While Bassmaster Elite Series pros strive for excellence throughout each event, the right combination of variables occasionally align to create the opportunity for superlative performance. Success hinges on seizing the moment, rising to the occasion and turning in a truly memorable performance. Here’s an example from Tennessee pro Buddy Gross.
Event: 2022 Bassmaster Elite at Harris Chain of Lakes
Scenario: When a Florida warming trend coincides with a full moon like the one that hung the night before this tournament’s commencement, nature fires the starting pistol that begins a shoreward sprint. While several of Gross’ competitors — including second-place Drew Benton and seventh-place John Cox, who won the Phoenix Boats Big Bass award for his 11-pounder — leveraged the sight fishing opportunities, a significant number of fish remained in prespawn staging areas through the event.
Nowhere was this more evident than the perennial community hole known as Banana Cove on Lake Harris’ southeast side. Holding the lake’s densest grass concentration, this area was sure to see heavy fishing pressure — and it did. Knowing this, Gross wasn’t keen on hanging his hopes on sharing this area with the crowd.
Much to his chagrin, the first two days of practice offered little hope for a viable alternative. All that would change with one small clue that turned out to be the tip of a fragmented, but significant, iceberg.
“It was a really bad practice for me; I had caught very little,” Gross said. “I was idling off a grass flat, and I saw a handful of dots that were fish. I kept idling because I’d had such a bad practice. I thought, ‘Man, there’s no way things like this happen.’”
A little too frustrated to consider the possibilities, Gross kept idling away from Banana Cove en route to the Dead River. He was planning to link over to Lake Eustis, take the Dora Canal into its namesake lake and then head down to Lake Beauclair. Not far from the river’s western entrance, Gross heeded an inner logic that overrules emotion and backtracked to investigate his brief sighting.
“I was burnt out on the area,” Gross said. “I was almost to the Dead River, but I was like, ‘I’m gonna run back and fish that.’ I turned around, went back, made three casts and caught three good keepers.”
As Gross explained, the spot comprised a shell bar on the edge of a grass flat with vacant shellcracker beds. Even though the panfish were absent, there was plenty of bait. Gross used his Humminbird 360 to spot fish moving up and down the hard bottom line.
“That was as good a spot as I’d found for catching more than one fish in that one area,” Gross said. “The whole game plan was to go right there (on Day 1), catch a couple of key fish, then go to Beauclair and throw a topwater the rest of the day for three bites.
“That was the whole plan.”
The first half of Gross’ plan worked, but he never saw the second half. He didn’t need to. That shell bar pattern held up, in different spots, for four days and delivered Gross’s second blue trophy — following a 2020 win at Alabama’s Lake Eufaula.
The decision: Tournament fatigue is a real thing. Sometimes, the grind dulls the senses, dims the light — whatever metaphor one prefers. Harsh as it may sound, tough times on the water often rob discouraged anglers of opportunities they just didn’t notice.
Gross admits he nearly fell into that trap, as that mostly dismal practice had him in a shoulder slumping, jaw clinching kind of mood. Fortunately, he staved off the negativity long enough to see the potential.
“I went back to that area the first morning and didn’t catch anything on my first two casts, but on my third cast, I caught a 6-pounder,” Gross said. “After that fish, I caught them every cast for an hour. People were seeing it, so I burned it down a little bit. I caught a lot more than I probably would have normally.”
Despite guarding his spot and catching a third-place bag of 22-12, Gross returned on Day 2 and found it barren. With a handful of similar hard bottom staging areas marked, Gross ran to another option and quickly got the show going with a limit of 17-11 that pushed him into the lead.
Semifinal Saturday required a good dose of patience, as Gross’ first three stops failed to produce. He’d ultimately find another patch of shell bar with fish ready to eat the reaction baits that produced his first two bags. He’d drop to sixth with a Day 3 limit of 14-14, but the final round would prove much more generous.
Notably, Championship Sunday required a location change, as the areas Gross had been fishing finally fizzled. Relocating to a point not far from Banana Cove, he was able to find a new group of fish and exploit them for a final round limit of 22-6.
Game changer: Without any hesitation, Gross said the difference maker — the pivotal detail that pushed him across the finish line — was a dramatic bait change. After three days of throwing rattlebaits, crankbaits and swimbaits, he opted for slow dragging presentations.
“The last day of the tournament, I switched from moving baits to a Carolina-rigged 6-inch Zoom Z-Craw Worm,” Gross said. They were feeding on needlefish, and that worm imitates that (forage).”
Takeaway: Admittedly, Gross had long considered himself a spot-oriented angler. Give him enough waypoints, and he’ll make it work. This event, however, pushed him beyond his comfort zone and forced him to adopt a new mindset.
Gross said this personal development made his victory all the sweeter.
“The cool thing about that tournament was I was able move around and find them again, but it was always different fish,” Gross said. “I grew more in that tournament than any other tournament. I like going to a spot, making a cast and catching them. I usually have several of those spots, and that’s how I’ve done well.
“That tournament, I had to keep finding them every day, and I didn’t get discouraged. I felt like I could go anywhere on the lake and if I fished enough of (those bars), I’d find them again.”
