The 654 Challenge | Episode 2 (ft HellaBass)

(upbeat music) - All right guys, we're back with another 6-5-4 from Omnia. This time we got our guest from Hellabass, Rich Lindgren. - It's up everybody. Good morning, excited to do this. - We got a warm day here. It's supposed to be in the 90s, hardly any wind. It's sticky already and the sun is just coming up. So we're getting an early start to it. We've got a little change in the format this time instead of getting six specific baits that we were given. This time we're gonna be selecting from six techniques and then we get to choose our baits. So to determine the techniques that we have to fish with today, we're gonna play a little game of 6-5-4 in honor of the name of the show and see where we get. - And before we roll, is there anything? So we've got glide bait. We've got a drop shot. We've got the EverPopular Urchin, Texas Frag, Jig, and Topwater. So before we roll, Rich, is there anything in here you do not want? - Well, you know, so we're summertime fishing. We're definitely like summer, summer. - It's middle, dead, middle, summer. - It's middle of July and I haven't been on the slakin forever. So don't know a ton about it. So let's say the one that I would, in the conditions being no wind, hot. - Maybe I don't, I don't know if I really want to topwater. - Interesting, interesting. So if it came down to me, I don't have confidence with glides yet. I just don't fish 'em enough. A lot of toothy critters around here, I get nervous about throwing those high dollar stuff, but so I just don't have the confidence in a glide. I know it probably will catch 'em out here, but. - Yeah, it's probably not ideal glide conditions today either, and I guess I don't really, I don't even know how big the bass are in this lake. So that's probably, I mean, (clears throat) Yeah, there's always the excitement behind the glide, but I think the two trouble hook lures are probably the biggest wall cards in this lineup. - I think so. - The other four are pretty safe bets, I think. - I would agree with that. All right, well it's roll to start it off here. (bell ringing) So the deal is you try and roll, you roll the dice, you roll five dice. You gotta get a six, a five, and a four, and then you get to count whatever the other two dice are. So right now I've got a four. So I'm gonna roll these again, see if I can get higher than a four. (bell ringing) Seven. Right smack in the middle. But I'll stick with a seven, I'll stick with a seven. So again, you roll all five dice and try and get a six, five, four to start. So the higher, the higher gets to pick, you got one, yeah. - Okay. - All right, so no six, you got to roll all them again. (bell ringing) - And you get three rolls, I should. - Three rolls. - Yeah, six. So we'll put that one over here. So now you gotta get a five, four. - Okay. - So you have to get them in order. - Yep. There's a five, but not a four. - But no four, no quality. - So you just get, you get to pick. - I get to pick. All right. I gotta, I feel kind of weird picking it, but I'm gonna pick a drop shot to start. It's just been my confidence bait this year. I know it'll catch at least some fish. I don't know if it'll get the big ones, but it'll catch fish. - It just shows you the chase with the kind of guy that lays up. (laughing) - So do I get second pick or no? - Now you get to pick. - All right, I'm, I'm, I'm going big, go home. I'm gonna take the urgent, the urgent. All right, pick two, pick two. I'm gonna go with a jig. - Yeah. - I can't pass up on a jig. - My head, that was a tough, that would have been one A1B for me. So I guess I'll take the Texas rig to make sure I got something safe. (laughing) - And I'm gonna go with top water, then. - Head. - So I get to be the man, and the chase is gonna throw the drop shot. So I still got a jig. I can get the big stick out. I'm all right. So we got our techniques. These aren't the exact baits. We got our techniques. I've got a jig that I'm gonna pick out. A top water, I'm gonna pick out. And some sort of a drop shot, I'm gonna rig up. And then Rich is gonna tie on a glide. - Yeah, I might, I got one tied on. I might borrow chases, try this out. I haven't got to throw the chop block much. So I'm probably gonna go a little heavier, turn my Texas rig and something I can flip. And then I got a whole box of arsenal of morning stars to rig up and play around with today. So the heavier weights, probably a good idea. Again, dead of summer, the weeds are thick. Millfoils growing up. So we're gonna need something heavy to get down there. All right, we got the boat wet. We're just about to take off from the ramp here. I got my baits tied on. So I'll show you what I got going here. So my first selection was the drop shot. Again, this is just kind of, especially this year, this has been my confidence bait. It just puts fish in the boat. Tied on there. I got a little robo worm in tequila sunrise. So that is gonna be my choice for today. Got this rigged up on a G-Lumus GLX. It's their drop shot series 863. So this is a seven foot two. They say it's a medium heavy. But it's got a super soft tip to it. Great drop shot rod. Still has the backbone to get them out of the weeds. So I have loved this rod ever since they came out with it. My second choice was a jig. Probably my favorite bait to throw almost all time of the year. It