Oneida Lake 5 & 7 Sep 08

I fished our NY BASS Chapter Federation event on Oneida Lake on 7 Sep. I went down on 28 Aug to show a young Soldier around the lake because he’d signed up to fish the BFL tournament on 30 Aug and he’d never been there before. I took him to the southern shoreline and we did very well in three foot of water or less over rock rubble. He caught a real chunker perch on a small shallow crank that had about a three inch crawdad in it's throat and when we dug it out the shell was still soft so I knew the dads were smolting or a least the ones in this general area were. That told me there was a very good chance the fish in this particular area would hold up a week later for our Federation tourney, because not all the crawdads smolt at the same time.

So, on Friday 5 Sep I went down to check the same general area that I showed the Soldier and sure enough the fish were still in there; not nearly as many ( I think a few got caught during the BFL event) but still decent numbers were there. I looked around and found a couple more areas with similar composition so no matter which way the wind blew I knew I could repeat that pattern around the lake. I got off the water by noon on Friday and I didn’t pre-fish on Saturday because I didn’t want to sore mouth any biters in that area.

My basic presentation was to fish shallow over the rock rubble with a ½ oz bait fish pattern spinner bait. I was using the 9/16th oz. Secret Weapon Lure (baby bass) spinner bait with a # 3 Colorado blade for vibration and a # 4 willow blade to give me flash, but reduce the overall lift on a fast retrieve. I’d cast it out and retrieved it as fast as I could crank the handle on my 6.3:1 reel. Here's my theroy why that works well when SMB are rooting around for crawdads.

The bottom line is those fish are on that open shallow water flat to eat, plain and simple. Now could you work a tube or other type of drop bait and catch them ... absolutely, but my theroy is I'll chunk and wind to show my bait to as many fish as I can that I know are up there to eat, and odds are I'm going to connect. This in your face rapid fire approach allows me to put a presentation across three times the area that a guy tossing tubes can cover in the same amount of time.

Then when it was sunny I flipped and pitched plastics to weeds clumps on a point across from the same area.

<U>Tournament Morning, 7 Sep: </U>

We had 74 boats (boaters against boaters & co-anglers against co-anglers)

I ran six minutes east of the Oneida Shores Ramp and fished the entire day in a ½ mile area. As long as the wind blew I fished the shallow rock rubble with the spinner bait just south of the eastern point of South Bay and when the sun popped out about 12 noon I went to some weeds clumps in 3-7 foot on the opposite side, on the western point of South Bay. I closed my limit and culled a few fish on a Texas-rigged chigger craw in green pumpkin.

Here's my biggest fish on the day


I finished in 6th place out of 74 anglers so that was pretty cool, but I brought in one dink 13 incher I just couldn’t get rid of. That last hour I pitched the weed clumps and I think I caught that dink’s clone a couple of times. I fished a clean tournament and executed my plan, and everything that bit I put in the boat. I just couldn't get that one big bite to bring it home. I ended up getting $400.00 for my effort of 12.26 lbs. and the winning weight was 15 (+) lbs. by Randy Lamanche

Congrats Randy and I hope I spelled your name right

Oh and like I always say there are no real secrets in tournament fishing just over inflated egos...

Thanks for reading

Burnie Haney