Top 5 Bass Fishing Lessons from Greg Hackney at the Bassmaster Classic

I’m amazed at the good fortune that put me in Bassmaster legend Greg Hackney’s boat, one-on-one for a competition day during the Bassmaster Classic. Find out what I learned from the legend about strategy, instincts, bass fishing and life.

How did I get here? Spending a full day with Greg Hackney during the Bassmaster Classic taught me some valuable lessons on bass behavior, fishing instincts, and proven techniques that still win tournaments. / Kurt Mazurek

Greg Hackney is one of the all-time greats in the sport of professional bass fishing. He’s beloved by fans for his combination of southern charm, playful demeanor and winning track record. And he’s respected by competitors because he’s an absolute crusher who has proven he’s a threat to win on any body of water on any given day.

What I learned from eight hours in his boat during Day 2 of the Bassmaster Classic is just how many solid, tested, well-thought-out nuggets of wisdom he shares in casual conversation. And these gems never come with an air of superiority or to convince anyone to change their mind. They’re just kind of matter of fact and do with them what you will. I quickly decided to start collecting them—jotting them down in the notes on my phone.

Some were specifically fishing related, but others were just good life advice that may also apply to good fishing. Following are a few of my favorites.

Greg Hackney in the pre-dawn hours tying on a lure he'll use later that day in the Bassmaster Classic. / Kurt Mazurek

1.) "I Make a Living, by Making Educated Guesses"

It was a clever little quip, but it really is a profound way to sum up the career of a professional fisherman, and not just a bass tournament fisherman. To catch your next fish most efficiently, consider all of the information you’ve learned, whether through reading or watching or personal experience, and apply the most likely, proven approach to the current moment’s conditions. It’s not a lucky guess, it’s an educated guess. Big difference.

2.) Think Too Long, Probably Thinking Wrong

Hackney busted out this little gem after about a half-hour dry spell. During the course of those 30-minutes, he went back and forth several times between the reasons the fish should still be where he was fishing, and the reasons they might be better positioned on a nearby shallow drain. Eventually, he stopped himself almost mid-sentence when the sage voice in his head reminded him that if you think too long, you’re probably thinking wrong. We made the move and the drought ended pretty quickly.

While Greg Hackney caught his share of bass that day, I just photographed, listened and learned. / Kurt Mazurek

3.) How to Read a Topwater’s Bubble Trail

This wasn’t a folksy life lesson sort of thing. This was practical fishing experience knowledge and something I had never considered.

He made a cast with a buzzbait and remarked how pronounced and long the bubble trail behind it was. Sensing that I wasn’t sure why that was so important, he continued that low barometric pressure explains why the bubbles don’t burst quickly. If the pressure was high, the bubbles wouldn’t stick around as long. And since low-barometric pressure days seem to be the time when bass feed more aggressively and are more likely to eat a fast-moving topwater bait, noticing that bubble trail is the intel you need to encourage you to keep throwing that bait. If the bubble trail fades quickly, you’ll probably want to use that info to choose a more appropriate presentation.

4.) Texas-Rig Only for the Spawn

I noticed that one of the all-time great jig flippers didn’t seem to have a single jig tied on anywhere in his boat, so I inquired. His decades of experience have taught him a jig is great for pre-spawn and then again after the spawn is over. But during the spawn, when beds have been made, they just bite a simple Texas-rigged creature much better than a creature on a jig. He wasn’t sure exactly why—maybe the more compact profile, he speculated—but years of experience had proven to him it just works that way.

If you listen carefully, Hackney has almost as many useful ideas about life as he does about bass fishing. / Kurt Mazurek

5.) Use Your Lure to See Underwater

I don’t want to make this article a debate about forward-facing sonar (FFS), but pretty clearly Hackney is above-average-capable of catching his share of bass without it. In fact, he mentioned casually that he had removed his FFS a couple weeks earlier to compete in a National Professional Fishing League (NPFL) tournament, where forward-facing sonar is banned entirely. When he got the Classic he never thought to take the equipment out of his storage locker.

He said most of the fish he was catching that week were setting up to spawn and probably on beds. He said “probably” because the water he was in was too murky to see down more than a foot or so. But from experience, he knew a lot of these bass would create beds on or around the roots of the endless supply of cypress trees in this lake.

So, using a Texas-rigged creature bait, he would pitch along the sides of these flooded tress and carefully drag his bait back to him. He would focus on the feeling transmitting up his line to tell him if his bait was dragging across mud, or a telltale hard spot where a bass had fanned out a bed. If he recognized that feeling of a clear, hard-bottomed bed, he would slow down and make additional pitches to the spot. The number of bites that proved him right that day was pretty impressive.

At one point, he leaned in with a coy smile and without an ounce of braggadocious said, “If they ever do ban FFS, we are gonna pillage and plunder this series.” His victory on the NPFL series a couple weeks later seems like a pretty good indication that Greg Hackney knows what he's talking about.

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