Professional Bass Fisherman Mark Davis Tells Us How to Improve Our Fishing
When Mark Davis Caught More Than 100 Bass a Day at Lake Guntersville and Davis’s Video Tells Three Favorite Baits for Fishing Clear Water
Editor’s Note: Mark Davis of Mount Ida, Arkansas, had the worst year in 2009 of his fishing career. But this year, he’s returned to professional bass fishing with a vengeance. In the last two Bassmaster Elite Series tournaments, he took two 8th-place finish checks home with him, one at Clarks Hill and one at Lake Guntersville. Mark has made one of the biggest turnarounds in his professional fishing career that anyone has seen. All of us go through slumps. We all get down on ourselves about bass fishing. We’ve asked Mark Davis how he’s come back from a lousy fishing year to having a great fishing year.
Question: How were you fishing at Guntersville, and how were you able to find and catch 100 bass a day and cull even some 5 pounders?
Davis: To start with, Lake Guntersville in Alabama is a great fishery. It’s always had plenty of big bass – if you can find them. What made Guntersville good for me was the fish were spawning or had just spawned. Because so-many fish were spawning, most of the competitors fished for those fish, which took the pressure off the post-spawn fish out in deeper water. So, I was able to locate quite a few schools of post-spawn bass. These schools would be holding hundreds of bass on each spot I found, and I had identified 18 of these kinds of places before the tournament ever began. I was fishing river ledges. I’d crank the 6 XD down to 15 feet – even deeper on some spots – and run it through those schools really fast. Once the school got fired-up and started feeding actively, I could catch one on almost every cast. Sometimes I’d even catch two bass at a time. I’d have one bass hooked on the front treble hook and a second bass hooked on the rear treble hook. Life and fishing doesn’t get any better than that.
Question: What color 6 XD were you fishing, and what type of retrieve were you using? Davis: I was fishing with the Sexy Chartreuse Shad color. It has a blue-gray top with pale-chartreuse sides, and I’ve found this to be a really-great color to fish when the water has some stain to it. I was using 12-pound-test Stren line making really-long casts and cranking the bait down on points and river ledges. Once I got the bait down, I’d reel it really hard and fast through the schools of bass.
Question: Mark, were you kneeling and reeling to get the bait down deeper?
Davis: No, I wasn’t. That’s what I like about the new 6 XD bait. It can get down to those deeper depths without a fisherman having to stand on his head, put his rod in the water and almost have to crank upside down. The real secret to fishing the 6 XD successfully is to make long casts. Then you can get the lure down to the depths where the bass are holding, before you bring it through the school.
Question: Why were you retrieving the 6 XD fast?
Davis: I believe that during the post-spawn, the faster you can retrieve the bait, the more excited the bass get, and the more eagerly they’ll attack the lure. Some of those schools of bass that I found I believe you could catch a bass on every cast, while continuing to fish for 2-3 hours.
Question: What rod and reel were you using?
Davis: I was using the All Star cranking rod with the Pflueger Patriarch reel with 12-pound test Stren line and cranking the bait really hard.
