One year after winning the Bassmaster Classic at Lake Ray Roberts, finishing fourth at the Tennessee River left me with mixed emotions. Obviously, I would have loved to win, but I’m super happy for Dylan Nutt. He deserves it. He fishes more than almost anyone out here.
All in all, it was a great week. Based on what I found in practice, I think I made the most of it. In the end, it just turns out that I wasn’t on the winning fish.
I’m super proud of what I did. My mind was in the dumps for the first part of Day 1, but I overcame that and ended up in the lead.
I thought I had a pretty good game plan going into it and at 11 o’clock, it just was not going well. I had four fish for, like, 9 pounds. I knew I was way behind the 8 ball and I had to make something happen quick.
That’s what I’m most proud of — overcoming that adversity. I was completely spun out, but I sat down, made a couple good decisions and got right in a hurry. It’s times like that when you can really turn tournaments around.
It’s crazy how just a couple different decisions can flip your day around in just a matter of minutes. For example, I completely abandoned my largemouth game plan and went offshore for smallmouth.
Looking back, I should have known to do that sooner, because while I was driving down the river, I noticed how much more current there was from the recent rain. Current is one of the biggest factors in helping a smallmouth bite, so as soon as I saw that, a lightbulb should have gone off; but hindsight’s 20-20 and we’re always learning.
The other key decision I made was switching to a Carolina rig. The wind started ripping and I could feel how strong the current was down there on my jig head minnow. I just thought a Carolina rig would be a much better presentation.
Every day there was less and less current and that made it harder and harder on me to generate bites. That’s the main reason my weights decreased each day.
I ran the same general pattern all week, but as the tournament went on, I was trying to focus on areas like neck downs and channel swings, which accelerate current. That helped a little bit.
I have to say that coming so close to repeating as Classic champion was definitely extremely motivating for me to make it to next year’s Classic on Lake Hartwell and to try to win it.
In the short term, I’m looking forward to our next Elite event at the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. It’s a river system with current, once again, so I feel really good.
It’s going to be another event where reading current will be the key to success. I’m expecting an old-school, shallow water tournament. I couldn’t be more excited. The baits I end up using will depend on water clarity. If we have clear water, 100% it will play
