If not for a mental lapse, Trey McKinney would still be in the driver’s seat for the Progressive Bassmaster Angler of the Year title.
The 19-year-old rookie mistook his check-in time at Smith Lake and ended up suffering a disqualification. The point lead he held for five events vanished.
“It’s a stab. It was like a shot,” McKinney said. “I locked up. My mind just blew a gasket. I thought I knew exactly when I was coming in.”
Instead of leading by 60 or more points, the Carbondale, Ill., pro goes into the final stretch with a 24-point deficit.
“We made it a lot harder on ourselves,” he said. “We’re just going to have to regroup and give it a shot.”
McKinney’s hopes of making up for his blunder lie in New York, where the season wraps up with back-to-back events on Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence River. He said he’s going in with mixed feelings. He has the opportunity to become the first rookie to win AOY in more than 20 years, but he has his work cut out for him.
“The weights are so tight, even one mistake can drop you so much. I realize how tight it will be,” he said. “I’m going to have to catch them really, really good in both tournaments to come back.
“Am I very good northern fisherman? No. I haven’t really ever done it.”
Lost in time and space
McKinney climbed atop the AOY leaderboard after winning stop No. 2 at Lake Fork, where he became the youngest Elite champion by four years and nearly set the all-time weight record. With two more Top 10s and no finish lower than 22nd, he led AOY through the next four tournaments.
Disaster struck on June 28, Day 2 at Alabama’s Smith Lake.
Standing 32nd after Day 1, McKinney said he was a bit stressed midway through the second day. With only a small limit, he worried that Classic champ Justin Hamner, already in the Top 10, was cutting further into his lead.
Something clicked for McKinney, and he started enticing bigger bass. He caught a pair of 4-pound fish and culled to the best bag of the day. During his rally, somehow, in his mind, he became dead set that his check-in time was 3 p.m. — it was actually an hour earlier.
“Once I caught ‘em, basically I was chill,” McKinney said. “I was good. Everything was all right. I was going practicing. I was just locked in that my check-in was 3 o’clock.”
With one small fish to cull and thinking he had plenty of time, McKinney rode past check-in at Smith Lake Park and went up the creek. He replaced his squeaker with a 2-8, giving him 16 pounds, 4 ounces, a weight that would have put him in second place.
“I was literally listening to music and flipping a dock,” he said. “I was just waiting. I knew I’d be in the Top 10.”
The check-in area was within sight when his phone rang. And rang. And rang. Strange, he thought, his family knew they can’t call during competition hours. Thinking it was an emergency, he finally answered. A frantic “Hey, where are you?” knocked him from his time fog.
“I just threw the phone and took off with the trolling motor down. Almost lost all my rods,” McKinney said.
An 83-point swing
Seven minutes late meant a 7-pound penalty, giving McKinney credit for 9-4 that dropped him to 63rd. Starting the event 59 points ahead of Hamner, who then stood eighth, McKinney still would have led AOY by 4 points.
However, off stage with B.A.S.S. officials, McKinney confirmed he answered his phone. He was told the outside help violated rule C3 xiv, disqualifying his entire Day 2 weight. Call or not, being 15 minutes late would have erased all his catch. It was a disastrous way to lose the lead.
“I was torn up,” McKinney said. “Everything you couldn’t control, you controlled. Then the one thing you could control, you didn’t control.
“I never cry. I was shedding a tear at the boat ramp. I didn’t know how to handle it. Oh my gosh! I may have just ruined the season.”
With a zero, McKinney left Smith in 93rd and dropped to third in AOY. He was now 26 points behind Hamner and six back of event leader Huff. McKinney regained some ground when Hamner and Huff fell to 10th and ninth, respectively, so he’ll start Champlain 24 points back of Hamner and two ahead of Huff.
“It definitely took a toll on me. I’ve never had anything like this happen,” he said. “It meant so much to me and to watch it go in just minutes, it really stung. I was in kind of a dark place for a few days.”
