Event: 2021 AFTCO Bassmaster Elite at St. Johns River
Scenario: New kicked off his rookie Elite season on a fishery he had visited only once before. Nevertheless, previous years had afforded him numerous opportunities to fish Florida waters, including his victory in the 2020 Basspro.com Bassmaster Eastern Open at Kissimmee Chain. (Notably, the first Open he ever fished).
“I had a lot of experience in Florida, and I really understood Florida fishing,” New said. “It’s all about the weather patterns for tournament week. Once I started putting it together (general Florida fishing), I started following the weather every single day for a couple months before an event.”
Having done just that, New practiced accordingly for his Elite debut. In classic Florida form, a warm spell yielded to the kind of brief cold snap needed to tighten up the prespawn movement and get the fish ready to advance.
“The first part of practice was cold, but it was forecast to warm up, so I purposely practiced for that,” New said. “I had followed the previous years’ Elite events (at the St. Johns), and I fished an event there the year before, so I had a good idea of where things went down.
“I figured, you study the weather patterns and then you find the best habitat. The area where I ended up winning in Astor (below Lake George) was the best habitat on that entire system. It has flow, it has hard bottom, it has deep water close to shallow water.”
Having discovered the Astor area’s prominence during previous visits, New stepped into his first Elite event with at least one ace in the hole.
“That was a popular area even before I won, so I knew that was going to be a good area,” New said of his first impression. “When I qualified for the Elites and saw the schedule, I said, ‘If I don’t find anything (else) in practice, I’ll fish there.’”
The decision: Knowing the Astor potential, New spent his first two days of practice searching for promising shellbars in the Little Lake George area, but he found little to sway his plan. Day 3, he ran upriver to Astor and struggled through a slow morning before getting the encouragement he needed.
“I was blind spawn fishing and by early afternoon, I started getting some bites,” New said. “That was the beginning of it. That final day, the spawning movement started.
“The first two days of practice, I found some shellbars with schools of fish. I knew that quality probably was not great, but I had that in my back pocket.”
After solidifying his plan during the off day, New launched for his first round of Elite competition and took his position at the Palatka City Boat Ramp — only to wait out a lengthy meteorological impediment.
“Imagine your first Elite blastoff, having to sit there for three hours and 15 minutes of fog delay,” New chuckled. “I was anxious to go, but it never really got in my head; I wasn’t worried about it.
“The only thing I was slightly concerned with was the place I ended up starting was a little over an hour away — with idle zones. Now, you take an eight-hour tournament day and knock it down to just four hours and 45 minutes (after fog delay), then have over two hours of run time, you don’t have a ton of time to fish.”
How it shook out: Despite the Day 1 limitations, New ran to the Astor area and fished pads in Lake Dexter, but the reward was not what he’d expected. Leaving that southern region with only three keepers, he briefly hit a shellbar on the way back, yo-yoed a lipless bait and finished a 12-pound limit that put him in 22nd place.
“That shellbar saved me on the my first day as an Elite,” New said. “I was just thankful to have survived that day. From what I saw on the shellbar and what it looked like on the spawning fish progress on Day 1, I decided to play it safe (the second day).”
On Day 2, New secured a limit of 12-15 on his shellbars. Confident he’d made the Day 3 cut, he ran to Astor, stopped about 7 miles north of Lake Dexter, upgraded to 20-3 and moved into ninth.
Championship Saturday found New still concerned about banking an entire day on the Astor spawners, so he again started on the shellbar fish and caught a good limit. When New contemplated a southward run, an imposing storm threatened the course, but his decision to press on proved wise.
“It was insane that day; it was the quickest I caught ‘em all week,” New said. “I literally fished about nine pads and had 20 pounds. I caught one or two on every pad.”
Ending Day 3 with 21 pounds, New rose to sixth place and faced a decision: Stay with the measured game plan or go for the win.
“At this point, I know where the shellbars max out, and I knew that wasn’t going to be the winning caliber fish,” New said. “I’ve already made the Top 10, I might as well try to win the tournament at this point, so I went straight to the pads (in Astor).”
Each day, New would start on his best spot from the previous day and eventually run across a good stretch. On that final day, he found three highly productive stretches and ended up catching 26-4 and surging across the finish line by a winning margin of 9-9.
“After the second stretch, I went awhile without a bite,” New recalled. “I knew I had a good bag, but I didn’t know how well I’d done. Looking back, I had it won at that point.
“I ran a little farther south, got to a no-wake zone and decided I didn’t want to waste anymore time running.”
That final decision is what slammed the door shut.
“I pulled up on a spot that didn’t even look that good and fished down through there,” New said. “I literally said (to the cameraman), ‘I don’t like this. I’m fixing to make a move.’
“While I said that, I got a bite and set the hook on a 5 1/2-pounder. I go maybe 30 to 40 yards and catch a 5-14 — the biggest fish of the final day.”
Game changer: Even though that unexpectedly shortened Day 1 produced his slimmest bag of the tournament, New recognized the two key factors that helped shape his event.
“After that fog delay, I made that long run (to my first spot in Astor) and it’s just dead, but that kept me from going back there at any other point in the tournament,” New said. “Even though it didn’t pay off, it kept me from wasting any more time during the tournament.
“Then finishing my limit on the way back — even though it wasn’t a ton of weight — it gave me the confidence that kept me calm and settled throughout the rest of the tournament.”
Addressing his decision to abandon the shellbars and commit his final day to what he believed would be intensified spawning activity, New said: “I knew I wouldn’t have had a chance to win if I didn’t make that decision.”
Takeaway: As New explained, taking a confident, measured approach to the biggest step in his career enabled him to formulate a sensible game plan based on the expectation of respectable results. Riding the momentum of his 2020 Falcon Rods Bassmaster Opens Angler of the Year title, New believed a victory was possible, but he kept it real until he realized it was time to step on the gas.
“I didn’t have anything to worry about,” he said. “The way everything happened, I just had that sense of ease that things are gonna work out.
“Honestly, at the beginning, it was never really about winning the tournament. You always have to have that goal, but you have to be realistic with yourself as well. You just have to do the best you can.”
Notwithstanding his genuine modesty, New recognizes the impact of launching his Elite career with the wind in his sails.
“At that point, there had been a three-year span where I had been doing extremely well in tournaments,” he said. “I had won the first Open I’d ever fished and won AOY in the Opens, so I had a lot of confidence.
“I knew it didn’t matter how many bad decisions I made, because I knew the next one would be a good decision. There’s no greater boost in confidence than when things like that start happening.”
