Advanced Spy baiting with Grant Goldbeck and IBASSIN

Spy baiting has become popular in regions across the country. This new Japanese technique is more versatile than many anglers imagined.  Ideal for largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass, spy baiting can help you add more bass to your tournament limit. You don't have to be a bass pro to use this simple lure. Listen as BASS Elite angler and DUO REALIS fishing pro Grant Goldbeck explains how-to utilize a spy bait into your fishing.

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2014 Bassmaster Elite Lake Dardanelle Day 1: Crew takes Flight of Lead

Crews is steady as she goes on Lake Dardanelle

By Deb Johnson

bass press release

RUSSELLVILLE, Ark. — “Steady” was the first word John Crews came up with when asked about his first day of competition in the May 15-18 Bassmaster Elite at Lake Dardanelle.

John Crews takes lead on day 1 in very tight field.
(Photo: BASS)

“One good one here, one good one there, and at the end of the day, it was looking really nice,” Crews said.

“Rock steady” is a more accurate description of Crews’ Thursday performance. The pro from Salem, Va., weighed a five-bass limit of 22 pounds, 9 ounces, for a lead of 12 ounces over Greg Hackney.

Bassmaster Elite Sunshine Showdown Day 4: Shaw Grigsby Wins!

Sunshine Showdown
Harris Chain, Tavares, FL, March 10-13, 2011
By Deb Johnson
Bassmaster.com (Press Release)

TAVARES, Fla. -- Shaw Grigsby, you still have it.
The veteran pro from Gainesville, Fla., outfished the 99-man Bassmaster Elite Series field in a nerve-jangling contest over four days that hinged on an on-again, off-again sight bite on the Harris Chain of Lakes.
Sunshine Showdown, it was called. For Grigsby, it was a personal test as well as a competition.
"I've been close quite a few times since my last win in 2000. I'm turning 55 in May, and at this age, you wonder, you question, do I still have it? -- and I guess I do," Grigsby said.
He flashed his trademark grin and waved the $101,000 check he'd just been handed as reporters interviewed him.

Shaw wins his 9th Tour Event.
(Photo: James Overstreet BASS)

"This is awesome," he said. "Yeah, baby! That's a lot of zeros."
Grigsby led for two days in the Harris event before he wrapped it up with 75 pounds, 4 ounces on Sunday. He won by 7-6 over Grant Goldbeck, who finished second with 67-14 after starting out in 97th place.
Stephen Browning was third with 66-9. Kevin VanDam finished fourth with 65-13, followed by his nephew, Jonathon VanDam, fifth with 56-13 in his first Elite Series event. Day One leader Pat Golden ended in sixth place with 55-5.
Shaw Grigsby (1st, 75-4)Grigsby's win was his first in a Bassmaster event in more than 10 years. He also won a 2012 Bassmaster Classic berth. It was the first one awarded under new rules that give each of the eight regular-season Elite winners an instant entry, bypassing the points system under which non-winners can still earn their way into the world championship.
"That to me is as big a thing as you can have," he said. "Winning is great, but making the Classic is like a load off. In the past, I've had some good years, but still I struggled to make the Classic, sweating it until the last second -- a lot like this tournament, sweating it until the last second -- so to make the Classic and know it's in the bag is like heaven, it's so nice."
Even though he led by more than 11 pounds going into Sunday's final round, Grigsby said he questioned all day whether he would pull off the win. His fears were not ungrounded. Any one big bedder could have altered the outcome on the final day.
"When Grant (Goldbeck) weighed in only 16 and he had the lead, I knew I had it, and I went 'ahhh.' It was a relaxing moment," Grigsby said.
He competed under one of the sport's most unusual circumstances. For four days, Grigsby and Goldbeck fished almost side by side in a small canal in a residential area between lakes Eustis and Griffin. They respected each other's water, and didn't jump a prior claim on a spawning bed the other had been working.
This is Grigsby's ninth B.A.S.S. victory.It was a new twist on bass competition, Grigsby noted.
"That was really fun. I guess in another sense, he was my main competition, so you could keep your eye on him, and as long as he doesn't bust 20 pounds, I'm doing OK -- and I did OK."
Like Goldbeck and a few others, Grigsby said, he found the canal off the Haines Creek during practice. It looked promising, he said, because of the hard bottom, quiet water thanks to low boat traffic, and deeper water adjacent to shallows.

Paradise for Shaw. His magic pond at the end of a canal.
(Photo: Steve Bowman BASS)

