Check out Scott on rigging a fluke. Click Here
This week we caught up with Major League Fishing Pro Scott Suggs, who wasn’t reluctant to admit that his season is off to a rough start.
“My fishing has sucked lately,” he said. “I’ve got a couple of issues, I’ve just got to get them worked through.”
One of those issues is a back injury that’s making fishing painful.
“It’s affecting me fishing all day long, so I’ve got several doctor’s appointments lined up. I’m just trying to get worked through it,” he said.
Suggs says his back pain is amplified when he’s standing on a boat for hours on end. But it’s not preventing him from competing. He’ll be fishing the FLW Tour this weekend on Lewis Smith Lake in Jasper, Ala. Suggs says the lake isn’t looking good Read Full Story on MLF
Editor's note: The following is the latest installment in a series of fishing tips presented by The Bass University. Check back each Friday for a new tip.)
While most bass anglers hate them, Arkansas pro Scott Suggs has at least a million reasons to love suspended bass.
When he won the 2007 Forrest Wood Cup on Lake Ouachita to claim bass fishing’s first seven-figure check, most of the field was telling him “how tough it was, how bad it stunk,” but Suggs quit practicing a week and a half before the event started and then dominated the tournament by slow-rolling a 3/4-ounce spinnerbait 25 feet deep over much deeper water.
While that event took place in the heart of the summer, one of his favorite times to chase suspenders, it’s not the only time that he targets them – by choice or by necessity. Winter is another time when fish may suspend, typically on main-lake channel swings and creek-channel swings. He’ll target them with a swimbait and a grub. As the season progresses toward the spawn, he’ll look for them on areas adjacent to spawning flats. He’ll stick with the swimbait, but also add a jerkbait to his arsenal. Read more
3. Scott Suggs carried a few weapons to target both the shad spawn and deeper fish. He rigged a swing-head jig (7/16, 5/8 or 3/4 ounce, depending on depth) with a Zoom Z Craw, Zoom Magnum Trick Worm or Gene Larew Biffle Bug. A Berkley Digger crankbait also produced, as did a War Eagle spinnerbait. A 7-foot, 6-inch, heavy Abu Garcia Veracity rod with an Abu Garcia Revo Premier spooled with 15-pound-test Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon was his go-to setup.
Shad spawn delivers for Suggs - Scott Suggs of Alexander, Ark., spent the week bouncing back and forth between a shad spawn in grass and shell bars out on the river channel to amass a total of 65 pounds, 1-ounce.
Like others mentioned, Suggs says the offshore bites were very sporadic and unpredictable. Given that, he spent his mornings fishing a shad spawn in grass along a river bar in 6 to 8 feet of water. On the first day he scored big on the shad spawn, boating 21 pounds, 5 ounces. But as the tournament wore on, his shad spawn area just kicked out keepers and he had to drag along shell bars for upgrades.
When targeting the shad spawn Suggs used a ¾-ounce War Eagle Spinnerbait, a Zoom Swimmer swimbait threaded on a ½-ounce War Eagle swimbait head and a Keitech 4.8 Swing Impact FAT also on a ½-ounce swimbait head.
To drag along the shell bars, Suggs used either a Zoom Magnum Trick Worm or a Zoom Z-Craw threaded on a ¾-ounce Gene Larew Biffle HardHead.
“I used the fixed Hard Head, not the hinged one because I wanted the bait to kick up when it hit the shells,” Suggs says. “I also caught some on a new Berkley Dredger deep-diving crankbait on the shell bars, too.”
