It’s crunch time, and the move from stingy Fort Gibson to Tenkiller Lake has Chad Morgenthaler breathing a little easier.
The Reeds Springs, Mo., angler stands inside the cut to fish the Toyota Bassmasgter Angler of the Year Championship, and he desperately wants to move up a few notches to qualify for his seventh Bassmaster Classic. So it’s do-or-die for him and others on the bubble as they head to Oklahoma for the Cherokee Casino Bassmaster Elite at Tenkiller Lake, Sept. 19-22.
“I was mowing the yard yesterday, and I was thinking about this whole situation on Tenkiller and the point spread,” Morgenthaler said. “I don’t think there’s going to be a tremendous amount of moving around. Even though 90 percent of the anglers haven’t been on the lake before, it doesn’t matter. The Elite anglers catch them every single time we put our boats on the water.”
The event will finalize the field of 50 who advance to Lake St. Clair, Sept. 29-Oct. 1, where the AOY title will be decided as well as berths to the 50th Bassmaster Classic on Lake Guntersville. Morgenthaler is 47th with 461 points, just six points inside the cut to advance, a scary place to sit.
Many Elites were pointing to Fort Gibson as a real wild card event, where a top 10 was as likely as a bomb. The tournament was moved to Tenkiller Lake last week due to an issue with the dam, and high water — B.A.S.S. wanted to prevent a potential last-second cancellation by lake managers.
The move sits well with Morgenthaler.
“It made me more calm,” he said. “I could have been one of the guys who double zeroed and fell out of the AOY Championship. Now I feel I have a really good shot at catching enough to at least stay even. I feel I’m going to put more pressure on other people to knock me out. I may not be able to advance enough to get into the Classic cut, but I’m going to be harder to knock out of the AOY cut.”
Before the switch, Morgenthaler said he targeted making the top 35 in the final regular-season event to advance to St. Clair. The high water and hot conditions in Oklahoma had many of the Elites saying it would be tough to even fill limits. Tenkiller has a greater fish population, including largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass, and now anglers don’t expect wild swings in the standings.
“Now, because everybody is going to catch fish, I feel like where I need to finish probably got extended 20 places,” he said. “I can probably finish in the top 50, 55 and stay in the AOY.”
Although he’s never fished on Tenkiller, Morgenthaler said his initial thought was that now he’ll almost certainly get bites. After talking with fellow Elite and neighbor Brian Snowden, he discovered the lake, about three hours from home, will fish much like Table Rock. Tenkiller is clear for Oklahoma, deep and is set up similarly.
“I feel pretty comfortable. I’ve been on Table Rock every day for about a week and half now. I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on what could be going on down there,” he said. “I’m trying to keep my options and eyes open, that’s why I’ve been on the water so much.”
Not keeping an open mind hurt Morgenthaler earlier this season. On Day 1 of the season at the St. Johns River, he struggled and didn’t have a fish at 12:30 p.m. A change in strategy allowed him to bring in four fish, although he lost two 5-pounders. With 26 pounds on Day 3, he climbed back to finish 13th. He knew it could have been better, or way worse.
“I got locked into a pattern and location in practice, and I couldn’t shake that,” he said. “The first day I struggled with nothing at noon, then I shot from the hip. I needed to get out of there, and I was rewarded. I came from nearly finishing dead last, so that was learning experience to trust my gut and don’t get locked into anything.”
Making the first two cuts put Morgenthaler 11th in the AOY standings, but missing the next four Top 35s dropped him to 52nd. Top 40 finishes in New York, narrowly missing the cut each time, put him back on the bubble. He most laments his 63rd at Lake Guntersville, where his comfort level was high.
“That’s the one that is absolutely killing me. I like to flip grass, I’m good at flipping grass. I know how to flip that particular lake, but I was so hard headed that I was determined I was going to catch them on ledges, and it absolutely destroyed my tournament,” said Morgenthaler, who finally left the ledges and weighed in eight of his 10 fish from the grass. “I fished grass for a grand total of about an hour and half, including all my practice day and the tournament. If I had practiced there at all and knew the stretches, I guarantee I wouldn’t be in this position.
“I learned you can’t count anything out. I should never go into an event thinking this is how I need to catch them, this is how it’s going to be won.”
The veteran said he preaches to young anglers that tournament fishing is a continual learning process. He said he actually takes more away from the bad tournaments than ones in which he does well, but anglers have to remember where they went wrong and apply it to the future. Each angler can look back and lament tactics, wrong decisions and even one lost fish.
“The guys who blame a Classic miss or AOY on one fish, that’s just the one that bothers them the most,” he said. “There’s a whole magnitude of situations that could have been different on that path. From that point on, I try my best to learn and not repeat my mistakes from the terrible tournaments.”
Zigging when you should have zagged, and vice versa, can haunt the mind, so it’s best to move forward. For the next two events, Morgenthaler knows what he needs to do to reach his goal of getting back to Lake Guntersville next March.
“My theory on the points is you go out and do your job and you don’t have to worry about them,” he said. “I’m in the cut right now, which is where I need to be at the end, so I just flat out need to catch them.
“I’ve got to catch them in both events. Perfect scenario is I catch enough to move me up in points to give me a better chance of making the Classic. If I can move right to or into the Classic cut, that would be fantastic. Right now it’s one tournament at a time. I know if I don’t make the AOY Championship, I’ll be working the Classic Expo.”
A sobering thought.