If you haven’t heard the name Brett Preuett in your bass fishing circles, be patient. This 26-year-old young gun is still fresh to the Bassmaster Elite Series, but is making big waves. He qualified for the big leagues in his first attempt fishing the Bassmaster Opens in 2015.
Here, Preuett faces one of the toughest challenges in bass fishing. His Day On The Lake coincided with the arrival of a killer spring cold front. It wasn’t post-cold front, but instead a cold front hitting within hours of launching his boat. The water temperatures indicated that spawning activity could be possible, but the drop in air temperature and increased north wind had something to say about that.
What follows will provide anglers with a solid foundation of bait and presentation options if faced with the similar unfortunate timing.
6:28 a.m. We arrive at Lake B. Preuett arranges an arsenal of custom-wrapped MHX rods equipped with Shimano reels on his boat’s front deck. “The spring weather in this region has been crazy — 80 degrees and sunny one day, 40 and raining the next. It’s supposed to get up to 60 later today, but it’s darn cold this morning.”
7 HOURS LEFT
6:45 a.m. We launch the Nitro. Preuett immediately lowers his trolling motor and starts casting a 3/8-ounce black Treeshaker Tackle buzzbait to a nearby undercut bank. “The water here is 58 degrees and the clarity looks decent. If there are any bass on spawning beds, I should be able to see them once the sun gets higher.”
6:48 a.m. He flips a 6-inch junebug Creme lizard to a submerged brushpile, hangs it in the cover and retrieves it.
6:56 a.m. Preuett idles straight across the lake toward a bank studded with laydown wood cover. “This lake has tons of wood in it. The challenge will be to figure out which wood the fish are on. Or, they may be suspending off the bank and not in cover at all. The quicker I figure all this out, the better.”
7:03 a.m. Preuett tries the buzzbait around shoreline wood cover.
7:07 a.m. Preuett switches to a black and white River2Sea Whopper Plopper topwater plug. “This noisy lure has been all the rage on the Elite Series trail. The tail section has a fin that spins around and creates surface commotion during the retrieve.”
7:09 a.m. Preuett flips a brown craw 3/8-ounce Treeshaker jig with a watermelon Creme craw trailer to a tangle of submerged tree limbs.
7:11 a.m. He skips a bluegill Spro Poppin’ Frog beneath overhanging branches. “You can skip a frog into tight, snaggy places where you could never get a buzzbait.”
7:14 a.m. Preuett ties on a pearl 7-inch Creme Reel Scremer swimbait rigged on a belly-weighted hook with a small spinner blade attached. “This is a prototype lure that’ll catch monster bass.” He slow rolls it across sunken tree limbs.
7:17 a.m. Preuett reverts to the buzzbait, casts it to a submerged branch and gets a solid strike. He works the fish around the bow of his boat and pulls in his first bass of the day, a fat, 4-pound, 1-ounce largemouth. “This fish has a big gut and hasn’t spawned yet. The branch she was on is in a little pocket [shoreline indentation].”
7:22 a.m. Preuett picks up his pace a bit, moving along the shoreline while alternating between the frog, buzzbait, jig and lizard. The sun dips behind a cloud and it suddenly feels 10 degrees colder.
7:26 a.m. Preuett moves into a short tributary arm, casts the Reel Scremer to a laydown, and a big fish nails it — but gets off! “Man, that one was way bigger than my 4-pounder! She really smoked it! I wonder if she’s on a bed.” He moves closer and eyeballs the spot where the fish struck but can’t see a nest.
7:31 a.m. Preuett fancasts the buzzbait and a red craw Bill Lewis Echo square bill crankbait around stumps in the back of the tributary. No takers here.
6 HOURS LEFT
7:45 a.m. Preuett replaces the lizard on his Texas rig with a Creme Chameleon creature. “This is a really cool lure; its color changes from green pumpkin to purple, depending on how the light hits it.” He pitches the critter around submerged stumps.
7:52 a.m. Back to the buzzbait. The north wind has picked up, and bluebird skies prevail. “The cold front has passed through, so I’ve got my work cut out for me now.”
8:02 a.m. Preuett moves to the mouth of the creek and retrieves the Reel Scremer across laydown logs.
8:09 a.m. He moves tighter to the bank and flips the frog into nooks and crannies between wood cover.
8:16 a.m. Preuett tries a blue herring 3/8-ounce Treeshaker spinnerbait. “There’s a little chop on the water now — ideal conditions for a spinnerbait.”
