Brandon angler Bill McKay, who has honed his big-bass skills for years, says targeting lunkers takes special tactics. Here’s how to match his catches.
Bill McKay pitched his jig to a submerged stump along a ditch on Ross Barnett Reservoir, and a lunker bass thumped it hard. McKay whipped his rod back and drove the hook deep into the jaw of the bass. The enraged sow exploded through the surface and tried to escape, but it was no match for this long-time bass master. McKay made quick work and put him in the boat and his livewell to fill his tournament creel.
McKay, who is from Brandon, has fished Barnett his entire life, and February is one of his favorite times because the sow bass are primed and ready to go. His biggest lunker caught from the Res during a tournament weighed 10.89 pounds and was caught on Feb. 2. This month, he is looking for four or five quality bites, and he’ll usually have 23 to 26 pounds if he gets the right bites and lands them.
McKay has won many tournaments, money, prizes and even boats, but it wasn’t always like. Early in his career, he struggled to even place or get a check in a tournament.
“When I first started fishing tournaments, I would catch 50 to 75 bass in a day,” said McKay, “but I would always come up short, just a few ounces out of the money and just miss a check. That happened over and over. I finally asked (myself) what I was doing wrong, because catching fish wasn’t a problem.”
Though he was catching plenty of fish he wasn’t catching the big girls, and that was a problem.
Big bites mean big bass
So what’s the secret to his success?
“I had to re-evaluate what I was doing, and it was obvious that I wasn’t ever going to win tournaments by catching a lot of bass,” McKay said. “I had to find a way to catch big bass and stick with it if I wanted to be successful.”
And that’s what McKay did; he started targeting lunker bass only and became very successful.
“During a tournament a couple of years ago, I only got four bites, but they weighed over 26 pounds,” he said. “That’s the kind of fish it takes to win on Ross Barnett or get a big check.”
That may be easier said than done. Too many anglers want to win tournaments but don’t want to change what they’re doing or put in the effort to do it. If you want to win tournaments or just consistently catch big bass on highly pressured waters, it takes time, effort and determination. Not too many people can stand on the deck of a boat and flip, pitch and cast, hoping for five bites all day. Here are a few of McKay’s successful tips, techniques and strategies for catching big fish.
Learn the lake bottom first
“When I’m fishing a new lake or new areas, I spend a lot of time with my big motor running looking for submerged stumps, drops and ledges with brush and cover,” McKay said. “Back in the early days, I had to cover a lot of water fishing and finding the submerged brush through a lot of hard work and trial and error, but now I use my electronics and GPS units to find and mark stumps, humps, brush and underwater spots that everybody else isn’t fishing.”
“Once the water temperature gets to the 40s, I’ll target isolated stumps in 2 to 4 feet of water close to deeper water that’s at least 2 to 4 feet deeper than the stumps or cover,” said McKay. “I like to fish isolated stumps on the edges of ditches, creeks, slough and the same isolated cover wherever I can find areas like that. The bass will come back every year and stage on the same places.”
Through trial and error, McKay has learned that the big ol’ sow bass will stage beside the stumps and roots, so he will target those during February and March.
Search baits
McKay likes to cover a lot of water when he’s searching for bass or looking for new areas, and that typically means square-bill crankbaits and big spinnerbaits.
“I have caught a lot of big bass on the 3-inch Bagley square-bill crankbaits in cold water,” McKay said. “I like to bang that square bill into stumps and brush and dig into those roots and that will trigger bass into reaction strikes. The only drawback is if you’re fishing a tournament and you get hung up in the roots or structure and mess up the area in the shallow water.”
Another go-to bait that McKay used in his early years and still relies on to search and find bass in cold water is a big-bladed spinnerbaits. He lets the pulsating blades entice bass into biting when he slow-rolls the bait through thick cover while banging into and around the cover. The strikes are sometimes ferocious, and the lure is a jam-up, cold-weather bait that is not as prone to hanging up as the big, square-billed crankbaits.
These days, however, his best big-bass producer is a jig with a big trailer.
The money bait
“When I’m fishing a tournament during cold weather, I’ll throw a big jig with a big trailer,” said McKay. “I like any color as long as it has a combination of black, blue and purple. Any of those colors are good by themselves or any combination of two or three.”
McKay’s money bait technique: Fish sloooow!
