At least in the first day and a half of this tournament, Brett Hite appears to be locked in to a bass fishing method and area more than any of the other seven anglers. Once he gets to the northern boundary of this event – the North Grand Island Bridge, located a few miles above Niagara Falls – Hite fires up his outboard only to idle over to another bridge pier.
“There’s just no use leaving this area,” Hite said. “There’s a lot of stuff to fish here, and nobody else is fishing it.”
Hite is drop-shotting a Yamamoto Shad Shaped Worm with a green pumpkin colored back and a pearl belly on a 1/4-ounce Reins Tungsten weight. That weight is key.
“It’s almost like fly fishing,” Hite said. “You want your drop shot to move at the same speed as the current. If you get it too heavy, it gets hung up and it doesn’t look natural. So the trick is to cast upstream and just kind of bounce it along at close to the same speed as the current.”
Hite said the depth here varies between 18 and 10 feet, depending on the bridge pier, and there are some deeper dug out holes.
“I had the fish on to have 12 or 13 pounds yesterday,” Hite said. “I know that potential is living right here, so that’s a good goal for today.”
His two-day total so far is 18-9 with three bass in the boat today weighing 8-7. That gives him a lead of 8-9 over Combs with just over an hour left in this morning session.