Winning the 2024 Tackle Warehouse Bassmaster Elite at Lake Champlain was a special thing for me. During that tournament, my wife and kids were able to come up. We have busy lives, and having fished six years on the Elite Series, this was the first tournament they attended besides the 2021 Bassmaster Classic.
Also, my cousin and her family live on Lake Champlain on the shores of the Inland Sea. They were there to watch me win it, and that was great. Additionally, one of my good buddies also lives on the New York side of Champlain in Westport, and he was there at the weigh-ins too. He was there at the beginning in the 1980s and 1990s when I was trying to do this for a living the first time, and he’s still there almost 40 years later.
While I’ve won smaller regional and local tournaments and made a number of Top 10s in the Elites, I’ve never won an event like this. Now in my mid 50s, those nagging thoughts inevitably start to work their way into your head, their frequency increasing with each passing year. Am I ever going win one? Do I even have what it takes to win? How many more chances am I going to get? What am I doing wrong? But then a few words from Dave Mercer on a stage wipe those doubts away forever.
When you wait decades, work at something for so long and sacrifice so much, I think you value good performances a little bit more. If a national-level win comes easy or early on, I doubt one can appreciate it as much as I do. That appreciation comes from having perspective, and perspective only comes with time.
In a year where the incredibly talented rookie class garnered most of the attention, I like that two “old guys” won events … me and Cliff Prince. We both have toiled for years chasing that elusive win. I don’t know about Cliff, but I know that I feel fortunate to have won, particularly when other guys like Gerald Swindle and Matt Herren — who have storied careers — have not had the planets align for an Elite Series win … yet.
Regarding Champlain, I first fished there in the summer of 1991. Back then, there was a Redman Regional that was going to be on one of my favorite lakes at the time — Buggs Island Lake on the North Carolina/Virginia border. To qualify for that tournament, I couldn’t fish the division I normally would, so I had to fish the Northeast Division full of unfamiliar bodies of water, Champlain being one of them. I ended up making that Regional, made it to the All-American that year, and at 21 I was the youngest to qualify at that point. Now that record is held by my fellow Elite angler Trey McKinney who did it at 17.
There are some bodies of water where good stuff happens when you go there, even if they don’t necessarily fit your style or you don’t know them that well. Like Buggs Island, good stuff has always happened to me on Lake Champlain since I first saw it back in 1991 and finished in the top 10.
This year at Champlain I was in an unusual spot. I wasn’t fishing for points because of my medical hardship that sidelined me for two events earlier in the year. When I got there, I went and checked the stuff I normally fish on the north end of the lake and thought I could catch maybe 18 pounds, which at the time I didn’t think was going to be any good. I also wanted to stay out of people’s way if I could. So, I fished some weird stuff on the upper end of the lake and caught a few, but I decided to go far south one day in practice to an area where I had never fished.
It looked good. It was protected. There were a lot of features and creeks. I went down there and caught some halfway decent bass, but I saw many more that were even bigger. It was the only place I saw big ones. So, I went down there during the event simply hoping to have some fun, get a check and stay out of the way. As it turns out, the closest angler to me was 16 miles away. After that the next guy was well over 20 miles. I was alone, and it was great.
It was a small area with certain sweet spots. Looking back, if there was another boat down there, we would have split up the fish and neither of us would have even gotten a check. I was lucky to be alone.
With a 2-pound lead going into the final day, knowing who was chasing me and what they were doing, I figured somebody was going to catch 20 or 21 pounds. So, if I caught 19 or 20 pounds, I’d be good. I didn’t think it was possible with my fish up north that I hadn’t touched. Although I had beat it to death, I decided to head back down the lake to where I spent the prior three days.
When I got there, the water looked much better than it had the day before. I started on the largemouth juice where I had caught them the first day on a Missile Bait Mini Flip, confident I was going catch a good bag. I didn’t get a bite. I went towards the end of that high spot which was holding smallmouth and on three consecutive casts I caught three on the jig. Then a few fish started rolling on the surface like tarpon. They were eating mayflies or some other bait, so I broke out a Spro Walking Haint and immediately caught two 3 1/2-pounders.
At that point, I had a limit with six hours left to catch a couple big largemouth. I thought it was going to happen, but after that, fishing was tough. I ran every little sweet spot I had, and nothing was working. As each minute passed, I could feel the win slipping away. I had to do something else.
During practice, I found this rockpile with some sparse grass on top. I fished it with the walking bait in practice and never had a bite, but I hadn’t thrown the jig that put most of my fish in the boat. I decided to go down there and throw the jig. As I’m running down there, I see on my Garmin that there is a flat point coming way off one side of that rock pile and it had one small circular contour line on the end of the point … a subtle high spot. I decided to fish it. I came in a little hot and by the time I came off plane and dropped the trolling motor, I was on top of it drifting quickly. Once in the water, my LiveScope transducer showed there were a dozen bass underneath the boat on that hump.
I grabbed my drop shot, and I threw back over my Mercury to where I thought the bass were. It didn’t make it to the bottom. I had one on. For the next 15 minutes, I had a bite or caught a fish every cast, including a 3-10 and a 3-8. Culling with those two fish is what gave me the win. But at the time, I didn’t know. I thought my 16 1/2 to 17 pounds would probably keep me in the top five, which would be a good finish.
When I got back to weigh in though, after someone said something to me, I realized I had a chance, but it was going to be really close. I have won the BassTrakk award quite a bit, so even though my weight showed as 16-10, I knew I had between 16-13 and 16-15. When Robert Gee went up, I realized he didn’t have me beat. Chris Zaldain and Matt Robertson said they didn’t have enough, so Chris Johnston was the only one I had to worry about. When he weighed in, I calculated in my head that I needed 16-14 to win. At that point, for the first time in four days, I got a little nervous. As directed by Robertson and Brandon Palaniuk (which is a whole other story), I ran up the stairs and placed my fish on the scales. When I saw 16-14 pop up on the screen, it was over. I won!
A month removed now, after all the texts, calls, podcasts and attention has subsided, after I’m back at work and I finally have a minute to reflect, I do wonder. Was that win the end of a 40-year journey when the fishing gods finally decided I had spent enough time in purgatory and let me have just one … or is it the start of new era for me? I don’t know.
What I do know is my roommates John Crews and Bryan Schmitt each have two blue trophies, so maybe for balance in our house I have another one coming. We all know tournament fishing is streaky and momentum driven. I’ll have to see which way it breaks for me, but regardless of how 2025 turns out, I’ll always remember and appreciate those four days in August and the blue trophy. No one can take that away.
