Fishing 'Loose'
With 'Blank Slate' Ike 'Fished Everything' At Jordan

Photo: ESPN Outdoors/Seigo Saito Mike Iaconelli said the fish were on "intermediate docks" – not too shallow and not too deep.

Mike Iaconelli won the leg, which pushed him up to 3rd in the BASS Angler of the Year (AOY) race, and he did it in style. He caught better than 14 pounds each day, and weighed the big bass both days (4-11 and 4-03).

What was particularly noteworthy about his performance was he didn't pre-practice, like others did, and didn't try to learn too much about the lake.

He therefore launched onto a brand-new lake and looked for every possible pattern he could.

"I fished real loose," he said. "I was just having fun. I was kind of fishing to win, but as far as patterns, I think the biggest thing that helped me was I came in with no preconceived notions.

"I'd never fished Jordan, and only once at the Alabama River (site of the final leg). I had a blank slate and that really helped in practice because I didn't write anything off. I didn't say, 'Well, they can't be here, they can't be there.' I fished everything and that really helped. That's what I look to do in the Alabama River too."

Huge Move Up

Ike's 1st-place finish at Jordan vaulted him from 10th to 3rd in the AOY race. He's still a longshot to win the title, because he needs Skeet Reese and Kevin VanDam (1st and 2nd, respectively) to fade significantly. But he's still in it.

"It feels good – it does," Ike said shortly after his Jordan win. "I definitely came into this week with the attitude of just fishing to win and it worked in the first one. There's two tournaments, and we're halfway through it. I came into the first one with the goal to win, and I won it. There's one left and you never know."

He told BassFan that no, his longshot odds don't dampen the excitement for his win. Instead, "it takes pressure off" since he still trails in the race. All the pressure's on Reese and VanDam, he thinks. "And that in itself is helping me a little bit by the fact that I know I'm a longshot. That's kind of freeing me up to fish real loose again."

Jigs, Tubes Worked At Jordan

Ike developed two patterns over his 2-day Jordan practice. During the 2 competition days, he caught about 80% of his fish on docks. The other 20% he caught by jerking a deep tube.

He noted that his dock pattern was largely overlooked.

"The way it shook out in practice was I figured out that the fish were on what I call intermediate docks – not the real steep ones. You'd think that in summer the fish would have to be on the really deep docks. They weren't on those. They weren't on the dirt-shallow docks in the very backs of pockets either. So I keyed on those intermediate docks."

His best docks, he said, were on points. And if he could find a dock with some deep water near it (not under it), that was gold because the big spotted bass would pull up under the docks at various times to feed.

"Most of my dock-fish came in 5 to 10 feet of water," he noted. "I was able to figure out that a lot of them were feeding on bluegills."

Photo: ESPN Outdoors Ike caught 80% of his fish on a brown Berkley Ike's Finesse Gripper jig.

He caught his deep fish on rises in 15 to 20 feet of water. Some of the rises were in the main lake, while some were in the mouths of pockets. He snapped his tube off the bottom and let it spiral back down to trigger a reaction bite – a common technique for Great Lakes smallmouths. He said it was a lot like fishing a jigging spoon.

Here's an in-depth look at his gear: