Norman Winning Pattern
Hoernke Ran New Main-Lake Water Every Day For Win

Photo: FLW Outdoors/Rob Newell Sean Hoernke didn't mess with the backs of pockets – the main lake offered the right water temperature for a bed-fish bite on the points.

You probably could have thrown a candy wrapper in the water and landed a 2-pound bass – that's how easy the limit-fishing was.

That turned the event into a quality quest defined by ounces. The goal wasn't 4-pounders. Those fish were so rare, only a few came to the scales each day. Instead, any fish at the 3-pound mark was pure gold.

Sean Hoernke found more of those fish, and that was the key to his win. His bags averaged right around 13 pounds, and he won by a comparatively large 4 1/2-pound margin.

Since the event was the National Guard Open, be pocketed $150,000 for the win.

Here's how the pro from Magnolia, Texas did it.

Practice

Hoernke gave up 2 days of his Norman practice to participate in the PAA-sanctioned Toyota Texas Bass Classic at Lake Fork. He didn't make the day-2 cut in Texas, so he humped it on down the highway and arrived in North Carolina on Sunday night.

That left him just Monday and Tuesday to practice.

He fished Norman last year and finished a disastrous 161st. But he'd also fished the lake in 2005 for a Bassmaster Open (where he finished 57th). Those two finishes weren't impressive, but his past experience did play a role this time around, especially given his shortened practice.

"The thing I really like about Norman is it's a classic pattern lake," he said. "It's one of those lakes you feel they wrote the textbook on. The fish here do a lot of the things they're supposed to, so if you can find a pattern, you can run it.

"And there doesn't seem to be any one section that's better than the other. That's what makes it such an interesting tournament lake. You can fish by the dam and win a tournament there. You can fish up the lake and win a tournament there. It seems there's an even distribution of fish."

Another big difference this time was that the major spawning wave occurred during practice. He loves to bed-fish, so he spent 1 day of practice trying to find where the better fish were nesting.

He spent the other day looking for post-spawn activity related to the shad-spawn, since he reasoned that several fish had spawned previously, and also, some of the fish that pulled up while he was in Texas would likely be done and gone.

"I really expected more of a post-spawn bite," he noted. "I really thought it would have been won on post-spawn fishing, but it wasn't."

To sum up his 2 days of practice, he said: "I just kind of went to areas and marked maybe 10 good fish. But there were fish (on beds) every 50 yards, no matter where you went. So I was just looking for quality areas – the little pockets that seemed to have better quality. You could look and see real quick that catching 2-pounders would put you 100th.

"I just started covering a lot of water," he added. "That's when I kind of narrowed it down to some sections and areas of the lake with better quality in the upper one-third of the lake."

On the second day of his practice, he was also able to find some shad activity around docks in a main-lake marina. The marina was at the mouth of a "major creek" he said, so it was a "classic post-spawn area, but there were only three stalls in the marina that were productive."

Competition

> Day 1: 5, 15-00
> Day 2: 5, 12-11 (10, 27-11)
> Day 3: 5, 13-05
> Day 4: 5, 13-11 (10, 27-00)

Hoernke began day 1 in the marina and whacked a quick 12-pound limit by swimming a jig. That was key, he said, because it gave him the freedom to run and look for new water.

Photo: FLW Outdoors/David A. Brown Hoernke said he caught a "pivotal" fish on day 3 from the marina.

He culled out all but one of his marina fish for a 15-pound limit (3-pound average) and 2nd place.

The big first day gave him the confidence on day 2 to "keep pushing it. The quality was few and far between, so I needed to keep running new water."

As he ran that new water, he was able to key in on a subtlety, he said, that made a substantial difference. He reasoned that the since the first wave of spawners traditionally do their business in the very backs of pockets, those fish would be the first to leave. When the main wave hits, he feels those fish tend to spawn more on the points of the creeks.

He knew the spawn was "off" this year, meaning it was late, so he focused on the points, rather than the backs of the pockets, and that's where he found the better quality. Also, those fish were exceptionally shallow, so he thinks many in the field didn't see them – they were fishing too deep.

"I saw most guys running in the back-half section of the pockets. There were fish back there, but they were all 2-pounders. The quality was on the points – almost out in the main lake. They were funneling in from the main lake and spawning on the first bank they hit. The water temperature in the main lake was right for that."

On day 2, he caught one small shad-spawn fish in the marina, but eventually culled it out. He caught 12-11 running his bed-fish pattern and made the cut in 1st.

Day 3 was a little bit different, in that he caught a "pivotal" fish first thing in the morning. It was suspended under a houseboat in the marina. He made a pinpoint cast with the jig and hooked up. "It was a 3 1/2-pounder, which was pretty clutch for the third day – those fish are golden," he said.

Day 4 was cloudy. He ran his bed-fish pattern, but switched from a shakey-head to a wacky worm because the fish were "looser" and suspended above the beds. The slower fall of the wacky worm helped him catch another 13 pounds while the rest of the Top 10 struggled, and he won by a 4 1/2-pound margin.

Winning Pattern Notes

Hoenke pointed to several key distinctions that helped him weigh a 13-pound average across the 4 days.