Jesse Tacoronte spent all three of his Winyah Bay practice days in the Waccamaw River. But on the eve of the tournament, he just couldn’t sleep with that decision. So he got out of bed at 2 a.m. Thursday and started looking at the Cooper River on Google Earth.
“I never gave the Cooper a chance (in practice),” said Tacoronte after weighing the 15th-place bag of 10-14 Thursday. “When I got up there, I felt like I was back home in Florida. I felt very, very comfortable.”
The 51-year-old Kissimmee, Fla., resident is even more comfortable in the Cooper River this morning. He put a 12-pound, 3-ounce limit in the boat just past 9:30 and is the early tournament leader, according to BASSTrakk.
“I watched the old Elite episode in ’16 and watched what Britt Myers and Brett Hite (who finished 1st and 2nd, respectively) were doing,” said Tacoronte. “I listened to them talk about drains and ditches. On Google Earth, you can back date it. I went back to ’06 when it was really low and found all those drains and ditches. I GPSed them all (Thursday) morning at 3:30 or 4:00.”