Winning two tournaments in my first season as a Bassmaster Opens angler was definitely not on my radar at the beginning of the season. Driving to Lake Okeechobee, I knew I was one of the least experienced people in the Tackle Warehouse Elite Qualifier field. I developed this mindset that, in order to beat these guys, I have to work harder than everyone and be more efficient than everyone. Those are the two main points I’ve focused on all season.
That mindset has worked out so far and resulted in wins at Lake Eufaula in Oklahoma and at Leech Lake. I’m also leading the EQ points race and in a great position to qualify for the 2025 Bassmaster Elite Series.
As far as efficiency goes, I keep as many rods on my front deck as I can fit. I don’t have 20 baits on my deck though. A lot of times I have four of the same bait in case one breaks off or a hook gets dull. I don’t have to sit down and spend five minutes getting my bait ready again; I can just pick up another rod and fire back in there. Every time you sit down and get stuff ready, that is a lot of casts and a lot of time the bait should be in the water. It all adds up.
If I’m expecting to catch some on a certain bait, I’ll prepare a bunch of them the night before the tournament just so I don’t have to rig them up during the tournament. It has paid off big time over the course of the season.
I’m a daylight to dark kind of practicer, and I also do plenty of work before I hit the water. I study Google Earth and find as many YouTube videos as I can on a particular lake. I think people really underestimate how important practice is. Sure, you have to break it down in the tournament, but the way I approach it, I want to see the whole lake. That way when conditions change in the tournament, I can revisit some of the things I saw that could work in the given situation.
That is exactly what happened at Eufaula. When I caught the 8-pound, 12-ounce largemouth, that light bulb had gone off. I hadn’t fished that particular place yet, and it set up for what I had been doing all week. My mindset of seeing the whole lake — it is instances like that where it really pays off.
For Eufaula, I put in at Nichols Point every day of practice and drove out to the main lake. The water was orange, so I spent most of the first day driving to every creek and looking at water color. I noticed pretty quickly that three or four creeks were much clearer than everything else. Being from Minnesota, I love fishing clear water so those are the ones I gravitated to. The rest of the week, I really broke down those four creeks and made sure I marked everything I could.
Every single day I had to make a key adjustment to keep catching good quality bass. That tournament is the highlight of my career in terms of making adjustments on the fly. I look back and think, “How did I even think that on the fly?” My best adjustment for sure was to leave my scoping, offshore deal and moving to two shallow bars. I picked up a ChatterBait and just winded it across those bars.
Being versatile was huge. Everyone says all the kids only know how to ‘Scope and that sort of thing, but it is not the case for me. I spent 12 years fishing without it, so I have the instincts. The wind was blowing on the bars perfectly, and I had the confidence I was going to get the bites.
I’m super proud of that win. It was one that was just meant to be.
Leech Lake was a different animal. I have spent so much time out there over the years. Living only 30 minutes from the lake, I spent tons of pre-practice time up there. Basically any free day I had all summer long, I was on Leech Lake. I spent hours and hours idling. I’ve idled the whole lake.
In that time, you learn the little areas bigger smallmouth like to live on. You can go on a giant boulder flat and there are only five or eight where the bass like to gang up. It makes you super efficient. You can pull up and know exactly what boulders to look at. If they aren’t there, you just keep rolling. You don’t have to look at the whole flat.
In official practice, I spent hardly any time at all on my smallmouth stuff. My boat had an “X” on it. I would stay out until dark. Around 6 p.m. is when people get off the lake, and that is when I could check some of my stuff. It was mentally trying for me, and it took a lot for me to trust I had a pulse of what was going on out there. I think I would have fished way differently if I didn’t approach it like that.
There are plenty of big smallmouth in the lake, but I was really surprised to weigh in 26-10 on Day 1. It was a combination of having 200 of the best bass anglers in the country out there, and also they have been out there five days. The two days of the tournament, I had my bait in front of that caliber of fish all of the time. I went from 20 bites on Day 1 to seven keepers on Day 2. I really should have had 28 pounds on Day 1 too, but I jumped off a 5-pounder.
Hoisting that trophy in front of my hometown crowd meant the world to me. Ever since I won the Bassmaster College Classic Bracket, everyone who lives around here told me the Leech Lake tournament is “your tournament.” I had to kind of block that out, and I knew I had to still work hard.
To back up all the hype is really hard to do, and I could feel it all week. To have all my family and friends who I grew up around there at the weigh-in, they were all so supportive, it meant the world. It is a win that will stick with me forever.
