BASS Elite Series pro shares pad-stem pointers

Bassmaster Elite Series professional angler Cliff Pace has traveled the country trying to catch bass, and he always looks for lily pad stems during spring to make him feel like he’s back home in Mississippi.

Petal’s Cliff Pace has fished pad-stem flats all over the country as he travels to fish the Bassmaster Elite Series tournaments, and he has put together a solid explanation as to why bass love getting around the shallow stems.

“Pad stems give bass an environment with a lot of cover but enough sunlight that they can spawn,” said the four-time Bassmaster Classic qualifier. “If you look at solid grass mats like water hyacinths, bass use them, but they can’t spawn under that kind of mat.

“Having all those stems around and no surface cover, they can get comfortable. That’s why pad stems are so effective in spring. They’re a natural draw.”

Pace has learned to take each day fishing pad stems as a stand-alone moment because of the unstable framework of spring.

“You’ve got to take each day for what it is,” he said. “They’re not going to act the same on a cold-front day as they will if it’s 70 degrees with a warm breeze blowing.

“You’ve got to change how you fish pad stems based on what the fish are doing today, not what they did yesterday.”

Primarily, that means Pace has to figure out if the bass are up high on the ridges in the pad stems where they can spawn on the hard bottom or down on the bottom of the depressions that run through the pads stems where they can wait out a cold front over a silted-in, softer bottom.

When fishing pad stems, Pace follows his rule-of-thumb to fish with the heaviest equipment that the conditions allow him to fish. In muddy water, that means heavy baitcasting gear and braided line, but in clear water, he might pick up spinning rods with fluorocarbon line.

“I typically use the 7-foot, 3-inch CastAway Skeleton Grass Master Braid rod with a 6.6:1 ratio US Reel spooled with 65-pound-test High Seas Grand Slam braided line,” Pace said. “When you hook a big bass in the pad stems, you’ve got to have the equipment to pull them out if you can’t go in to get them.”

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