We all want to win every tournament we compete in, but I’m pleased with my 14th-place finish at the first Bassmaster Elite Qualifier of 2026 on Norfork Lake. Any one of the three EQs can knock you out of contention to earn Progressive Bassmaster Elite Series angler status.
After the first EQ, maybe 80 guys still have a chance to become Elite anglers. After the second EQ, you need to be among the top 20 to have a legitimate shot. These highly competitive events are fast-paced and cutthroat.
I dodged a bullet at Norfork. I normally don’t get squirrely when I fish the Bassmaster Opens, but I was stressed before Norfork because I’d had a disappointing practice.
I rolled out the first day and stopped to fish a point. After several casts without a bite, I ran way up the lake to an area I hoped would carry me through the tournament. After spending some precious morning hours there, I knew I needed to make a major adjustment.
I ran back to the point I had started on that morning. This time, a mega school of largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass were stacked 35 feet deep just off a rocky seam that ran down the point. I hammered them by dragging a drop shot and a football jig and quickly boated a 10-pound limit.
I fished shallow the rest of the day in search of some kicker bass to cull with. I went to a single dock floating over shallow water way back in a creek. I never made a cast to that dock during practice because my gut told me it would hold a good fish.
I caught a 4-pound bass on my first cast down the side of the dock with a 3/8-ounce, green pumpkin Elite EVO ChatterBait. My mindset went from being stressed to becoming tremendously confident. My 12-pound, 12-ounce sack that day included two largemouth, two smallmouth and one spotted bass, which landed me in 17th place.
My second day was a carbon copy of the first. I sacked an early limit on the point and fished shallow for kickers. My limit included two largemouth, two smallmouth and one spotted bass, and it weighed exactly the same as the first day, 12 pounds, 12 ounces.
My second day’s weight could have been heavier. My biggest bass that day was a 4-pound largemouth I caught by flipping a jig into a lone cedar tree in the back of a creek on a flat. I dropped my Power-Poles, culled a smaller fish and let everything calm down.
When I flipped my jig back into the tree, I saw another good bass chop it as soon as the jig hit the water. I lost all control and set the hook so hard I straightened the hook out. Had I caught that bass, I probably would have made the Top 10.
Since that tournament, I’ve been fishing every day to stay sharp for the next EQ. Living in Arkansas, I can pick a lake to practice on that has similar bass habitat to about any tournament I’ll be fishing.
Because the next EQ is at Toledo Bend Reservoir, I’ve been fishing the west end of Lake Ouachita. It has a lot of timber and some big fish this year. I’ve been working with forward-facing sonar and throwing at bass I see floating around in timber. I think that style of fishing will dominate at Toledo Bend.
I also squeezed in a few days to go bowhunting for whitetails and tagged a nine-point buck. We’re allowed two bucks here in Arkansas. I’ll have to put buck number two on hold for a while. The EQs take precedence.