just seems to catch them all the time. Traditional black and blue. That is an old stealth fighter jig. If you can still get your hands on them somewhere. And matched up with that, I've got a rage bait, strike king rage bait, rage chunk. Half ounce jig, great all around jig. I should be able to flip into some stuff. I can still pitch docks if rich wants to get up shallow. So it'll be a good all around choice, I think. I've got that rigged up on a G-Lumus NRX Plus 893 JWR. This is probably one of my favorite all around rods. It's long. So it's not your best docks skipping rod. But the leverage you get on it from those extra couple inches, perfect for pulling them out of the weeds. Lastly, I don't even know if I'm going to get to toss this, but I kind of hope I do. My top water. We've got an evergreen shower blow. Super popular walking bait, spit some water with that cup lip, fabulous bait. Hopefully I can get a few bites on it, but there's my lineup. I got this rigged up on a Dobbins X to C. And this is the 610. So this is a medium power, 610, fantastic top water rod. All right, so my three baits, number one here. Got an urchin style bait. This is an arsenal morning star, 20 millimeter, and the OG GP. I got it rigged on a double hook, right? Yugi too hot. And I like the shrooms weights from Z-Man. This is a 10-thounce for my weight. They just really stay in the bait. They keep it compact, nothing. So I can use this out deep kind of on the weed edges, blue-gill beds, things like that, twitch night mid column. And also, if we go up shallow and docks, this is going to be what I probably end up using. So that'll be exciting. This is a really good bait for me this year. For the rod and reel, I'm using 20 pound straight flora on the urchin and a Dobbins 734 power. You can use just about any series they have and they're 734, which is a really good urchin run. For my Texas rig, I'm going to go a little heavier. I'm going to go, but it looks like to be maybe a half, three core ounce tungsten. We've got a jungle hook, three out here from owner. And Texas straight here with a big bites tube claw. And if it gets after, we're going straight bulk pack here in the 1099 color. So came prepared with any water color. You get half green pumpkin, half black and blue, pretty much catches fish everywhere. And then for the big bait, the glide. And if this plays, Chase will be in trouble here. We got the Galapagos 240 here in Carpe Diem color. And I got that on a Dobbins 795 swim bait rod, 25 pound straight floral. And for the Texas rig, we're going straight braid, 50 pound, ecstasy, 756, straight, hammer stick, with a zillion on it. So I'll be excited if I can catch a bunch on this one today. All right, we just pulled up to our first spot. We just got out here. I'm taking control of the trolling motor to start the deal. So to start, I ended up with the top water. I picked a bank that is going to have hopefully a little shade on it for a little bit. And I'm going to try and get a top water bite to start this deal off. If I'm going to get a bite on top water, I think it's probably going to happen pretty early. So I'm going to start there. Nothing happens. We'll move our way out to the edge of the weed line. See what we go. Ready to start? Yeah. I'm going to give the glide a shot and follow up this morning. And if it doesn't happen, I'll start flipping behind the top water. God, you really are making me feel like I'm laying up here. I'm going with the glide right off the bat. Just watching you launch that glide out. I don't think he's-- Is it a one pound minimum or a 12-inch minimum? Yeah. This is enough minimum. I'm not even going to put this one on the scale. I am cut. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing, though. What do you think? Fish on the first cast of that good luck or bad luck. Can't catch them every cast if you don't catch them the first cast. Well, there you go. I haven't heard that one before. Just number one. Small enough, it's not going on the scale. Rusty crayfish or some kind of invasive crayfish got in there, and they've like really knocked the grass back big time. Really? Well, that was a little better one. Yeah, but we might be scale-worthy. Let's get started here. We'll take that one. On the old shower blow, 2.17. 2 pounder. Yeah. Big fish of 6'5" 4" or so far. Can only go up from there, right? Classic, man. All right, so we just pulled up to our second spot. We tried up shallow to start. Caught a couple fish right away on top of waters, but they're pretty small. This lake really has only one significant or obvious hump to it. So I figured, let's get there. Let's see if the fish are piled up. They should be stacked up here, mid-summer patterns, deep mid lake, hampos and weeds. So let's see if they're here. On. Tight. We all put them saying tiny. He's bigger than my top. Thank you for the one you weigh the other way. Yep. All right, number two. All right, we just got number two out on the deeper hump with the drop shot. Was I supposed to bring my own scale? No, we could make it work. I just realized I didn't. 1-8-7. Not quite two pounds. Classic drop shot fish. We're on the board. On the board. I'm pretty sure that's bigger than Brian Rees-Gaff-Crotton. So I'm just throwing that out there, Brian. 