Event: 2023 Bassmaster Elite at Lake Seminole
Scenario: Normally, anglers don’t want to be fishing behind other anglers, but during the second event of his rookie season, Joey Cifuentes III found this to be the winning strategy. For clarity, he wasn’t actually fishing spots after another angler departed. Rather, he was targeting fish at an earlier stage than most of his competitors.
Cifuentes did the majority of his work by fishing a drop shot with a 7-inch hand-poured worm in a bay with standing timber off Spring Creek. As he explained, this area offered the right mix of clear water, prespawn staging habitat and proximity to expansive spawning flats.
“I was using my Garmin LiveScope on the edge of the spawning flats on the outside edge of the grass,” Cifuentes said. “I was looking for where the main channel swing came in, where fish would be coming and going.
“In that event, there were some fish spawning and even a few postspawners, but the majority of them were prespawn. That week was one of the first major warming trends. In practice, we had just come off a cold front, so the water was still cool.”
The favorable weather played a major role in the success Cifuentes found, but as he explained, understanding how the majority of the fish in Spring Creek were positioned and how they were progressing was the most significant piece of the puzzle.
“Most of the fish were out in the standing timber; not close to the spawning area. But as the week progressed, I started catching them closer to where they were gonna spawn,” Cifuentes said. “Like, you had a flat that dropped off into the main creek channel and most of my big fish were caught right there where they would swim up and go spawn.
“Earlier in the week, they were more scattered throughout the timber. Going through the tournament, I saw a lot more fish moving. They weren’t so much staging on a tree, they were coming in, so I kinda caught them in transition, and there was more of a transition toward the end of the tournament.”
The decision: With three wins in FLW and BFL competition, Cifuentes was no stranger to success, so his well-honed discipline served him well on Lake Seminole. In his view, nothing was more important than parking in his chosen area and holding fast.
“It was sticking to that small zone and not trying to go up shallow and look for spawning fish; I think it was really crucial that I stuck with the deep bite,” Cifuentes said. “Everybody in the tournament, for the most part, was moving shallow. It was getting so warm that you’re thinking in the back of your head, ‘Man, I probably ought to be going up shallow and there’s probably some big fish up there getting close to spawning and I could probably catch them shallower.’
“But I stuck with the prespawn fish out in the trees. I didn’t really move around much. There was just something about that one spot where fish were constantly pulling up to go spawn.”
After placing sixth on Day 1 with 19-13, Cifuentes took over the top spot with a Day 2 limit of 26-1 — the tournament’s heaviest bag. Cifuentes added 20-13 on Saturday and entered Championship Sunday with a lead of 4-1 over Tyler Rivet, who had won the previous week’s season-opener at Lake Okeechobee.
Weighing a final-round limit of 18-7, Cifuentes surged to victory by a margin of 8-12 over fellow rookie Kyoya Fujita. (Notably, Cifuentes and Fujita also finished first and second, respectively, in the 2023 Bassmaster Rookie of the Year standings.)
Game changer: Hefty fish plus heavy cover equals the potential for disaster. Cifuentes’ final day was plagued with lost fish, but that was mostly due to pulled hooks. Over the course of the event, Cifuentes felt confident battling big bass because he was properly equipped.
“Beefing up my spinning gear and line size was an important decision for fishing around that thick timber,” he said. “Generally, when I’m throwing a drop shot, it’s a finesse technique and, for the most part, you’re using a light leader and light braid.
“Those fish were in 15 to 20 feet, and they were close to the bottom in a stump field where you have a tree every 10 feet. When you hook a big fish, you really need to get them up to the top as quickly as possible. Once you get them to the top, they’ll try to dive, so you have to horse them.”
Knowing the challenge he faced, Cifuentes used a 7-6 medium-heavy spinning rod that offered enough tip to properly present a finesse rig, with plenty of fish-whipping backbone. He upsized his main line from his usual 10-pound braid to 20-pound and also beefed up his leader to 12-pound fluorocarbon.
“That was very key because some of those fish got me wrapped around trees,” Cifuentes said. “They’re smart, and they know what to do. That beefier gear got me out of some hairy situations.”
Also, to minimize his snagging risk, Cifuentes Texas-rigged his worm on a 1/0 hook.
Takeaway: Going against the norm, forging his own path and resisting the temptation to change kept Cifuentes on course to victory.
“I was doing something different from everyone else,” Cifuentes said. “I had a feeling even before practice started that the prespawn fish were gonna be a better bet. I’m not a bed fisherman. I will do it, but it’s not my expertise and I don’t have a lot of confidence in it.
“You go through practice and you see everybody else up on the bank, and I did look at some of that stuff in practice. There was some pressure to do that, but I stuck with what I had confidence in.”
The real test came when Cifuentes noticed how quickly the prespawn fish were progressing through the timber, to the hydrilla off the edge of the nearest flat. With the warming temperatures spurring the fish to spawn, he expressed concern that his deal might expire.
Banking on having enough fish still following that course, Cifuentes held out long enough to earn his first of two blue trophies. (Also Lake St. Clair, 2023)
“There were times when I worried I was losing some fish that were moving shallower, but I stuck with what I believed in,” Cifuentes said. “Don’t leave fish to find fish.”