“As long as it’s a dark-colored jig, it will work around stumps,” he said. “I like to fish it really, really slow — almost like dead-sticking it. The reason I like to work the stump fields and ditches with the jigs is because they will come through the brush and roots a little better. And those prespawn bass will smash them, too, but you need to crawl that bait because the lunkers are lethargic when the water is very cold.”
McKay prefers fishing a medium-weight jig with a big trailer in shallow water because it doesn’t get hung up as much as a heavier bait.
When the bite is on and the wind is down McKay is apt to catch a 25- to 27-pound, five-bass limit. He’ll typically have a couple in the 5- and 6-pound range, plus a few 4- to 5- pounders, and that’s usually enough for a top-3 finish on most cold-weather tournament days in Mississippi.
“I try to get within 20 to 30 feet of stumps, and they’re all underwater, unseen by other anglers,” McKay said. “I’m confident that everybody else hasn’t already pounded the stumps that I’m fishing because they’re much harder to find, and most folks just don’t spend that much time on the water looking for isolated stumps.”
Fishing up close also allows McKay to jerk a bass up and out of the brush in a hurry because lunkers in the 7- to 10-pound range will bury down into the roots and break him off in a heartbeat — and then it’s all over.
“I want to get close enough to get bit and get them out, but not too close or I’ll spook those shallow-water bass,” McKay said. “Ideally, I’ll make underhand roll casts with the jig about an inch above the water or pitch up close to the stump so I can control the jig and make precise casts without a big splash. “
When fishing a 3/8- to 1/2-ounce jig and trailer, McKay prefers a 7-foot, heavy action baitcasting combo and 25-pound fluorocarbon.
“I prefer the lighter jig in shallow water if the wind isn’t blowing, but I’ll move up to the heavier jig if the wind is blowing,” he said. “I fished a tournament a few years ago and was paired with pro angler Mark Menendez, and he gave me some Oldham jigs. I liked them and have used them ever since.”
Fishing piers and poles
If a lake has piers and poles, you’ll usually find brush piles planted beside them, and they are a favorite target for McKay.
“I like to fish lakes like Eagle Lake during cold weather, too, and I’ll fish the piers and poles and work the brush piles around them and usually catch big fish,” McKay said. “If you’re willing to spend some time on the water and locate areas that have big bass ,you can catch some really big strings in February.”
Another proven technique McKay utilizes in February and March is a prespawn pattern on the main lake at Barnett.
“If the wind will let me fish the main lake, I’ll target prespawn bass, and I also catch a lot of bass that have already spawned with a Bagley’s DB3,” McKay said. “I still throw it because it swims with an erratic motion, and I’ve caught a lot of bass on it when the water temperature is in the 50- to 65-degree range.”
Best bets for public-lake lunkers
Though they’re not all large lakes, these lakes produce big bass, and February is the perfect time to get after them. According to fisheries biologist Rick Dillard, if you want to catch a lunker, these are some of the best Mississippi has to offer. There’s no doubt big bass are swimming in these waters, in fact, the next state record may be caught from one of them.
Dillard has personally electro-shocked up many bass in excess of 10 pounds from some of these lakes. Catching them is the hard part.
- Davis Lake. This is a 200-acre lake just south of Tupelo, and it has behemoth bass. Jeff Foster caught a trophy largemouth on Jan. 4, 2013, that weighed 17.34 pounds, just missing the state record of 18.15 pounds.
- Turkey Fork. Near Richton, this lake is full of pads and grass and lunker bass.
- Okhissa. Near Bude, this lake is deep and clear and grows lunker bass.
- Chewalla. Chewalla covers 223 acres in the Holly Springs National Forest. It was stocked with Florida-strain bass in 1998. It is one of the few lakes in that area that has produced double-digit bass.
- Marathon. This small lake south of Forest also has lunker bass swimming in its waters.
Here are Bill McKay’s favorite public lakes beside Ross Barnett.
- Calling Panther. Deep and clear, this lake is tough to fish but harbors massive bass.
- Chotard and Albemarle. Another lake chock full of quality lunker bass in the 4- to 6-pound range.
- Eagle Lake. Eagle lake produces large strings of 5-pounders in January and February
Bill Giles’ wild-card lake:
- Neshoba County Lake. When it comes to consistently producing lunker bass in the 9- to 12-pound range, Neshoba County is probably one of the top two lakes in the state. Anglers regularly catch monster bass in February and March. Don’t expect to catch large numbers, but if you know what to do and how to fish the lake, you might just catch the lunker of your lifetime on any cast.
