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By Craig Lamb - Between them are 718 tournaments and 39 years of competition on the Bassmaster tours. After nearly four decades you might think Paul Elias and Shaw Grigsby are slowing down as they near the end of their careers as full-time pros. Use the age card as excuses to go out late, come in early during practice at the Bassmaster Elite Series.

Not so and not even close.

Without fail the first two boats launched on any given morning of competition belong to Elias, 67 years old, and Grigsby, age 62. Arriving on average 90 minutes before the first boat leaves the dock defines why the two stalwarts of the game remain competitive. 

“What a great sport, one that we can just continue enjoying, while remaining competitive,” said Grigsby, bearing his usual smile, as he sipped a cup of coffee. 

“It’s all I’ve ever known, just part of who I am and always will be,” added Elias, the softer spoken of the two running mates. “I still enjoy it now just as much as when I started.”

That was a long time ago. Elias joined the tour in 1979 and Grigsby came along three years later. Both enjoyed early success, Elias winning the 1982 Bassmaster Classic and both anglers racking up 16 appearances in the world championship. Grigsby has $2.1 million in earnings and Elias has $1.1 million. Any doubt either has backed off the throttle was erased when Elias won an Elite Series event in 2008, or 26 years after his Classic victory. Full Story

OLATHE, Kan.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Garmin International, Inc., a unit of Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ:GRMN), today announced it earned the coveted “Best of Show” award for its new Panoptix LiveScope™ at the world’s largest sportfishing trade show, the International Convention of Allied Sportfishing Trades (ICAST), presented by the American Sportfishing Association (ASA) and held last week in Orlando, Fla. Prior to being selected as the Best of Show, Panoptix LiveScope was first voted by media and buyers in attendance as the “Best Electronics” in the ICAST New Product Showcase where 974 products were entered by 331 companies, all vying for the ICAST 2018 Best of Show award.

“To not only win the ICAST Best Electronics award, but the Best of Show award, too – it’s an honor we’re incredibly proud of,” said Dan Bartel, Garmin vice president of global consumer sales. “Panoptix LiveScope delivers the best of both scanning and live sonar technologies and there’s nothing out there even close to it. These awards solidify our commitment to giving anglers and mariners the most innovative technology on the water, and they further strengthen our desire to be the top marine electronics brand in the world.”

Panoptix LiveScope is a live scanning sonar that gives anglers higher resolution and easier-to-interpret images of structure, bait and fish swimming below and around the boat than ever before. Garmin’s revolutionary Panoptix™ all-seeing sonar technology was the first to deliver live sonar images in real-time – forwards, backwards, sideways and below the boat – even while stationary. Now, thanks to the active scanning capabilities of Panoptix LiveScope, anglers can see images and movement so clear and precise that it’s even possible to distinguish between species of fish. See Panoptix LiveScope in action here.

“Panoptix changed the electronics game a couple of years ago,” said Jason Christie, Bassmaster Elite Series and Garmin pro. “Now, LiveScope is even taking it to the next level. The cool thing about it is the simplicity of it. What you see is what is there. The only picture that could be better is if you dive into the water with goggles, and I’m not sure that’s really even better.” Full Story

Pickwick Lake is a great ledge lake. Although you primarily will be fishing for and catching largemouths there in June, when you get a strike, you don’t know what you’ll reel in, because all types of fish and baitfish will be running those ledges. All of the Tennessee River lakes are extremely fertile and home to an abundance of baitfish. During June, the ledges are the structure you can bet on to find and catch bass.

We’ll fish these Pickwick secondary ledges — not the river ledges — many different ways. In June, bass will be holding on the first ledges you come to between the river-channel ledge toward the bank. The weather is warming, but it’s not quite enough to move bass out to the deep-water river ledges just yet. 

We’ll also fish secondary points and bars. This time of the year, I’ve found the best Pickwick bassing to be between Second Creek and the Natchez Trace. This area has many ledges and bars with underwater creeks cutting through them. Generally, you’ll see some grass starting to grow on some of these bars in June. My favorite two June places to fish at Pickwick are mussel-shell bars on these secondary ledges and the ends of those bars. 

Crank ‘em up

I’ll start off with Mann’s 15+ and 20+ crankbaits in gray ghost or brown back/chartreuse colors. Read Full Story

Maynor Creek, a 500-acre lake near Waynesboro, is a Pat Harrison Waterway District lake. One of the older lakes in that group, Maynor Creek had issues with its dam almost 10 years ago. The state pulled the water level down to repair the dam. 