That happens after a self-inflicted 83-point swing.
Pulling up the bootstraps
It was understandable McKinney felt like hiding under a rock. Instead, he pointed north and drove all day and night. The next few weeks would be spent pre-practicing on Champlain and St. Lawrence until the cutoff periods.
His only other foray north was an 88th-place finish in last year’s St. Lawrence Open, so McKinney worked to better learn the ways of the smallmouth. His mission: Put the crash behind him with a crash course.
“Exactly. That’s the only thing you can do,” he said. “The past is past. The future is future. The more I dwell on it, the more I kick myself, the more mad I get, the more I think about I won’t ever have this chance again. Those thoughts don’t help you.
“There’s no reason for me to think like that. It would just affect me more in the long run, just being negative. That plays big on how you fish, how you practice.”
A little help from friends
Fellow Elite rookies JT Thompkins and Tyler Williams, eighth and 12th in AOY points, joined McKinney. They helped get his mind right while getting some good work done.
“Between us three, we can break down a lake so fast,” McKinney said. “If you’re a sad person, like I was after that, you just go hang out with Tyler. He has a different way of doing things. He just cracks me up. Anything he does makes me laugh. We just had a good time.”
There were also a “few lightbulb moments” for McKinney, who experienced flurries at both fisheries, along with their fury. A calm morning turned into a rough afternoon at Champlain, forcing him to navigate rollers at 6 to 10 mph for more than two hours to get back in.
At St. Lawrence, he went into Lake Ontario, where he got stuck in a storm and broke some equipment. Lesson learned. Later, he ventured out with his electronics secured. His searches concentrated on finding areas like those that produced 100-pound totals in the past two Elites there.
“There’s a little bit of a trick to catching them,” he said. “If it’s windy, I can’t throw it. I can’t present my bait right.”
Still, McKinney said he averaged close to 25 pounds a day, with a best of 27. He also learned it’s hit or miss.
“It’s all about picking the right area,” he said. “The guy one point over can have 30 pounds and you’re not catching jack.”
There are risks of making the long run from Waddington, and he’s unsettled on his plan. Last year, Kyle Welcher put all his eggs in the lake and caught enough to claim AOY, but equipment wear and tear caught up with him on the final day, stifling his chances to win and top 100 pounds.
“I love the lake. Would I like to go to the lake? Yes, but sometimes Mother Nature says no,” McKinney said. “It will all depend on what happens at Champlain.
“If I have a really good tournament — Holy cow, I got a chance, there’s hope — then it starts playing I might stay more conservative than being more risky.”
To continue his northern acclimation, McKinney spent the rest of the five weeks between Elites visiting other lakes in the region. When contacted, he was finishing his first day on Cayuga Lake, where the New York record largemouth was recently caught. McKinney reported he caught a 7 and a 6 with his best five going 27 1/2.
“Ran a gut feeling. When I can do that at a place, I feel more confident,” he said. “The main thing for me is the gut feeling. A largemouth fishery, I know how to adjust, but smallmouth, I’m going to that spot and if they’re not there, it looks like I’m out of luck. I don’t know how to adjust quickly yet.”
Figuring that out might take more time, a heal-all for wounds. A fruitful month of fishing has helped put some distance on his Smith Lake debacle.
“The weather is awesome. I’m not sweating every day,” he said. “I’m enjoying life. I got a smile when I wake up and a smile when I go to bed.”
If he doesn’t recover and win AOY, the time mix-up will haunt him for a while. The ultimate fix, he said, would be “catching lots and lots of bass. That’s basically the only cure.”
A young man of faith, McKinney is still coming to grips with his Smith Lake snafu. He realizes it’s a fact of life that humans all make mistakes. He’s just praying he’s suffered his worst, that he learns from it and goes on to build a successful career in fishing.
“I’m a believer,” he said, “and for some reason — I don’t know what yet — He has a plan.
“In the grand scheme, this is a small thing.”
