, Bohannan fished the pro division of the Central Pro-Am Association series, then moved to the Wal-Mart Bass Fishing League circuit in 2005. He won a BFL event on Grand Lake in Oklahoma and had three top-10 finishes before moving to the Stren Series in 2006 and doing well enough to qualify for that year’s championship event.
The decision to become a full-time pro in 2007 was not taken lightly.
“I didn’t want to go into it and go broke like a lot of people do,” he said.
Noting that his costs to compete full time are about $ 30, 000 a year, he set a goal of earning $ 100, 000 as a measure of his ability to sustain a pro career.
During what he described as his “break-out year,” Bohannan fished the FLW Series, Stren Series and BFL events, doing well on all three and qualifying for the Stren Championship on the Mobile Delta in south Alabama, where he claimed a second-place finish that he repeated two weeks ago at Table Rock.
In addition to exceeding his monetary goal by winning $ 130, 000 in 2007, the second-place finish in the Stren Championship qualified him to fish not only the Forrest Wood Cup but also the FLW Tour of 2008. On the latter, Bohannan created a stir when he qualified for the finals of the Wal-Mart Open on Beaver Lake, where he finished in third place with a catch of 17 pounds, 14 ounces over the final two days.
While Bohannan has won tournaments outright from time to time, the hallmark of his success has been his consistently finishing near the top. Besides the top finishes in the Wal-Mart Open and Stren Championship, his biggest career boost of 2008 was being named to the Kellogg’s Pro Team and running a Ranger bass boat wrapped with the company’s logo. “That was a huge boost, but I was also thrilled and honored because there are a lot of elite pros on the Kellogg’s team,” Bohannan said.
FINDING FISHING ACTION Given the significant happenings of Bohannan’s fishing year, there would seem to be little left to thrill him Friday about a return to Table Rock, but he would apply himself to the task with enthusiasm and good humor. Under dark, billowing clouds signaling an approaching cold front, we arrived at the Cape Fair area of the lake and launched into the green waters of the James River arm, where Bohannan set out to fish the same areas that had produced the 20-pound string the previous Saturday.
While the surface temperatures of 62-63 degrees were similar to those a week earlier, Bohannan didn’t like the slick, calm conditions when he set up to fish a white War Eagle buzz bait along a rocky bank.
“It’s amazing what a ripple on the water can do for the fishing,” he said. “You can catch none when it’s calm; and a bunch with a ripple.”
Positioning his boat near the bank, Bohannan put his trolling motor on a medium-high speed, paralleling the shoreline and casting the buzz bait straight ahead with a high-speed Abu Garcia reel and a 1 6 / 2-foot Fenwick rod.
“What you want to do is cover water, going as fast as you can while still being able to retrieve your lure,” he explained.
Despite the calm, Bohannan soon caught a couple of small spotted (Kentucky ) bass and a 14-inch largemouth, and lost a better-size fish.
“Sometimes if you get a few short fish on a bank when it’s slick, you can go back with wind on it and catch bass of 16 and 17 inches. I see that a lot,” he said.
In the course of single-handedly catching 25-30 largemouth and spotted bass by noon, Bohannan would get the breeze he wanted to put a ripple on the water and see the action improve with larger bass.
Of the shorelines fished tight and shallow with the buzz bait, the cover ranged from rocks of all sizes to button willows, logs and stick-ups. All would usually produce a bass or two. The other type of buzz bait water consisted of what Bohannan referred to as “flat coves” with shallow water along with scattered stick-ups and remnants of brush piles. With several keeper spots and largemouths caught and released along the banks, one of the flat coves produced a deja vu moment. “See that little stick-up over there ?” Bohannan said, pointing out a single finger-size twig projecting above the surface. “That’s the top of a small brush pile where I caught a 5-pounder last Saturday.” He ran the buzz bait by it and — bam ! — caught a fat largemouth he estimated
1 at 3 / 2 pounds. The scene repeated itself in another flat cove. “On these stick-ups at the end of this little point, I lost a big bass Saturday morning; I saw it when it jumped and it weighed 6 pounds or more,” Bohannan said, aiming a cast at the spot. This time, the bass blowing up on the
1 buzz bait was a 2 / 2-pound largemouth. The only other variation in Bohannan’s fishing pattern during the morning was to throw a Wiggle Wart along the occasional steep bluff bank we encountered. He said the lure is a special, crawfish-colored version that is custompainted by Rob McGilvry at Fall Creek Lures in Republic, Mo.
While the Wiggle Wart showed itself capable of producing plenty of action, the buzz bait produced all the larger fish.
As the breeze gradually increased with brief periods of sunshine and longer periods of light rain, the brunt of the cold front came closer and closer until it hit with a vengeance of high wind and sheeting rain to send us bolting for the dock.
The low windshield on the passenger side of the bass boat offered little shelter from the pellets of rain stinging like cinders, but Bohannan had the answer in the form of a motorcycle helmet with a full-face shield.
“It’s a must when it’s rainy or cold,” he said. Toward the end, Bohannan caught
1 another 3 / 2-pound largemouth, a 2-pound largemouth and a 2-pound spotted bass, giving him a best-five total weight of about 14 pounds. “My goal in a tournament is to catch one good keeper per hour, and when I can have 14 pounds by this time of day, I’m very encouraged because I need only one big fish for a heavy string,” he said. Obviously, he’s meeting that goal and others with consistency.
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