What is the primary cover or structure that the fish relate to?
Hengst: For years, all we fished were rocky ledges. There are of course a lot of flats and there are also rocky demolished buildings under water. When the lake was almost 60 feet low, that was the time to mark up your maps. We thought it would never come up again, but it did, and it flooded a lot of that new fertile cover. The other pattern that often works is the hardwoods. Sometimes they’ll be in the hardwoods and not on the rocks, or the other way around. BZ: What stage of the spawn will the fish be in when BASS arrives? Hengst: There will still be a few spawning, but for the most part they’ll be post-spawn. In my opinion, we have two spawns, sometimes three, each year. Those fish have acclimated themselves to the rising and falling of the water and where there’s a will, there’s a way. I’ve caught fish with bloody tails and fish with eggs in them in October. BZ: What kind of weight will it take to win over four days of competition? Hengst: In the post-spawn period, it will definitel
