Key To Winning Bassmaster Northern Open On The James Is To Match Lure Selection To Primary Forage
The James River holds the potential to win a bass tournament from the rapids in Richmond all the way down to where the river pours into the salt waters of Chesapeake Bay, said Bassmaster Elite Pro Michael Iaconelli who has finished in the top 5 in the last two Bassmaster Northern Opens held on the river.
“I’ve got some familiarity with the river from fishing there prior and it’s a tidal river like the Potomac, the Chesapeake and the Hudson rivers, so there are a lot of parallels with East Coast tidal river fishing and that gives me an awful lot of confidence when I go down there,” said Iaconelli who finished 4th in the 2011 Bassmaster Northern Open on the James and 3rd in the 2013 Northern Open.
“The entire river is viable and it is diverse and the other thing about that river is that it is so unique,” said the Pittsgrove, N.J., angler as he prepared for the 2015 Northern Open on the James which will be held June 9-11. “A lot of rivers have one predominant form of cover, but the James is really diverse. You can fish everything from rocks to man-made structure like pilings and seawalls, wood in the form of trees and brush, and then the vegetation in some of the tributaries.”
That diversity, he said, makes it an easy river to fish because it spreads the anglers out since they have so many options.
The key, then, he said, is making the right lure selection.
“Lure selection is something we do everywhere, but on tidal rivers like the James it is even more important. You have to match the hatch. My lure selection is going to be placed on matching the forage the fish are feeding on.”
And the forage in the James is richly diverse, he said, much moreso than in an inland impoundment because the river connects to the ocean.
“On a Southern reservoir like Lake Murray, for instance, you know the forage base is going to be blueback herring, shad and bluegills. On the James it is so much bigger. You have shad, bluegills, crawfish, but because the lower tributaries are ocean-bound you’ve got other forage,” he said.
“Little 3- to 5-inch eels are a big forage base this time of year, as are blue crabs. Bass love small 2- to 3-inch blue crabs. You find all that forage you don’t see in freshwater, like flathead minnows and small needlefish. All that is going to dictate my bait selection.”
Iaconelli, who counts the 2003 Bassmaster Classic on the Louisiana Delta among his 8 B.A.S.S. wins, has 60 top 10 finishes in his pro career and has earned almost $2.3 million in prize money in B.A.S.S. tournaments.
He led the Bassmaster Elite tournament on Lake Guntersville for three days before an unfortunate final day when he caught only one bass and finished 12th. He was 6th in the Bassmaster Classic on Lake Hartwell in February.
As for the Northern Open on the James, Iaconelli said the weights probably will not be as good next week as they have been for the last few months in tournaments.
“There have been some major tournaments on the river and it a big FLW event two or three weeks ago there were some phenomenal weights, a lot of 16- to 18-pound bags brought in. I think we will see some of those bags but we are switching into a summertime pattern now and fishing will be a little tougher,” he said.
“I think it will take 15 to 16 pounds a day to win it and for an East Coast tidal fishery that is a really good average for mid-July.”
Bassmaster Northern Open
Jul 9-11, 2015
James River