While the water was down, a tremendous amount of grass and brush grew up from the bottom of the lake. Once the lake level rose back to a normal level, that growth provided extra cover for spawning bass and young bass. Maynor Creek is in very good condition and is producing some 3- to 5-pound bass, as well as crappie and bluegills. You may catch a postspawn bass at Maynor Creek that weighs 7 pounds or more. 

Early morning

From just at daylight until about an hour after, I’ll be fishing the lake’s causeway. A small bridge there is at a place where the lake necks down, and the bass have to pass through that area to reach the northern end of the lake. The causeway and the bridge create a funnel for baitfish and bass to move back and forth from one end of the lake to the other. At daylight, you’ll usually see plenty of bass action in that area, and perhaps even schooling bass. 

I’ll be fishing this region with a white, ¼-ounce buzzbait and a shad-colored Zara Spook. To fish the buzzbait, I’ll use a 7-foot-2, medium-heavy Shimano Expride rod and a Curado 200 XG reel with 23-pound test White Peacock fluorocarbon. I’ll use a 6-foot-10 medium-heavy Expride rod with the same reel with 30-pound bass braid and a 20-pound fluorocarbon leader to fish the Spook. I’ll cast both lures from the points of the causeway bridge down the road embankment to about 50 yards on either side of the bridge and on both ends. Read Full Story

April is a post-spawn bass month at Bogue Homa. The females will be coming off the bed, and they’ll want to feed up to help recover from the spawn. But they will still will be holding fairly close to the spawning area in shallow water.

Ever since the restructuring of Bogue Homa 10 years ago, the lake has held numbers of big, healthy bass. To successfully fish at Bogue Homa, remember that weekend anglers know the big-bass potential of this lake. So your best opportunity to catch bass there is to fish during the week. 

Early morning

• Two topwater baits. In April, I like to start off fishing topwater baits early in the morning around the big, underwater, cypress stumps that line the ditches running through the flats on Bogue Homa. My favorites in April are the Zara Spook and the Whopper Plopper. The stumps will be about 1 to 1½ feet under the surface and can be hard to see at first light. I have a number of them marked on my Garmin GPS, but the electronics tool I’ll primarily be using is my Garmin Panoptix. Read Full Story

I enjoy fishing Bay Springs Lake  in March, because I like catching largemouth, spotted and smallmouth bass on the same lake, often in the same places and sometimes on the same lure. 

With bass in a prespawn mode and moving shallow, I depend heavily on my Garmin Panoptix depth finder to actually see the bass and learn whether they’re suspended or moving. I can spot schools of baitfish 60 to 80 feet off the bank and any bass related to those schools. 

Two tactics work best this month for bass. Early in March, we’ll be fishing a suspended jerkbait, since the water is still cold, and the bass will be schooled up, lethargic and moving toward spawning areas. From mid-March until the end of the month, I’ll be fishing a Carolina rig and a Mann’s C4 square-bill crankbait.

Early March tips 

I’ve found a bait like a Suspending Rogue in the Saturday Night Special color — a clear body with some purple and chartreuse on its back — to be productive in 42- to 48-degree water. I’ve always been able to catch fish on one in places and times when bass needed a suspending bait. Full Story Here

I think February is the best month of the year to fish Ross Barnett Reservoir for bass, which are in the prespawn mode and moving shallow. In many sections of the country — and Mississippi — you will often be fishing for bass in deep water in February, but on Ross Barnett, you’ll catch most of your fish in water 3 feet deep or less.

This time of the year also is when bass like to get into the lily pad stems, unless a severe cold front arrives. But on those very cold February days, I’ll be fishing the rocks. Basically those are the two February patterns for Ross Barnett.

Pad stems, reeds 

First, fish the lily pad stems and the reeds with a black/chartreuse or a crayfish color Baby 1-Minus crankbait on a medium-heavy Shimano Zodias baitcasting rod, alternating casts between the two colors. I’ll be fishing a Shimano Curado 200, a 6.2-to-1 retrieve-ratio reel, spooled with 23-pound White Peacock fluorocarbon. I’ll run that Baby 1-Minus with a fairly fast retrieve into the lily pad stems and on top of the scattered patches of coontail moss that comes up from the bottom but doesn’t reach the surface in the stems. Generally, I get my bites when the lure hits the stems and bounces off.

The most-productive part of the lake to fish for bass is from the Highway 43 bridge south on the east side of the lake. Even in February’s shallow water, you can catch several bass weighing from 4 to 7 pounds each, since the females are full of roe. Read Full Story