8:22 a.m. Preuett rigs up a Treeshaker umbrella rig with multiple white 3.5-inch Creme swimbaits. “We can’t use these rigs in Elite Series competition, but I wanted to try one here. I’ve caught bass up to 11 pounds on umbrella rigs. Most guys use them to cover big main-lake structures, like points and humps, but I like to make short casts around cover with them as well.”
8:26 a.m. Preuett motors into a big tributary arm and runs the buzzbait around several docks.
8:37 a.m. He tries a Tennessee shad Megabass 110 jerkbait. “They might be suspending out from these docks in this cold front.”
5 HOURS LEFT
8:56 a.m. Back to the buzzbait. “These docks are all pretty shallow. I wish they had some deeper water close by.”
9:04 a.m. Preuett idles 100 yards out from the docks, where he spots a ledge on his graph. “It’s 10 feet deep on top and drops off quickly to 22 feet. There’s a lot of brush and baitfish down there.” He probes the structure with a Rapala DT-16 deep-diving crankbait in the smash color.
9:06 a.m. Preuett hangs the DT-16 in brush, breaks it off and replaces it with a shallower-running Rapala DT-10, same color. The lure snaps off on his first cast. “Looks like I need to put on some fresh line!”
9:17 a.m. He crawls his jig over the top of the ledge but can’t entice a bite.
9:21 a.m. Preuett moves to a rock point and tries the umbrella rig. The water temp here is 60 degrees.
9:24 a.m. Preuett hits a stretch of rock bank with the buzzbait and jig without success.
9:35 a.m. Preuett zips to the back of a cove and tries the buzzbait and jig around the bank.
9:38 a.m. He pauses to tie on a watermelon/red flake Yamamoto Swimming Senko sinking worm and a pearl Creme soft jerkbait. “I want to try skipping these baits around all this brush and wood. The higher the sun gets, the more likely the fish will pull tighter to cover.”
4 HOURS LEFT
9:45 a.m. Preuett continues around the cove, alternating between the soft jerkbait, Senko and buzzbait.
9:56 a.m. He switches lizard colors from junebug to green pumpkin and flips the lure around shoreline logs while scanning the bank for spawning beds. “I haven’t seen any beds, and there aren’t many fish on this shallow wood, either.”
10:04 a.m. Preuett pitches the lizard to a lone stump on the end of a mud point. It comes back unscathed. “How could there not be one there?!”
10:07 a.m. He idles to another bank with several docks and tries the spinnerbait. The wind is gusting to 20 mph.
10:11 a.m. Preuett ties on a 3/8-ounce chartreuse and white Treeshaker Shaker Blade bladed jig with a generic white swim trailer and retrieves it parallel to a concrete retaining wall. “Bass like to spawn around these walls. If there aren’t any fish on bed yet, there could be some prespawners cruising nearby.”
10:15 a.m. He pitches the lizard to a dock. No takers. “I’m disappointed I haven’t had any luck around these docks. If the cold front has backed them off the banks like it appears, docks are a logical place for them to hold until conditions improve.”
10:18 a.m. Preuett switches to a green pumpkin Creme finesse worm rigged on a 1/4-ounce Treeshaker shaky head. He hops and crawls it along a rock bank.
10:24 a.m. Preuett changes Shaker Blade colors to chartreuse shad, turns his boat around and casts the hard-throbbing lure parallel to the rock bank.
10:31 a.m. He moves into a nearby canal and retrieves a Bull Shad jointed swimbait past a boathouse.
10:36 a.m. Preuett chunks the umbrella rig to a gravel boat ramp in the back of the canal. What’s his take on the day so far? “I caught one good fish and lost a really big one early, but it’s gone downhill ever since the front moved through. The water temp and time of year tell me if the fish aren’t shallow, they should be holding close to potential spawning areas, but so far I haven’t figured out where. I’m going to head to the upper end of the lake to see if the water isn’t warmer there. I’m also going to try backing off into the 7- to 10-foot range to see if I can’t get on some staging fish.”
3 HOURS LEFT
10:45 a.m. Preuett runs uplake to the entrance of a long tributary arm. He wind-drifts past several docks while casting the umbrella rig and lizard to the structures.
10:52 a.m. He moves into the whitecapping tributary and slow rolls the spinnerbait around scattered stumps.
11:04 a.m. Preuett rigs a perch Smithwick Rogue floater-diver minnow on a spinning outfit and casts the lure tight to the bank, retrieving it with erratic snaps of the rod tip. “They’ll jump all over this bait if they’re up shallow.”
11:09 a.m. He retrieves a red craw Bill Lewis Rat-L-Trap lipless vibrating crankbait parallel to the outer edge of a shallow flat.
11:14 a.m. Preuett moves to a long main-lake point, drops his Power-Poles to anchor his boat in the wind and ties on a perch Strike King 8.0 square bill crankbait. “This big plug pushes a lot of water and triggers hellacious reaction strikes.” He launches the lure across the point and grinds it along the bottom.
11:27 a.m. He tries the umbrella rig on the point. Nothing.
11:36 a.m. Preuett runs to a main-lake flat where he tries the spinnerbait and frog.
2 HOURS LEFT
11:49 a.m. The upper end of Lake B hasn’t panned out, so Preuett decides to run back downlake. But when he tries to start the Merc, his cranking battery is dead. “Rats, my bilge pump has been running all morning and ran down my battery! I probably hit the console switch with my knee and didn’t realize it.” The pro patiently pulls out a bag of tools and switches his outboard’s cables over to another battery. Task completed, he cranks his engine and races back downlake.
11:58 a.m. Preuett is back on the bank where he caught his sole keeper. He flips the lizard around laydowns, gets a tap, swings and misses. “At last, a bite! But it wasn’t very big. It just grabbed the tail.”
12:05 p.m. Preuett moves into the short tributary arm where he lost the lunker on the swimbait earlier. “They should be moving in here; the water is 62 degrees, and it’s protected from that cold north wind.” He tries the lizard and U-rig but can’t connect with a fish.
12:13 p.m. He flips the lizard around the stumps in the back of the creek. “They just aren’t in here.”
12:19 p.m. Preuett ties on a 4 1/2-inch All American Trash Fish swimbait in a realistic minnow pattern rigged on a belly-weight hook. He skips it beneath overhanging branches and retrieves it with erratic jerks. “This is the perfect lure to throw while you’re moving quickly along a bank and looking for spawning beds. It skips beautifully, and you can work it through some pretty gnarly cover. Big bedding fish will crush it.”
12:26 p.m. He switches to a shad colored Lucky Craft 2.5 square bill and roots it around a shallow point at the mouth of the creek arm.
12:39 p.m. Preuett has run farther downlake to the entrance of a little feeder creek, where he cranks the 2.5. No love here.
1 HOUR LEFT
12:47 p.m. Preuett rigs a bluegill Zoom Super Fluke soft jerkbait on a wide gap hook and skips it around the creek’s snaggy shoreline.
12:53 p.m. Preuett has spotted a small bass cruising the bank. He moves in closer and sees a light colored spawning bed. “I don’t see that little guy on the nest, but maybe his big, fat girlfriend is somewhere close by.” He pitches the lizard to the bed and shakes it but can’t raise a fish.
1:11 p.m. He moves out of the creek arm while working the Trash Fish around the bank.
1:18 p.m. Preuett races to Lake B’s dam, where he cranks the U-rig and 2.5 around the riprap. He snips off the square bill and ties a DT-16 onto that rod. “Let’s run back to that ledge I fished earlier.”
1:25 p.m. Back on the ledge, Preuett dredges the DT-16 over some deep, submerged brush. “I’m seeing some really big fish holding around the ledge, and the way they’re relating to cover, they must be bass.” He rigs a 3/4-ounce green pumpkin/blue Treeshaker football jig with a green pumpkin Creme craw trailer, casts it to the ledge and crawls it slowly around the structure.
1:29 p.m. Preuett grinds a Tennessee shad Strike King 6XD crankbait across the ledge.
1:34 p.m. A bass pecks the football jig on the ledge but immediately drops it.
1:37 p.m. Preuett makes his final casts of the day to the ledge with a 7-inch Basstrix swimbait on a 3/4-ounce head.
1:45 p.m. Back to the boat ramp. Preuett has had a tough day on Lake B, but the one bass he managed to boat was a good one: 4 pounds, 1 ounce.
The Day in Perspective
“I had a small window of opportunity early in the day to put some big fish in the boat; then once the cold front passed all the way through, the bass got lockjaw,” Preuett told Bassmaster. “I caught a 4-1 early on a buzzbait and had a giant slam a big swimbait; instead of slowing down to flip wood cover early, I should have put my trolling motor on high and kept covering water with those two lures for another hour or two before the front blew through. If I were to fish this lake tomorrow under cold front conditions, I’d spend way more time offshore, scouting ledges, rockpiles and humps with my electronics. Even though the calendar says it’s spawning time, most of the fish here haven’t moved up yet; it’ll take several warm, sunny days in a row to get them going.”
WHERE AND WHEN PREUETT CAUGHT HIS BASS
1. 4 pounds, 1 ounce; 3/8-ounce black Treeshaker Tackle buzzbait; shoreline wood cover; 7:17 a.m.
TOTAL: 4 POUNDS, 1 OUNCE