Christie: Top 20 finish feels like a win

I didn’t win the Bassmaster Elite Series tournament on Chesapeake Bay, but with the way practice went, I feel like I won the Super Bowl.

I didn’t win the Bassmaster Elite Series tournament on Chesapeake Bay, but with the way practice went, I feel like I won the Super Bowl.

Sometimes a good tournament is a 10th-place finish and sometimes a good tournament is a 50th-place finish. It’s all relative to how familiar you are with the water and what you develop in practice.

Put it this way: If someone had offered me a Top 20 finish before the tournament, I would have taken it in a heartbeat. Winning is always the objective, but in this one, my 19th-place finish feels rewarding.

For perspective, I never caught a bass in three days of practice for the Chesapeake Bay event. I practiced in a lot of areas, but there was one creek arm that I didn’t fish. I just kind of ran through it.

When the tournament started, I thought since I haven’t been there yet, I’d just go there and fish. This creek arm was close to takeoff so it would allow me to fish all day and not run around.

Imagine how good I felt when, after not catching a fish during practice, I caught one – a good one – on my first stop. At that moment, all the weight was lifted off me. It was like I had won the tournament just by catching one.

I had been doing the right thing; I just hadn’t gotten into an area where there was a lot of fish. I caught my first day’s fish by swimming a jig and casting a vibrating jig around docks.

In practice, I spent a lot of time trying to catch them out of the grass. But in the last few hours of practice, I started fishing some boat docks and I got a couple of bites. I didn’t catch any fish, but I got a couple of bites and that’s what tipped me off to what I needed to do.

The big thing was I learned where the fish were holding in the water column and that helped me start to figure out a pattern. I say “start” because one fish is not a pattern. But then I caught another one 30 minutes later doing the same thing.

I started gaining a lot of confidence in what I was doing and when I caught five by 11:30 on the first day, I wanted to go put it on the trailer – I was excited. Of course I stayed after it, and I ended up culling one.

I actually got a lot of bites on the first day and I felt like I was figuring some stuff out. The good thing was I was catching my fish on a higher tide. A lot of guys wanted to have a low tide, so I felt good about figuring out a high-water pattern.

Now, as good as the first day went, the second day was crazy. I only got one bite the entire second day.

It was weird because I felt like I fished well that day. I was making good casts and trying different things. I was fishing new water and water where I had caught fish.

I just got one bite.

I felt pretty bad when I came in, but then you look at some of the other guys, and they did the same thing. Guys with a lot of experience in tidal waters struggled as well, so that made me feel a little better about how I did.

It still bothered me that I only caught one fish on the second day, but that was an important fish. Without that fish, I don’t think I would have made the cut. But that one fish got me to Saturday.

On the third day, I was around a lot of other people and I wanted to do something a little different, so I flipped the new Booyah Finance Jig that just came out at ICAST. It has a smaller profile and a more finesse presentation, but I can still use big line and a big flipping stick.

I had the opportunity to have a really big bag but I lost a big fish that would have culled a 1 1/2-pound fish. But I’m not going to be greedy; I’m happy with how this tournament turned out.

For one thing, I feel like I overcame a really tough practice. Also, I needed to do well at this event to keep myself in good shape in the points.

I was in 14th going into the St. Lawrence Elite, but then I fell to 28th after a bad performance there. Now, I’ve jumped back up to 19th, which is still not a secure place. With a poor tournament at our next event on Lake St. Clair, I could be right down there where I was after the St. Lawrence. So I need a strong finish at St. Clair to qualify for next year’s Bassmaster Classic.

If I had not done well on Chesapeake Bay, it probably would have taken me out of the Classic cut. I always want to qualify for the Classic, but with it being at Grand Lake in my home state next year, I have an extra dose of motivation.