Event: 2022 Strike King Bassmaster College Series at Norfork Lake presented by Bass Pro Shops
Scenario: In his second year at Drury University, Arkansas native Beau Browning and his teammate Jake Peck channeled their extensive White River experience to decipher a challenging late-April event. In true Natural State form, the week’s meteorological makeup put them through the paces.
“It was a very tough tournament because, through practice and the tournament, conditions were changing daily,” Browning said. “We had a huge monsoon come through during practice, which muddied parts of the lake.
“We had some cold weather right before some warm days. It was all over the place. It was typical springtime Arkansas weather — it had all kinds of different conditions.”
Knowing that such a diverse makeup would shuffle the deck and make finding consistency a tall order, Browning and his partner went into practice expecting slim pickings. Fortunately, they were able to locate a seasonally apropos scenario that would carry them to victory.
“Leading up to the tournament, Jake and I kinda were piecing together stuff, but nothing really that great,” Browning said. “We ended up in a little area up the river that looked really right for how we like to fish.
“It was a shallow flat that was about 4 to 5 feet deep with a 10- to 15-foot ditch that ran through it. They were in a ditch bend that met the corner of the flat, and there were lots of visual targets to throw at — logs, buck brush.”
As Browning recalled, he and his partner instantly recognized how well the spot fit their wheelhouse.
“We both agreed that if we could get a couple good bites outta here, it would be hard to turn our back on it,” he said. “We rolled in there the last day of practice and we each caught a 3-pounder on the first piece or two of isolated wood.
“We said, ‘Lets get out of here. We know it sets up right, it feels right and there’s obviously quality here.’ So we left.”
In their post-practice analysis, Browning and Peck discussed their options and came to the conclusion that if they were going to win, it would happen at that upriver spot. Rolling the dice, they committed their first tournament day to that spot.
Covering water with ChatterBaits, they’d fish until they got bit and then throw jigs to pick apart the area.
“We didn’t know what the rain was gonna do to that spot, but we knew if it could just give us a chance, we could make it happen,” Browning said. “That first day, we absolutely pummeled ‘em. We caught them in that deep bend — they were prespawners getting ready to move up and spawn.
“That was the biggest school of fish I’d ever seen. That first day, we caught 150 to 175 fish. There was only a handful of casts where we didn’t catch a fish.”
The decision: A Day 1 limit of 19-1 put Browning and Peck in the lead by nearly 3 pounds. Unfortunately, changing conditions would make the second round significantly more challenging.
Nevertheless, the leaders held fast to their game plan and gutted out the victory. Picking their way to a second-round limit of 11-2, they secured the win with a two-day total of 30-3.
“Both of us were familiar with Norfork, in the sense that we both had it in our heads that it was going to take 30 to win and we were pretty close to that number,” Browning said. “We had to make a decision on Day 1, because they were biting so good and we had them pinned so good on the spot that we had to decide, do we lay off or do we keep catching them?
“It was one of those mental battles, because you don’t want to catch fish you might need tomorrow. We were at like 16 or 17 pounds, and we sat down in the middle of the tournament and talked it through.”
At that point, the anglers knew they had enough to lead the first day, but the temptation to shoot for 20 pounds gnawed at their competitive consciousness. Continuing to upgrade could build their advantage, but it also risked busting up the school.
“We made the decision to catch all that we could, because we didn’t know what the next day would bring,” Browning said. “Conditions were changing so much, and it’s hard to catch ‘em twice in the same spot on Norfork.
“We said, ‘Let’s hunker down and catch everything we can today and that will leave us with less that we need tomorrow.’ We knew we only needed 11 or 12 pounds the next day, and we felt like we could scratch that out.”
Game changer: Notably prophetic was their outlook, as the second day saw their spot presenting a very different mood.
“The second day, we got back in the same area and it was not happening like it was the day before,” Browning said. “The dirty water that had come from that rain had moved down and it changed the whole look of that place. The water had gotten a lot cleaner, and it made those fish harder to catch.
“The fish were still there, but it was much harder to catch those quality keepers. Luckily, Jake caught a 3-pounder first thing that morning that kinda set us off on the right foot, but it took us till 11 or 12 o’clock to get a limit. We were both glad that we got everything we could the day before, because if we had laid off with 16 pounds, I don’t think we could have caught 14 on Day 2.”
Statisticians may argue that going lighter on the spot the first round might have left more opportunity for the second. Maybe, but a bird in hand is worth two in the bush.
“In our minds, we played it perfectly by getting everything we could on Day 1,” Browning said.
Takeaway: Looking back, Browning said he was most pleased with the smart mental game that he and Peck played.
“For both of us, following our gut instinct,” he said. “It all went back to that decision after the last day of practice. ‘Are we gonna roll with an area where we only had two bites just because we feel it in our gut that it’s setting up right?’
“Trusting our gut shone so bright in that tournament. Yeah, there was a lot of doubt to be had. We didn’t know what it could be, but we were so in tune with each other that we fed off of each other. It didn’t take a lot of convincing. ‘You feel it and I feel it; let’s roll with it.”
