“I couldn’t tell you that five years ago,” said Bassmasters Classic champion Skeet Reese, when I interviewed him a couple of days ago.
What he couldn’t tell me about then was how much different a sophisticated, technical approach would have changed his tournament fishing and his success. “I always thought fishing was not rocket science,” he confessed. “But the older I’ve gotten, the more I analyze and the more I realize how scientific it is.”
In particular, I was trying to find out the role of sunglasses, especially since seeing cover (not seeing fish) was a matter that came up in his post-Classic interviews. His Wiley X’s (click here) helped him then, but what role did they play for the rest of the Elite tour?
But before he answered that question, he reflected on the Classic situation in the winning stump field. “When you bang into stumps or are trying to get off stumps, you don’t focus on the fishing: the next cast and the next presentation,” Skeet said. “When you fish for a living, you need to see the minute differences below the waterline, the different kinds of grasses, the bottom, whether it’s pea gravel or rock, and to separate them visually. When I do that, it makes my job easier.”
He noted, “I want to see the shade of bottom. Black not white or gray or chocolate. That different bottom color represents different rock or other cover and that helps me targeting patterns in shallow water.”
One particular place he has put increased stock in the Wiley X’s he now carries (15 to 20 pairs in a couple of different styles) is with lens color. “I think that’s the one thing that has helped me in a lot of different fishing environments. Many don’t pay attention to that. And I think a lot of people are missing a better experience on the water.”
When I pressed him on the matter, Skeet offered up some great examples. “In clear water in spring,” he advised, “a yellow lens emphasizes green in the water (grasses or bass)—it will help bring up that green from a sight-fishing standpoint.”
But things are different in different parts of the country. He says, “In the Louisiana to Florida area, they have that blackish water. A lighter green lens works much better. It takes the brown or the black out.
“In the central part of the country, amber works well for me. In the dirtier water situations with mud or silt in the water, I can see deeper into the stained water (with amber).”
But for the technical and highly successful Wiley X pro, a fishing trip is never all just one thing. Skeet said, “I may wear yellow in the morning but graduate to green or amber in the afternoon. I know it helps.”
(Below)
THE POPULAR Wiley X Jakes model feature the same “bullet proof” design the line is famous for, in this case with the amber lens.