1-86. Pretty much the same size as Chase's second fish, so. Texas rig, big bites, tube craw. Around the board. Well, does it pain? It's just a trophy, isn't it? Not big fish pays, and then that's what I thought, too. You liked that jig? You made a chance. There's another one over here. Down the hatch. Rich is there. We're on them. I'll start throwing them in the bottom of the boat way and later. Cheers. 2.21. New record. Monster. There's new 6.54 record. It's what we're all about, breaking records. 2.03.201. All right, so I got two fish for basically four pounds, and Chase's got three fish for-- Basically seven. Seven? Or seven? Like six? Six, seven. Six, seven. Oh, dang it. That's not good. And it's good for me, but not good for you. I blew it. All right, well, we are off of this little humpback. Not quite the dinks that you described. No, with your move here, you got-- I got, what, 40 minutes left? I'm going to go to this little bank with a point on it here. Fish a couple of humps just outside here. Caught some fish on the first one. It had some great vegetation on it. We moved back to this little hump here, and kind of see it on the screen. And worked our way around that. That did not have hardly any grass on top of it at all. And all we got were a couple pike. So we're going to move a little closer to the bank. There's a great drop off of a little point coming up up here, and we'll see if anything's on the top of it. I don't want. He's weighing this one. No, I won't. No? Oh, he's-- Actually, you know what? What do we-- do we have a pound limit? I don't know. I feel like we should. Yeah, I can't put that on there. Not even three quarters of a pound. I guess I got some real stunted lakes up there. Like-- Oh, urchin! Gulse it. Boom! Nice. Hats off to the baby drop shot fish that ate Chase's little kink worm. And I was able to get 30 seconds of boat control. And we got the biggest fish in the bank. On the Arsenal Morningstar. I'll just keep catching these little fish. Yep. All right, let's get the good third fish here. 292. Almost like three, y'all. I think we've got a new leader in the club. I was a three fish right now. Uh-oh. One big bite will do that. Might be a clue what you're going to see in my half. [MUSIC PLAYING] Nope. Oh, god. Oh, it is. These are long. You got it in. Got number four. Got her. I thought that was a norther coming up. It looks so long. All right, not a bad one. I'll take it. This should put me back in the lead. Oh, my biggest of the day. 269. That's quite as big as Rich's big one, though. But I'll take it on the jig. Jigs for pigs. All right, I'm ready to take over. I'm going to take the tube crawl and the urchin. And we're going to go run some bank, look for some shallow grass clumps, look for some docks. See if we can get a couple big fish. My time up at the twirling motor is done. I kind of feel like I failed a little bit. I got one right at the last second. They're the put me back in the lead. I got my four fish. But I really didn't get anything big. And now you got control. So we'll see what happens. At least I got my jig. I got my top water. I'm ready for some shallow water stuff. So let's see if we can make it happen. I saw that one. That was awesome. Oh my god. That was one of the coolest bites I've ever had. That was so cool. Flipped it into the pads and I could see them go into the pads and pick it up. Oh yeah. 3.23. Big fish of the day. 3.23. Skinny guy. Long but skinny. But gosh, that was a cool bite. Again, I threw it right into the pads and just-- oh, the sun saw this flash go right in there. And spunked. Oh, I finally had a bite and I blew it. [LAUGHTER] I don't think he's going to bite again. I think I spun him pretty hard out because he was a giant. Number four. Number four. That was harder than I thought it was going to be to catch number four, but at least we kind of limited. I mean, Brian, he's got never caught that. Fun fish. There's that. 1.95. You need a big one. It's really going to come down to-- if anybody there wants to get a big bite here at the end, it's like 10 pounds to 9 pounds right now, basically. Monkey grass. Did you get it? Oh my god, no. Get in here! Let's go! That is awesome. I don't know if that's the one I saw, but that is the one we needed. That's the one. 3.79, I'm going to see some actually stuff for the wait. I think we got a new leader in the clubhouse just under an hour to go. We got a tire up in there. Oh, now you got a big one. Oh! [LAUGHTER] No! They might have been the one I saw. 3.43, knocking out at 2.17. No way! That's something crazy about her. I can't quit that big one. These might have a little bit. Cheers again. Oh, is yours? 3.5. 3.5, just under. You got a 2.01. You got to get rid of-- Probably help there. I think Chase is back in the lead a little bit. Helped to tell that we don't have our totals. We're going to have to add it up at the end, to make it interesting. I still have it. We both have it, yeah. You got big fish. Yeah, but I have a small one, too. 20 minutes. 