Event: 2023 Bassmaster Elite at Santee Cooper Lakes
Scenario: It’s one thing to know the weather forecast, but knowing how to interpret the impacts it will have — now that’s how tournament are won. While this late-April event saw a chilly practice, Palmer knew the tournament days would bring a warming trend and very likely see a spawning wave.
A year prior, Palmer placed fourth in a mid-March event at Santee Cooper Lakes, while Drew Cook sight fished his way to victory. Channeling the frustration of coming up a little short at that 2022 event, Palmer gave the same area another shot because he knew the potential was there. Success, he said, was a matter of repetition.
“That tournament was one off of history for me. The year prior, when Cook won, the area I was in had the potential for a 35-pound bag. I did get a 33-pound bag on Day 3, but I knew it had the fish to win.”
Unfortunately, the area on Lake Marion’s southwest side — a spot Palmer called a big funnel for spawning fish, with cypress trees skirted by eel grass — suffered when the week’s wind turned it cold and muddy. The 2023 event would serve up a more favorable scenario — but one requiring Palmer’s continued faith, along with his willingness to pivot as needed.
“In that event, the fish were not in there as good, but I caught a huge one around 8 or 9 pounds in the last hour of the final practice day. That area had a lot of people in practice, but not in the tournament.
“Once the tournament started, the fish decided to show up. As the warming trend happened, those fish that were out in the eel grass made a big move.”
The decision: Palmer entered the 2023 tournament convinced that throwing a bladed jig with a Gene Larew Long John Minnow through the eel grass offered his best shot at winning. Much to his surprise, a seasonal shift would literally nullify that deal. Shaking off the sudden upheaval, Palmer regrouped, dialed in the right deal and rode that pony across the finish line.
The linchpin? Belief in his spot.
“In practice, it was pretty tough. On the final day, I pulled into a section and started catching some good ones on that grass edge. That’s what I was counting on. It was like there was a wave sitting out there waiting. But when that warming trend came they vanished from the grass.”
Moving to the cypress trees, those previously staging fish arrived in a snappy mood, and Palmer was ready capitalize. Armed with a 7-foot-3 heavy Falcon Amistad rod and a high-speed reel spooled with 20-pound Sunline Shooter fluorocarbon, he picked off big fish after big fish by flipping a YUM Wooly Bug and a YUM Bad Mama, both Texas-rigged with a 3/16- or 5/16-ounce Rougarou Tungsten weight.
Picking through the thousands of cypress trees dotting Lake Marion, Palmer found the ones closest to deep water most productive. With the event scheduled toward the traditional end of the Santee Cooper spawn, he focused on the zone most likely to attract late spawners.
Palmer attributed a big chunk of his efficiency to his Power-Poles, which allowed him to maintain his position, while his Humminbird MEGA Live forward-facing sonar showed him a tree’s residents. Each tree had a particular “sweet spot,” so he tried to make the casts that would trigger bites from territorial bass.
Describing the feeling of redemption after knocking on the door a year earlier, Palmer said: “We all talk about that special time when everything went right and this was it. I would have liked to win the year before, but it wasn’t my time, it was Cook’s. I was very blessed that it happened when it did.”
Palmer got off to a solid start with a limit of 21 pounds, 3 ounces that put him in 10th place. He’d back that up with 23-9 on Day 2 and move up to third. Palmer continued improving with a third-round total of 26-3 that sent him into Championship Sunday with the lead.
During a final round that saw early morning showers, then a brutal midday storm, Palmer lock up his bag of 25-15 by 10:05 (per BassTrakk). Catching the day’s biggest bass, a 7-5, clearly helped the cause.
Finishing by a margin of 14-3 over Kentucky pro Mark Menendez, Palmer claimed his first blue trophy.
Game changer: Oddly enough, Palmer thanked a stroke of bad luck for opening his eyes. Usually, a multi-hour session marked by crushing losses would send an angler into the dreaded spin-out. However, Palmer said this frustration pulled his focus away from what probably would not have held up for four days and allowed him to lock on to what clearly did.
“The first morning of the tournament, I pulled out to my grass fish and I spent three or four hours out there trying to get them to bite and nothing was happening,” he said. “I had gone down a spot in practice and caught a couple 2- to 3-pounders on a buzzbait, so I said, ‘I’m gonna go over there and try it.’
“I pulled over there and lost 23 to 26 pounds of fish on a buzzbait in an hour. If I would have landed those fish, it could have ruined my tournament, because that afternoon, I pulled up on a few trees at 1:30 and caught 21 pounds. When that happened, it all clicked for me.”
Takeaway: Looking back, Palmer said his Santee Cooper win stressed a principle that, while certainly not new to him, became ever more resonating.
“Don’t force things. When it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. The first day, I didn’t have a single bass in the boat at 1:30, and from 1:30 till 3 o’clock I was able to change my whole outlook on the tournament.
“It’s like (Mike) Iaconelli says: ‘Never give up.’ You gotta go down to the last second and that could make it happen for you.”
