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Phoenix, Ariz. –. The fishing world became very acquainted with FLW Tour pro Brett Hite in March. Hite won both the FLW Tour season opener at Florida’s Kissimmee Chain, and two weeks later, he won the FLW Series National Guard Western Division on the California Delta. His earnings for the month of March totaled $250,000, and he cashed both big paydays using the same lure, and largely the same program.
The 29-year-old Hite has a history of consistency since he began fishing pro level tournaments in 1998. As a Bassmaster Tour pro, Hite earned $146,879 and had 12 top 10 finishes, including a 2nd place finish at the 2002 Georgia Tour stop at Lake Seminole.
In 2003, he began entering FLW Stren Series tournaments on the West Coast in between tournaments on the Bassmaster Tour. In fact, he won the first Everstart (now Stren Series) tournament he entered on Lake Pleasant; his home Lake, in January.
However, at the start of 2007 he made the switch to the FLW Tour, and qualified for the 2007 Forrest Wood Cup, where he placed 15th. He then entered the final two events on the FLW Series Western Division where he finished 55th on the Columbia River, then finished 8th at the final event at Clear Lake; a tournament his FLW Tour traveling partner and roommate Tim Klinger won.
By finishing 8th at Clear Lake, Hite secured his 7th place positioning the FLW Series points, which qualified him to compete in the 2008 FLW Series East / West Fishoff. However, Clear Lake did more than qualify him for the 2008 Forrest Wood Cup; it also laid the first bricks in the path to his two $125,000 wins.
That October tournament was the first time Hite had gotten really comfortable with throwing the Phenix Vibrator jig, the Southern California manufacturer’s version of a Chatterbait. The Phenix lure was responsible for both of his early season wins.
Hite spent some time with The BASS ZONE as he was sitting behind the wheel of his Coppertone wrapped Chevy Suburban on the way to Alabama’s Lewis Smith Lake for the second stop on the FLW Tour. He talked to The BASS ZONE about his Florida and Delta wins, and the gear he used to close out his second and third FLW wins. He also talked about Lewis Smith Lake, and what makes Brett Hite tick as a tournament angler.
Learning the Vibrating Jig
“I never really threw the vibrating jig much before Clear Lake,” Hite said. “It was my secondary pattern at Clear Lake, but when my flipping pattern stopped producing, I turned to the vibrating jig and the bass were all over it.” The lure was responsible for much of his weight during that tournament, and it also proved to him how effective it was around grass.
Those discoveries gave him the trust in the program and most of the keys to unlock the door to his winning patterns in Florida and California. What he found was that he could rely on his 7’ 4” Performance Tackle B-Hite Special glass rod, 20-pound Sunline Sniper fluorocarbon line and a 6.1 retrieve reel.
“I started figuring out that my retrieve speed was dictated by how close the grass was to the surface of the water,” Hite revealed. “The shallower the grass, the faster I had to reel the bait, and for deeper grass, I had to slow down; the key was to keep in contact with the cover.”
While many anglers tend to use braided line for their vibrating jigs, Hite said he gets better results with his Sunline fluorocarbon. “Fluorocarbon is low stretch so I still get good hooksets with it, but I get more bites than I have with braid,” he said. “The whole thing works well because the combination between my glass rod and the line; it sets the hook and helps to hold them tight.”
The rod and line combination in partnership with the characteristics of the Phenix jig have helped him land more fish than most other vibrating jig anglers report. “The Phenix jig has a medium wire hook on it, which is different than other baits that have a heavy wire jig hook,” Hite reported. “I think it helps to hold the fish better because it doesn’t rip as big a hole in their mouths as they fight.”
The ironic thing about Hite’s honesty regarding his program is that he is not sponsored by Phenix. “I buy them off the shelf at a tackle store back home in Phoenix,” Hite said. “I don’t have any ties to Phenix Bait Company, I just like the bait.” As widely reported, his dark green pumpkin lure is paired with a Yamamoto Swim Senko or large Yamamoto Twin Tailed grub; both green pumpkin with the tails dipped chartreuse. “I’m trying to imitate a bluegill, sunfish or some other baitfish,” he said.
Fun in Florida
Hite’s competitive history with the Sunshine State had been mediocre, but he said that he gained more confidence in winning the season opener. However, his confidence came not from actually winning the tournament, but more from how he learned to apply what he learned over the years.