20 minutes. All right, we just pulled out. We had five hours of fishing to get our four biggest fish for each of us. Six baits? Six? Five hours? Four fish each. Six baits? Split between the two of us, so three apiece. Got bait fish on five of the six. The only one we didn't get bit on today was the glide, which we talked like this was high-risk high reward. Wasn't ideal conditions for the glide. No, we have one follow. Five of the other rides that we were throwing, all caught fish. I'll break down. Really, it came down to one for me. I did catch a couple right away on the shower blow. Got a few on the drop shot, but they were all pretty small. So everything that basically ended up on the scale today for me came on a little black and blue, half-balanced flipping jig. Flip-intergrass jig. This one, again, was a stealth fighter. I'm pretty sure any black and blue jig would have gotten bit out there today. But had that paired with a little tiny rage chunk from strike king, great action on that thing. Let it bake in the sun a little bit to give it a little more softness and a little more flutter. But yeah, that's mainly what I caught all my fish on today that ended up counting. And caught them deep, caught them shallow. My two biggest ones came up shallow. And then my other two are out on that deep hump, flipping kind of deep grass, deep weed edges, so. For me, I got one, my second biggest fish on the Arsenal Morningstar, which keyed us in on some of the bigger bites we got, shallow, under a pontoon. Ended up not being efficient enough for covering the water. I needed in the second half. So I kind of locked the Texas rig or the tube crown. My tungsten flipping weight, a straight-shank, three-odd hook. And caught quite a few fish and pretty much called almost everything in my bag, except for that Morningstar fish. I mean, that's where the bulk bag. You can get these bulk, the 25 packs at Omniar, a great deal for these, and they catch fish all over. And it came down to just a couple tents between us. I knew it was going to be close. I knew it was going to be close. All right, we ready for the tallies here? I'm ready for the-- I don't know the totals yet. All right, so I brought them up on the bubble scale here. So I had a 2.1, a 2.39, a 2.92. And the biggest fish of the day, a 3.79, for 11.2 pounds for four fish. So 11.2, all right? So just under 3 pound average, 2.3 quarters, or something like that. That was higher than I was expecting. Now I'm a little nervous. I don't know if I've got 11. Chase, I had a 2.21, a 2.69, a 3.23, and then a 3.43. For 11.56, so only 3.6 pounds. So just over a quarter pounds, Chase got the nod today. So he's undefeated. Undefeated, 2.0. That was a great round, though. Again, where especially when it came down to that little flurry on that one dock, you got that big one, and I saw that head come up a single boy. Yeah, absolutely. I took the lead, and basically, as I was re-rigging, you took the lead back. Yes, you got that one under the dock, and you made the mistake of saying, "I don't think that was the one I saw." And as soon as I heard that, my ears just rung, and I had to get in there. So I threw one cast in, and I got lucky, and got that other 3 pounder. Yeah, so it wasn't fast and furious in the afternoon, but we ended up getting three of our four biggest fish in the afternoon session, fish in shallow. Yep, so it wasn't fast and furious, but that was the right call for the bigger bites, and they came right down to the water. So we talked about it a little bit when we were out there, but we were limited to the three baits we chose before even putting the boat in the water. What would you have tied on knowing what you know now? Yeah, I mean, I would have loved to also had a jig in my arsenal to be able to flip and swim. You were able to be very efficient in the second half with that. But I would, you know, the conditions, and after seeing the body of water, I absolutely would have loved to have a hollow body frog over this, or maybe even like a flap and frog, or something like that. You know, to cover water and fish, there was a lot of pads, a lot of weeds that we could only flip, and we'd get occasional bites, but like I think if we could have frog or covered them more efficiently, we probably would have got a few more decent bites that way. I agree. I would have loved to have had a frog as well. There were a lot more lily pads than I was expecting, with the water clarity and everything. I just didn't think there would be that many fishable pads, and that ended up being kind of one of the big players was the shallow water bite. So, wish I had a frog, I actually wish I would have had probably a green pumpkin, and maybe also a heavier jig. The half ounce was able to get me to where I needed to be most of the time, but I think it would have been a little bit more efficient and probably been able to punch a few more of those mats and stuff. So you had almost been like to alternate between a light and a heavy jig. Yep. Yep. And then if I really was trying to catch more numbers, I would have loved to have played with a net rig a little bit out there too. I think that probably could have caught fish, but. Yeah, great show. Our great round of 654. That's one yet for fish catches and size of fish, and I think more great things to come. Yeah. So again, this was summer patterns. We're exactly right smack in the middle of July. It's hot. And these are kind of what I go to for my summer-- Do you want-- should we link the Fish and Reap-- I'm the Fish and Reaport down in the video description for people to know. We can make a report. We can definitely make a report. So if you're curious where this was, there will be a lake report down in the description, and you can check it out. Check it out. [MUSIC PLAYING]