Predicting who will win the 2012 Bassmaster Classic is a near impossibility, but guessing how and where it will be won is a much simpler proposition.
It is easier to predict a winning roulette number than it is to guess who’s going to win a Bassmaster Classic. Take Skeet Reese for example. Nobody predicted this California kid going to the Red River and winning in 2009.
However, fishing being what it is, all the variables and proverbial stars aligned for Reese three years ago as he found enough Red River bass to bring home the title of Classic Champion.
Unfortunately for Reese, he won’t be able to defend his Red River championship because for the first time in 10 years, he didn’t qualify for the Classic.
“(Going back to the Red River) is good for those fishing, but it sucks for me because I’m not,” Reese lamented. “It’s going to be bittersweet going back to the city and river where I won, and it’s going to be a little rough not coming through the coliseum with the Louisiana crowd backing me. But one thing I learned in 2009 is that the fishery has good fish in it, no doubt.”
Reese realized that he could only speculate on what the bite’s going to be, but from what he saw in 2009, he knows that 20-pound bags are definitely doable on the Red River as evidenced by his 22-pound limit that he caught on the second day the last time the Classic was held on the Red River.
“And there’s the potential of catching a 25-pound stringer out there,” Reese said. “So if they time it right, it’s going to be good — although a lot of it’s going to be based on weather and water.”
Two local bass anglers agree with Reese’s assessment of this year’s Bassmaster Classic.
Minden based bass pro and Red River guide Homer Humphreys Jr. is one of the few anglers to ever have won a BASS tournament on his home waters, and he thinks that this Classic will go down in history as being one of the big-weight Classic tournaments of all time.
“If the weather stays like it was in late December — no severe cold stuff or anything like that — they’re going to break the record from last time,” Humphreys predicted. “February on the Red River means big bites. Not a lot of bites, but big bites.”
Southpaw Guide Service owner Russ McVey fell right in line with Reese and Humphreys.
“You could not ask for a better time of year on the Red River,” McVey said. “With that new moon we’re getting about the third week of February, you know as well as I do that the February moon phase plays a role on these fish moving in regardless of the temperature.”
In fact, McVey caught his Red River record 13.63-pound bass on Feb. 20, 2006, when he believes the moon phase pushed the giant fish into shallow water along a ridge out in the middle of an oxbow lake.
“There’s something about that time of year when the big fish just start showing up in Northwest Louisiana,” McVey said. “They’ve been out in deep water all winter, and if you can get a few warm days, watch out. They’ll be up shallow or on the edges of the shallow water. Actually, I try to get my guide trips to book in February if they’re looking to catch quality bass.”
Fortunately for Reese, the Red River being low and clear played right into his hands in 2009. He was able to find fish moving in to stage in a prespawn pattern before they actually spread out to get on beds.
“Where I caught a lot of my fish, if the river would have been higher and muddy, I would not have caught them there,” Reese acknowledged. “If it would have come up and turned muddy, I would have been stuck back in a pond — the Bobo Hole — with 20 other boats, and it would have been tough to win in that situation.”
That brings us to a point that all three anglers agreed upon, and that is that things can change quickly on the Red River. A bite discovered during practice can evaporate as quickly as the river can rise or turn muddy.
Humphreys says that the biggest threats to the Classic waters are heavy rains up north in Oklahoma or heavy winds in Northwest Louisiana.
“Actually, local rains don’t bother it that much,” Humphreys explained. “Wind is worse than rain. We’ve got a lot of 6-inch to 2-foot sandbars that if the wind comes across them, it muddies up the water real quick, but it seems to settle out quick like that too. The good thing about February is that our wind is predominately northwest, and everything where the fish are caught is protected from a north and northwest wind.”
Humphreys believes that a perfect storm of disheartenment would be for the Classic competitors to have to fish during a warming trend coupled with 15-m.p.h. winds out of the south.
“That would make it a tough tournament because it would blow all that sand and mud into the clear water areas,” Humphreys said.
As for heavy rain up north in Oklahoma, Humphreys pointed out that all that water would have to flow through the Red River and that it was up to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as to how fast it would reach the Shreveport-Bossier area. Many times, it seems like it’s overnight.
“I’ll give you an example,” Humphreys said. “I had a guy fishing with me back in December right after a big rain up in Oklahoma. We were out there on a Monday and caught 40 something fishing on the inside of the rocks. He wanted to come back the next day, but when we got there, you could have tracked a coon across it because all that water had reached Pool 5. It can change overnight.”
Although Reese didn’t experience such a huge change during 2009, he knows that if the Red River gets high and muddy, it locks all the competitors into the backwater lakes and oxbows that are cut off from the main river current.
“Those areas will house the best water color in those conditions,” Reese said. “The Red River is named the Red River for a reason. When that thing runs red, it’s tough to get bites out of that raging, red, muddy water. In that case, you’ve got to look for some cleaner stained water that is out of the current.”
Reese feels like the ideal scenario for the anglers this year would be for the water to be low and clear because that means they’ll pretty much be able to fish anywhere on the river. Low and clear water will also open up the transition areas between the main river channel and the backwater oxbows where Reese located most of his fish in 2009.
Back then, most anglers were targeting bass back in the ponds, so Reese had his whole little area pretty much to himself. Because the water wasn’t too dirty, Reese was able to find fish farther out closer to the current.
“It was just a little secondary oxbow coming off the river with just a little natural flow coming by even though it was half a mile or so from the main river,” Reese recalled. “There was still some natural current in the channel, but it had a little ditch that funneled back into the big lake behind it.
“Those fish that were out in the river had to come right through this one little ditch. I could be fishing on the current side in dirtier water and move 30 or 40 feet to the inside and be out of the current and in clear water. I had the best of both worlds.”
Humphreys knows exactly the kinds of spots that Reese fished three years ago, and he pointed out that if you could have seen Reese’s area from the air, you would have very easily seen the line between muddy water and clear water.
“Those fish butt right up against that clear water,” Humphreys said. “The river is bad about cleaning up from the bank out, and those fish sit there in that dirty water and wait on something to eat moving on the bank. You’re just not going to catch them in that muddy water.”
In other words, the wider the clear water band between the bank and the mud line, the more anglers can spread out and find their own areas to fish. The more narrow the band of clear water, the closer anglers will be forced together and have to fish in a crowd.
If that clear-water band extends out to at least 4 feet of water, look out. That will open up what Humphreys and McVey feels will be the absolute best patterns for fishing the Red River during February.
“I think one of the big keys will be those guys putting their boats in maybe 8 or 9 feet of water where’s it’s maybe a cast away from the bank or the top of a ridge,” McVey said. “The weather will dictate how I fish it, but warm or cold, those fish should be somewhere in that zone from 1 to 4 feet deep.”
So who’s going to win? According to Reese, there are so many variables that he just can’t pick a favorite.
“A lot of people never predicted me being a California kid going in there and winning,” he said. “Some of the best fishermen in the world will be there breaking down that river, so it’s just who makes the best decisions and finds the best water.”
This year’s Classic winner is going to need a lot of skill and a lot more luck. If you pick the winner, make sure to stop at the casino before you leave town. Perhaps Lady Luck might strike twice.