The first day's wind and rain created conditions that wrecked his chances to actually look at the spawners. Grigsby managed 14-7 out of the canal for 11th place.
"It was really brutal conditions with overcast skies and a lot of wind, so you couldn't see," Grigsby said. "I went back the second day and, oh my goodness, all the ones I'd seen were still there, and it was just a slugfest from there."
He slammed them Friday, that second day. His catch weighed in at 29 pounds, 8 ounces, for a lead of more than 8 pounds over Kevin VanDam. Grigsby held on handily on Day Three, even stretching his lead against Goldbeck to 11-10.
Grigsby's victory is well overdue; it's his first in over a decade.Grigsby didn't credit any one lure or setup for his fish. He tried anything he could think of to entice bites from the big females settling on the beds, from 8- to 25-pound Stren to casting and spinning reels. He pitched different baits to the spawners. His choices were mainly Strike King's Rage Craw, Rodent, and Ringworm lures.
"I just mixed it up, and it didn't matter what color. I did a lot of black-blue, Okeechobee craw, white -- white Rage Craw was really big for me. I just kept pitching, and going, and stopping, locking down on one and working it, hopefully catching it and going on.
"It was rare that I could just pull up, cast and catch one. I did that a couple times, but it was more like fish one bait, and he wouldn't pay attention, change to another one and he wouldn't pay attention, change again and maybe he'd tee off on it."
It was not a numbers game. He made repeated trips to the same beds for his five bass Sunday, five or six the first day, and seven each of two middle days.
"I didn't catch very many, I caught the right ones," he said.
For Goldbeck, Sunday's second-place finish was a victory. Second place is the highest he's ever finished in a Bassmaster tournament, but it was his zero-to-hero performance that thrilled him more.
He had ended Day One in 97th place with 1-1, but went back to the canal's spawners for another try, and sacked 27-1. That moved him up to 16th. Day Three he did it again, 22-15 for the runner-up spot and direct threat to Grigsby.
"You don't have to win them to get that feeling," he said. "It's an awesome feeling."

Bassmaster Elite Sunshine Showdown Day 3: Shaw Keeps Shining at Harris

Sunshine Showdown
Harris Chain, Tavares, FL, March 10-13, 2011
By Deb Johnson
Bassmaster.com (Press Release)

TAVARES, Fla. -- -- Shaw Grigsby sacked 18 pounds, 12 ounces Saturday for an even tighter hold on the lead in the Sunshine Showdown. But even his 11-10 cushion might not be enough on Florida's Harris Chain of Lakes, given its current crop of heavyweight spawners.
Three days of enticing fussy bedding bass to bite resulted in a hard-won 62-11 total over three days for Grigsby in the Bassmaster Elite Series season opener.
Most in the Elite field agree that big spawners are still out there, and any of the top 12 finalists competing Sunday could overtake Grigsby by landing a lunker and amassing a big bag. Or Grigsby's magic could evaporate. That happened the last time the Elite field competed on Harris. In that 2008 contest, Brian Snowden's 10-pound lead was not enough to fend off Mike McClelland, who won then with 59-2.
Already surpassing that after three days, Grigsby, a veteran pro from Gainesville, Fla., is the first to nod to the reality of what the Harris Chain can do to even a long lead.
"I'm very blessed right now in catching the right fish, and just holding on," he said. "I really am. I feel like I'm holding on by my toenails, my fingernails, and I'll have to grow them out by tomorrow. I'm not catching all that's in there, I'm just catching enough to hang on. It will be a tight one."

Shaw scores another on Day 3.
(Photo: James Overstreet BASS)

Shaw E. Grigsby (First, 62-11)Grigsby's success has been in a canal he's been sharing with at least two others, Grant Goldbeck and Pat Golden. The leader has found heartache there, too. Saturday he lost a bass that he estimated at 5 pounds.
"At the end of my day, she set up (on the bed), I threw in, and she ate it on the first cast. I got her to the boat, she went straight up in the air, and sent my bait flying, I don't know why. I lost her, and that's all there is to it," he said.
A win on Sunday would be the first in a Bassmaster event for Grigsby since 2000, when he won two to add to six previous Bassmaster wins. The Elite's first prize is $100,000. an instant qualification for the 2012 Bassmaster Classic, and the lead in the points race for the 2012 Toyota Tundra Bassmaster Angler of the Year title.
Going into Sunday's final round of the top 12, no pro near the leaderboard's top was ready to concede to Grigsby. That included Goldbeck, who moved up from 16th place into the runner-up spot with 51-1; Stephen Browning, with 50-6; Golden with 49-2; and the hottest angler on the Elite circuit, 2010 and 2011 Bassmaster Classic champ Kevin VanDam, who had 48-10 for fifth place.
Grant Goldbeck (Second, 51-1)Goldbeck brought in Saturday's biggest bag, 22-15, as well as the largest bass, a 7-4. It was another success on top of Friday's, when he sacked 27-1, but still he had regrets.
"I had a couple of 2-pounders in my bag today, and I left a few fish behind that are haunting me," he said.
One was a bedding bass he estimated at between 12 and 14.


Goldbeck is literally behind Shaw.
(Photo: James Overstreet BASS)

 "For four hours I tried and never got her," he said.
He bypassed a 7-pound male on the same bed, making the call that taking the smaller bass would spook the behemoth.
"That would have been really helpful going into tomorrow," he added. "Shaw's fished a great tournament, and he deserves to win, but it would be nice to give him a little scare."
Grigsby and Goldbeck both said they thought their shared water would hold up under another day of pressure from them and Golden, also in the same small area.
Third-place holder Browning, who said he was not fishing for bedding bass, said he changed his tactics.
"I changed lakes, but did the exact same thing," Browning said. "The lack of wind was wonderful. I was fishing a worm, extremely slow, and that's been the biggest key for me this week. Every fish I've caught this week has been on a soft-plastic worm on the bottom."