Psst: Do you plan to compete on South Carolina’s Santee Cooper Reservoir? Here’s a tip: Check the entry list for Allan Glasgow of Ashville, Ala. If he’s in the field, get sharp. He may be the one you’ll have to beat.
Glasgow took his third Santee Cooper title Saturday. This one was the Toyota Tundra Bassmaster Weekend Series Championship presented by American Bass Anglers, a win that earned him a 2012 Bassmaster Classic entry. He also won on Santee Cooper in March 2005 in an FLW event. A Bassmaster competitor since 2008, he won on Santee in October 2009 in a Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Open.
Santee is not his home lake. (Home water, he said, is Neely Henry and other Coosa River impoundments in his native Alabama.) He’s never lived near the South Carolina impoundment. It might help that he has fishing buddies who live there, but he’s up against most of them in the same Santee events he enters. For example, his good friend Wade Grooms of South Carolina also competed in the Weekend Series Championship.
Glasgow, 40, said that while success may breed success, his tournament trifecta was more about compatibility.
“Every time I go there, it just fits the way I like to fish,” he said. “Santee Cooper is a lake I really love.”
Multiple scouting trips helped him this time around, he said. As owner of a small plumbing business, he can arrange his own schedule, so was able to make two short trips to Santee before the Weekend Series Championship’s off-limits period kicked in.
The extra practice clued him in during competition to the tune of 65.1 pounds over four days. He found most of his bass just where he usually does on Santee: in the impoundment’s northern reaches, deep into shallow Stumphole Swamp.
“I stay where my gut tells me to go, and on that lake, that’s up in that northern end,” said Glasgow, who came from 27th place on Day One to the No. 2 spot going into the final round. He clinched the win by less than a pound over Grooms; both benefitted when leader Mike Jackson zeroed on the last day.
Glasgow’s strategy depended on patience and nerve. The swampy areas he was working must be navigated at low idle to maneuver safely through the mine fields of engine-eating stumps. Then the time needed to work the right stumps and to refine a lure presentation made the strategy a commitment.
Glasgow said his most recent Santee win netted him $155,000 — a $100,000 first-place prize plus contingencies. The big payday was all the sweeter, he said, for securing the seat reserved for the Weekend Series champ in the Feb. 24-26 Classic on the Red River out of Shreveport-Bossier City, La.
“I’ve been to the Red River several times, so I’m excited to get there to scout it, learn the navigation better,” he said. “I already know the fishing there is what I like to do.”