Sight Fishing with Pro Angler Jared Lintner and G.Loomis

Introduction: We received an invitation to head to Clear Lake with members of the G.Loomis team as well as prostaffer B.A.S.S. Angler Jared Lintner to fish the complete E6X Series lineup. We headed to the lake just as the fish were starting to move up to see just how Jared fished the new rods and what approach he used to target fish in transition.

Jared Lintner, B.A.S.S. Pro Angler, rigs up a giant tube in preparation for some sight fishing

Clear Lake is one of our favorite testing grounds as it offers such varied types of structure and has seemed to hold up well as a fishery, even when under pressure. Big bag limits and plenty of largemouth caught weighing 10 plus pounds has made Clear Lake the stuff of bass fishing legend, but those that regularly fish this lake know that it isn’t always exactly easy to catch quality fish here, and this was one of those times.

On the week that I met up with Bruce Holt, PR and Communications at G.Loomis, Jared was just finishing a tournament on the lake in which he and his co-angler took third place. Fishing had been tough and the only way that anyone was reportedly catching fish was sight fishing. If you couldn’t see them you couldn’t catch them, which is often the case as bass get into spawn mode and literally just have one thing on their minds.

Bruce fishes the slough with blind casts but nearly all of our fish would eventually come sight fishing

Bruce had prepared the complete spectrum of E6X rods for us to fish with and we got a download from Jared on how we would be fishing over the next two days. For this event we were also joined by Renaud Pelletier a seasoned tournament angler who would run the second boat as we looked to stress the E6X rods on whatever fish we could find. Jared prepared us for what would be two days of intense sight fishing, using a combination of techniques which included pitching Texas rigs, drop shotting, and even some unconventional swimbait fishing.

Jared points out a locked on fish to Bruce

The next morning when we launched I inspected some of Jared’s tournament used E6X rods and found that they had held up well, and though the cork had a few miles on them, there were no issues that would have altered performance. Jared uses a variety of G.Loomis rods on tour, picking rods from various lines that match up with exactly how he likes to approach various applications. Our mission today was to find the fish that were locked onto beds and catch them.

We had the opportunity to fish the complete assortment of E6X rods

While there are some anglers that have issues with bed fishing as it disturbs the bass it is undeniable that the technique is productive when you are looking to catch big fish. Jared and Bruce were both adamant that if we caught any fish they were put right back into the same location quickly.

Renaud carefully positions the boat to target a fish bedded up near the tules

The first thing we did was head down the shoreline, looking for beds which usually were indicated by dark patchy areas or in some cases patterns that had brightly exposed rocks and shells which fish had polished off as they built their nests.

Bruce lands a fish with the Jackall Gantarel swimbait