We’re way up the Cooper River, the same shallow flat where Britt Meyers won this event from the last time the Bassmaster Elite Series visited Winyah Bay. And there are numbers of anglers up here looking to get their tournament started.
Carl Jocumsen is here, along with Brandon Card, Jesse Tacoronte, Clark Wendlandt, Cliff Pirch and others. They’re sharing at this point.
It’s not a small area, but once you jam a dozen boats in here it starts to fish small. Right now it’s a community hole, but the likelihood of it holding up for four days of competition, and be the location of the winning pattern is pretty low.
But who knows — its way too early to tell.
The real question is can the rivers near the main launch site produce competitive weights. The general opinion of a few local sticks is “yes” the Black, Peedee and other river systems can and will produce competitive weights this time around. In fact, the rice fields are very capable of kicking out strong limits of largemouth.
But so are the Cooper and Santee rivers. The key may be the amount of time one gets to spend on each system determining the pattern.
One thing is for sure, (to channel my inner John Madden): Regardless of how much speculation we pour out now, at the end of this thing we’ll have the answer for sure.
More to come.