“Florida is all about water clarity and grass,” Hite said. “Where clear water and grass come together, there will be bass; the trick is to make them bite.” What he did to make them bite was retrieve the bait like he described above, but he would pop the bait up and give it an erratic action after contacting the grass.
He fished two primary areas and made short casts to the edges and lanes around the grass. “Things were best when there was a mix of vegetation and clear water,” Hite said. “It was like the dinner bell was going off, they were just there.”
He said that the conditions in Florida made it possible for him to win his first tour level event. “What helped me there were two things,” Hite said. “I was making more casts than most everyone else, and the flipping bite was a little off; those two factors helped me there.”
Details on the Delta
Like Florida, Hite found that contact with the grass was key to producing strikes, and again, he spent his time in two areas. However, instead of the large flat he was fishing in Kissimmee, Hite’s Delta area was a long canal that he would make two passes down each day. His area produced all but eight of the 106 pounds, 11 ounces of weight he won the tournament with; he caught an 8 pounder on another spot early in the tournament.
He chose his area because Frank’s Tract, the main community hole at the heart of the Delta had not been producing enough action to sustain a large tournament. “I’m used to get 35 to 50 bites a day in Franks,” he said. “I was only able to get 10 bites a day, so I went to the other area; which I had pretty much to myself.”
One other key was in being on his best water as the tide turned to incoming each day. “I only got one hour of the incoming tide on the first day,” he said. “But, as the tournament wore on, I got to fish more of the incoming, and my results improved.” The reason, he says is that a rising tide tends to lift and loosen the cover, and activate baitfish and bass. What he discovered was that his competitors were relying on the outgoing tide, and that their time with the outgoing condition was shrinking each day.
He said he had the majority of his daily weight early each day, “It really helped me to have an early bite,” he said. “There wasn’t a day on the Delta that I didn’t have 20 pounds by 11:00. On the third day, I had 26 pounds by 12:30 and just went practicing.”
The end result was he was able to overtake the field by catching quality fish each day, the smallest fish he weighed in was four pounds, and his biggest was eight pounds, but he had one each day.
On Lewis Smith Lake
Hite was in the field in as fellow Westerner Charlie Weyer won the Alabama Citgo Bassmaster Tour in February, 2004; he finished in 28th place. He said that he experienced things at that tournament that he had never seen before.
“We got some warm thunderstorms early in the practice and into the first day of the event,” Hite said. “The lake came up 14 feet overnight, and that was really weird.” After the storm front passed, the clearing skies resulted in some extremely cold temperatures.
He doesn’t expect to see the extremes that the field experienced in 2004, but he knows that there have been some storms moving through the area, and that the lake level is fairly high. “Smith Lake brings me back into my style of fishing,” Hite said. “Clear water and finesse fishing is what I started fishing on, and I am really comfortable in those kinds of conditions; I’m looking forward to it.”
More about Hite
Hite is known to practice mainly by himself with some help from his roommate Klinger from Boulder City, Nev. and their fellow Western pro Michael Bennett of Roseville, Calif. He said he prefers to work things out on his own, and he starts early and finishes late. “I like to be the first one on the water in the morning,” he said. “I take the extra time to rig my rods when my mind is fresh.”
He also practices long each afternoon. “I just want to find out where the fish live,” Hite said. “So, I’m on the water as late as possible each practice day looking for active fish; once I find them, I can figure out how to catch them.”
Hite prefers to stay away from hotels when traveling to tournaments, choosing instead to locate rental houses close to the water. “Tim, Michael and I usually try to find a place that is out of the way,” he said. “That way we never have to worry about our parking spaces being stolen, or whether we will have power to charge our batteries, and we don’t have to worry about noise at a hotel; it works better for us.”
The FLW Tour schedule moves to Lewis Smith Lake in Jasper, Ala. for its second stop April 3 – 6, and BASS ZONE .com will be there.
BASS ZONE’s on location coverage of the 2008 Wal Mart FLW Tour is presented by Jasper Engines and Transmissions. Tune in for our Live Chat, Game Day stories, and videos featuring Dan O’Sullivan and FLW Tour pro Chad Morgenthaler - Stay Tuned!
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