As the St. Croix Bassmaster Open at Leech Lake presented by SEVIIN begins, I’m riding a wave of momentum from my 14th-place finish at the Yokohama Bassmaster Elite at Lake St. Clair. That was a great event; I was in the Top 10 until the third day.
I was super happy with my practice. I found a lot of fish and then the last day of practice, I found a pretty good school of big ones — 4- and 5-pounders — and that’s what I landed on the first day of the tournament.
I had 23 pounds that first day, but as the tournament progressed, I lost track of those big ones. I don’t know if they left, or they got caught. There were a lot of people in my area of Anchor Bay, so it could have been a little of both.
My takeaway is that that I wish I had bounced around more with the big motor, rather than the trolling motor and hit more regions of the lake.
The thing about St. Clair is that you can catch them all day long, but they school by size up there. So, if you’re catching 3 1/2-pounders, you have to leave, because it seems that those bigger-than-average ones don’t mix too much with the smaller, 3-pound-class fish.
This was only my second time on St. Clair, so I had to learn that lesson through experience. The other lesson I learned was just how random finding bigger fish can be.
The best way to do that is you have to catch a bunch of fish in practice. That sounds weird, because you usually don’t want to catch fish in practice, but up there you have to just to test the size.
In practice, I found my bigger fish by running sand/grass lines. The fish were running those boundaries, so I found as many of them as I could and tested the size on each of them.
Even though I always want to win, I was happy with my St. Clair performance. Those fish are super hard to catch and I figured out a couple of deals to get quite a few of them to bite.
But that’s only half of it. You have to find that better-than-average school and I only had half of the puzzle figured out by the end of the tournament. I could catch them, but I lost track of the big ones.
All in all, it was still a great event for me. I left St. Clair 22nd in Angler of the Year points, so I’m super happy with where I’m at, especially after the rough start to my rookie season. I still have an outside shot at Rookie of the Year, but it will take the top two guys to stumble.
Going to La Crosse, I’m definitely shooting for the win. That’s been my goal since winning the Classic. I’m definitely gonna try and get my first blue trophy.
That’s one of the reasons I’m fishing the Open at Leech Lake. I perform my best when I’m constantly on the water. It seems when I take a break, I lose touch, so I want to be at my best.
Leech was a no brainer. I wanted to stay sharp and give myself the best chance of earning my first Elite win.
