Polar opposite approaches – that would describe Jacob Wheeler’s and Casey Ashley’s takes on fishing Lake St. Clair this week. The two anglers sharing second place in the AOY race, 40 points behind leader Brandon Palaniuk, are in completely different frames of mind.
As noted in an earlier blog, Wheeler is “100 percent” focused on the AOY race. Ashley, on the other hand, says he doesn’t have a care in the world. He’s all but clinched a spot in the 2018 Bassmaster Classic, which will be held where he won the ’15 Classic on Lake Harwell in his home state of South Carolina. Anything else is gravy now.
“I think I’ve got that done,” Ashley said of Classic qualification. “I’m just having fun now. If you try to push it and put more pressure on yourself than what’s already there, you’re only going to jack yourself up. I want to catch ’em this week. AOY is in the back of my mind, but I ain’t going to lose sleep over it, like the night before the first day at Hartwell.”
Ashley was thinking back to the night before the 2015 Classic, when he was feeling all the pressure in the world, fishing arguably his “home lake” in the Super Bowl of bass fishing.
“I woke up at 2 a.m., wide awake, and never went back to sleep,” Ashley said. “My mind was turning.”
Ashley knows some of his fellow Elite Series anglers are operating on little sleep today, under all the pressures of this regular season-ending event.
“I’ve been there,” he said. “It will weigh on you. I’ve been in that situation several times. It ain’t no fun.”
Ashley is having fun today. BASSTrakk shows him with only two fish so far, but they’re two of the right ones, totaling 7 pounds. It will be interesting this week to see which angler’s approach pays off, Wheeler’s pedal-to-the-metal game plan, or Ashley’s laid-back style. It doesn’t have to be either/or; both might work.
Photo by Bassmaster Marshal Keith Mensing