Since fishing the Progress Bassmaster Elite Series tournament at Santee Cooper Lakes, I’ve been hanging at a buddy’s house in South Carolina editing some of the tournament videos I post on YouTube under Cooper Gallant Fishing. It took me four 12-hour days on a computer to edit my Bassmaster Classic segment.
The time and effort required to film, edit and create videos during and between tournaments is considerable. The videos promote my fishing career and provide value for my sponsors. The downside is the extensive editing process keeps me off the water.
I feel like I should be fishing now to stay sharp instead of being handcuffed to my computer, especially after having four of my worst Elite events in a row. I could blame the videos for my poor showings, but I’ve been filming and documenting my tournaments since the beginning and had good success.
I’ll need Top 10 finishes in each of the final three Elite tournaments to pull myself up to respectability in the Progressive Bassmaster Angler of the Year standings. To make the Classic, I’ll have to win the final event at the St. Lawrence River. I intend to spend the month of July pre-practicing there.
I hope to squeeze in an outing to Lake Hartwell before heading to the next tournament at the Pasquotank River. It would give me a chance to experiment with the spiky Coike-style baits that dominated at Santee. The Pasquotank has similarities to Santee insofar as vegetation, wood docks and cypress trees. The Coike is sure to catch some big ones there.
This weird bait was originally designed to be twitched on the surface. Guys added a nail weight to make it sink slowly. This presentation proved deadly at Santee when the bait was cast into cover where big bass were hanging out.
The bass keep getting smarter. In a few years, they’ll get wise to the Coike, and it won’t be as effective as it is now. Then some other new bait will come along and dominate.
Pasquotank River
I have pre-practiced for every Elite tournament I’ve fished to this point except for the Pasquotank. That’s because my pre-practice there last year hurt my performance. It’s a huge body of water, and every creek feeding into Albermarle Sound looks good and has bass in it.
During a week of pre-practice at the Pasquotank last year, I fished every creek I could find. When I came back for the tournament, I caught myself running around way too much instead of dialing into an area and picking it apart.
This year, I intend to focus on a couple of areas instead of running around with my head cut off trying to fish a million different areas.
Lake Champlain
Champlain is a no-scope event, so big largemouth will play, for sure. I don’t think it can be won strictly with smallmouth. The winner will likely have to catch some 4- to 5-pound green ones throughout the week.
I’ll be fishing mainly for smallmouth but will keep largemouth in the back of my head. I believe I’ll need one or two largemouth kickers every day to have a shot at winning there.
For largemouth, I’ll be checking out docks, deep weeds, rocks mixed with weeds and shallow reeds. For smallmouth, I’ll have several moving baits tied on, including a Great Lakes Finesse Stay Pinned spybait, a Shimano World Pop popper and a Heddon Super Spook walking topwater.
St. Lawrence River
It will be all-out finesse fishing for me at the St. Lawrence. I’ll spend 90% of my practice in Lake Ontario. However, I won’t overlook the river. There are some big ones there, too.
