Stretching your own horizons

They are getting increasingly rare, but innovations still do happen in fishing.

Last week’s Bassmaster Elite tournament on Lake Erie out of Buffalo, N.Y., proved we don’t have all of the possibilities mastered when it comes to finding and catching fish.

The tournament was won by Kota Kiriyama, a native of Japan who moved here years ago to pursue his dream of professional bass fishing. He has enjoyed success, but everything came together last weekend as he easily thumped more than 100 of the world’s greatest bass anglers.

And he did it by doing what nobody — or darn few, anyway — have ever done before.

Kiriyama’s winning tactics produced nearly 100 pounds of smallmouth bass over the four-day run of the tournament. He weighed in five-bass limits that topped 25 pounds each of the last two days.

His winning technique was so much different than the other Elite competitors that it is almost a sure-fire guarantee Kiriyama’s tactics will find their way into the smallmouth fishing that we northeastern Ohioans enjoy on our stretch of Lake Erie.

He discovered a virtually unmolested population of smallmouth bass more than 60 miles west of Buffalo and fished for them with tactics that most anglers experienced on Lake Erie wouldn’t have considered.

Kiriyama fished waters as deep as 90 feet — far greater than the typical 15 to 30 feet that Erie veterans are accustomed to working. He watched his sonar screen to show great schools of baitfish, and when he located them, he shut down the engine and went to work.

Conventional Lake Erie smallmouth bass tactics would have had him dragging or drop-shotting bottom structure — humps, ledges or rock piles. At the depths Kiriyama was fishing, the bottom was almost irrelevant.

He proved smallmouth bass can thrive in great numbers without their fins touching the bottom. It’s a safe bet the bass he located had seen darn few lures, and those who had probably were more accustomed to walleye and steelhead trollers’ fast-moving spoons and plugs.

Once Kiriyama located the bait schools, he hovered over them with his electric motor and dropped soft plastics that resembled the forage fish. The predatory smallies were holding just under the baitfish, and Kiriyama could see his lures falling toward them on the graph mounted to his front deck.

He combined his yen for exploring unknown water, his skills at finessing bites and his knowledge of sonar and GPS to earn a $100,000 paycheck and a place of honor among the winners of the most prestigious bass tournament circuit in the world.

What’s more, however, is the fact that Kiriyama opened a new chapter in the book of great developments in fishing tactics. I wouldn’t be surprised if his name becomes a verb — as in “I Kiriyamaed today and filled the boat with smallies.”

Local anglers would be well advised to stretch their own horizons. It’s pretty tempting, when the fish are cooperating, to stay close to the traditional spots in the 15- to 30-foot range and pick off our share of bass.

But as Erie becomes increasingly popular among those who recognize it as home of the world’s best smallmouth bass fishing, the fish are getting warier and tougher to trick.

So next time you get the opportunity, go with the goal to try to Kiriyama Erie’s smallmouths. You may just find that special place.

jwwollitz@aol.com