Ott DeFoe: Looking for that Summertime Current

On a day when the Major League Fishing staff had turned the GEICO Select pros loose on the vast, smallmouth rich waters of Lake Huron, I almost couldn’t help but chuckle.

Chuckle when my MLF camera boat operator Rick Newman pointed our Nitro bass rig up the Thunder Bay River where two or three anglers were cruising their way up into the shallow stuff.

Including Ott DeFoe, an angler from Knoxville, Tenn. that is known affectionately in bass fishing circuits as “The Otter.”

True to his roots of fishing serpentine river impoundments like Chickamauga Lake near his eastern Tennessee home, DeFoe is a self-described river rat who is never bashful about targeting bass in such places.

I shouldn’t have been surprised because DeFoe has been more than willing to share his love of river fishing – and his knowledge about it – to me in the past.

And whether he’s fishing down south or way up north, it fits his style of fishing, not to mention his on the water comfort zone.

“In the summertime, it’s all about current,” said DeFoe as he tried to educate me on the topic. “It doesn’t matter if you’re fishing for largemouths, smallmouths, spotted bass, whatever it is, it’s all about current.”

Just like the current that he found in the Thunder Bay River as it slowly flowed into Lake Huron.

As he motored up the river, DeFoe looked for smallmouth bass, especially in spots that featured a hard bottom, some rocks, some woody structure or even a vegetation line.

In each situation, those objects helped to alter the flow of current to some degree.

“In the summertime, you want to be in the places in a river system that has the most current,” said DeFoe. “Typically, that’s going to be in a place that necks down, some type of funnel that holds (some) numbers of fish.

“And if you find the right one (funnel), it’s going to have some size (to those fish) too.”

As DeFoe and several other MLF pros fished the river right in the middle of town, I saw a fair number of fish get caught as local Alpena residents paused from their daily routine to watch the unfolding show.

The reason for that success to some degree was due to the current. In other respects, it was due to the shade that the bridges and other features offered on a warm late summer day. And in still other respects, it had to do with the anglers understanding how fish position themselves in current.

And that latter one is something that DeFoe excels in as he uses tactics that trout fishermen utilize in targeting rainbows and browns holding in seams and other likely ambush spots on a quick flowing river or stream.

“It’s very similar,” said DeFoe, a three-time winner in the GEICO Select series. “I want to be in places where the water is extremely fast. And then I’m going to kind of fish my way out from that very, very fast water.

“I’m going to start there and work my way towards the slower stuff. And somewhere in all of that, I’m going to find the seam, the breakline, something that those fish are holding on.”

While river systems can vary from the smaller sized Thunder Bay River this week all the way up to the voluminous Mississippi River where the 2016 MLF Summit Cup was contested in Lacrosse, Wis., DeFoe is on the lookout for certain characteristics.

“The bigger the fish are, the faster the current is that they’re relating too,” said DeFoe, who finished second at the 2015 Summit Cup in Waterville, Maine and third at the 2016 MLF Summit Cup in Lacrosse, Wis.

“And the smaller fish are going to be relating to a small eddy, a place that has got really slow water compared to the water around it.”

In addition to faster current – relatively speaking, that is – DeFoe is also looking for something that creates a preferred ambush point where a bigger bass can take up position.

On the Thunder Bay River, that was a series of bridge pilings and structures in the river around those bridges, objects that created a current break.

“If you can find a place that has fast water pushing up against something, (that can be good),” said DeFoe, the 2011 B.A.S.S. Rookie of the Year and a three-time winner of B.A.S.S. events. “Usually, it’s vertical like a real sharp bank, a steep rocky face, whatever it might be.

“It only has to be a couple of feet in terms of a vertical break,” he added. “It’s those hard edges that fish relate to the best.”

The bottom line in the Tennessee angler’s mind is that current is everything during the summer months, even in a slower moving stream that seems more lake like than it is river like.

“You just have to find those places that is magnifying it in some way or another, whether it’s two places coming together or if it is a place that is some type of a feeder creek or stream.

“You’re looking for anything that is adding more current to the system or making the current that is there more noticeable and more significant.”

What types of baits does DeFoe rely on in such river fishing situations?

That depends on the time of day that he’s actually fishing, something that can cause the MLF pro to throw a variety of baits including a soft jerkbait, a swimbait, a crankbait or some other sort of moving lure. And at times, those baits might even include some sort of flipping bait or a jig if there is vegetation or timber present.

“It (the time of day) affects the way that you have to catch the fish,” said DeFoe. “The fish don’t really move from where they are.

“You know, they may be feeding more actively early in the morning, but they don’t really move (and change) locations like they do in some systems,” he added.

“They are still in the same place (as the day goes along), you just have to figure out a way to make them bite.”

And when it comes down to figuring out how to make that happen, DeFoe is pretty good at it.

No matter which river system he happens to find himself fishing upon, be it the Thunder Bay River or the Mighty Mississippi.

Because at the end of the day, the Otter is a bona fide angling river rat and a pretty good one at that.