Carl Jocumsen’s last trip to the Santee Cooper Lakes produced a second-place Bassmaster Elite Series finish at the event held in October 2020. The Australian’s four-day total of 61 pounds, 9 ounces, came during the fall doldrums when the legendary lakes aren’t at their best. Even so, Jocumsen put on a show, going to battle with heavy tackle in the gnarly vegetation for which the fisheries are known.
Now, he’s back, this time for the Guaranteed Rate Bassmaster Elite at the Santee Cooper Lakes, and during the original timeframe when the 2020 derby was scheduled, and then rescheduled, due to the pandemic.
If you schedule a tournament in the spring, you can just about go ahead and fill in your calendar for the week before with, “A cold front is coming.” Nearly without fail, a pesky couple of cold nights will come along and try to mess up the spawning activity on any given fishery in the spring if there’s a big tournament coming up.
The same might appear to be the case here in South Carolina this week. But the overall consensus among many of the anglers here at least was the cold snap came a couple days too early to derail the potential of huge weights.
Jocumsen wanted to calm any fears of the cold weather knocking the fishing back for this opportunity. Though he was also quick to admit that Sunday — the first day of practice — was bitterly cold, with air temps of 20 degrees when he first launched his boat.
“It was full on ice out of the reels and guides freezing up,” said Jocumsen. “It wasn’t too bad; it was still fishable. But if you were in the shade or the wind, your stuff would just freeze. You had to be where there was no wind and a bit of sun on you, and then it was alright.”
Oftentimes around the spawn, when a hard cold front hits, that tends to knock the fish back from their spawning migrations. That means bass heavily interested in spawning decided to retreat with the falling temperatures. Jocumsen didn’t think that will be the case this week.
“I don’t think it’s going to bump them back,” he said. “The water wasn’t as cold as what you would have thought. I thought they were already up there, and it just got a bit cold. But it didn’t knock it back enough.”
With four days between that super cold start to practice and the start of the actual event on Thursday, Jocumsen felt confident the sunny skies and warming air temps will right the ship just in time for this to be an incredible event. And the cold snap may actually just add to the fire that’s under these fish to spawn.
“Having that cold snap actually kicks them, and now this could be insane,” Jocumsen said. “Really looking at it now, this has the potential to be the perfect storm for one of the greatest events ever.”
In addition to the cool snap and the current warming trend that’s underway, there’s also a full moon scheduled to arrive on Friday, Day 2 of the event. Full and new moons greatly enhance spawning activity, and it’s certainly no accident that this event falls on a full moon, with B.A.S.S. intentionally scheduling it this way to try to create the perfect storm. Jocumsen believed they may have just done it.
“With the moon and everything, that’s what it sort of looks like,” he said. “There’s just no doubt you’re going to have crack them to stay in this thing. It’ll take over 100 pounds, I feel sure.”
With the super cold start to practice, the water warming, the full moon on the way and the bass transitioning, there’s one added variable that will make things very interesting as anglers head out on Thursday. That variable is the off day on Wednesday. For this event, B.A.S.S. has scheduled a mandatory off day between practice and the event. Jocumsen predicts that the off day on Wednesday is really going to help and surprise some anglers, going as far as to say that the angler who wins here this week won’t really see it coming.
“They’re just going to run into them,” he said. “A lot of people are just going to go into an area where there were some fish or they had some confidence, and there’s going to be like 30 pounds sitting there ready to be caught. That’s how it’s going to go down.”
Jocumsen didn’t believe this will be an event where an angler will be able to hunker down in one spot though and ride out all four days. The fish are moving, and moving too quickly in his opinion for a good enough concentration of big ones to stay in one spot for the entirety of the event.
“You’re going to have to continually run into fish,” he said. “Sometimes you’re just going to go to your spot and they’re going to be there, or you’re going to have to go and try to look for them, because they’re going to be up somewhere loaded.”
The theme this week seems to be variables, as it typically is for that matter when it comes to fishing. But like punches from a heavyweight boxer, they just seem to keep coming here. The next up for discussion is low water levels. The word around the ramp was that the water in Lake Marion was down roughly 2 feet, and the water in Lake Moultrie is down roughly a foot as well. But Jocumsen actually thinks this one might help the anglers a bit.
“There are cypress forests, and when it really floods, the water can get way back into these swamp areas and you just can’t get a boat back there. So, the low water sometimes helps in these situations to keep bass out where they’re catchable.”
When asked whether Jocumsen thought this would be a full-blown sight fishing derby, he was hesitant to go that far. Although he does believe the prevalent patterns will be targeting bass that are at minimum interested in spawning.
“It’s probably not going to get won by someone looking at them all four days, but the majority of the fish are probably going to be up shallow getting ready to spawn.”
One last variable Jocumsen is a concerned with is the water temperatures. He definitely believes the overall water temps will rise and be where they need to be for the lake to explode with spawning activity during the event, but the water temperatures he’s seeing around the lake vary widely. The emphasis will be finding the right area with the right water temps.
“I saw water temperature as low as 51 and as high as 63 (on Sunday),” he said. “It’s some of the wildest temperature swings I’ve ever seen. The lakes are so big. The water temperature differs so much, that you could actually change areas of the lake and fish for fish that are in a whole different phase.”
By the end of the week though, Jocumsen predicts we’ll see water temps around 65 to 68 and stabilizing.
“Prime, right where it needs to be.”
Jocumsen’s optimism is certainly contagious, and it seems that the question won’t be so much how to catch them this week, but how to catch enough to not get left behind by the competition. With all the variables lining up and the storied history of Santee Cooper’s giant bass, it looks like we’re in for quite the treat here at the the third stop of the Elite season.