When I made a leap of faith to leave MLF and take on the Bassmaster Opens Elite Qualifiers, I knew the odds were against me. It is incredibly difficult to run the EQ gauntlet to become an Elite angler.
I’m really proud I made it by finishing second in the overall Angler of the Year standings. Looking back over the season, I can’t help but wonder if fate was on my side.
If you finish near the bottom in one EQ event, your odds of making the Elites are slim. If you bomb in two of the tournaments, you’re pretty much out of it.
I was on the verge of bombing on Day 1 of the first EQ on Lake Okeechobee. It was noon, and I had only three small bass.
I ran across the lake and finished the day with a decent limit. I did well enough on the second day to finish in 37th place. The decision to make that long run prevented a disaster.
At the third EQ on Santee Cooper Lakes, I made a last-second move that saved my season. With minutes to spare before my 3:30 check-in on Day 1, I had only four bass.
On the run back, I pulled into a pocket near the boat ramp at 3:22 and skipped a Senko under a cypress tree. I jammed the rod’s handle between my knees and ripped off my sun shirt so I could put on my tournament jersey for the weigh-in.
I was shirtless when a 4 1/2-pound bass nearly pulled the rod overboard. It was the biggest fish I caught that day. I started in that pocket the next day and sacked over 20 pounds. That jumped me from 92nd to 44th place.
If I had not caught that last-second 4 1/2-pounder, I probably would not have qualified for the Elite Series.
The fifth event at Lake Eufaula, Oklahoma, was a tough bite. Thirty pounds got 10th place. I had a strong start on the first day but struggled the next.
I had three small bass late in the day when I pulled up to a bridge I hadn’t fished before. It’s the biggest community hole on the entire lake. There must have been 25 tournament boats there.
I was only 20 feet from another boat when I spotted one little rock on the bottom with Garmin LiveScope. I pitched a drop shot to the rock and caught a bass that weighed 6-13 on 7-pound line.
I finished the event ninth with 36-6. Without that big one, I would landed far below 10th place.
I also had some good fortune at the second-to-last EQ on the Upper Mississippi River. About 40 of us ran downstream to lock through to Pool 9. A barge was in the lock when we got there. We had to wait more than an hour for the lock to open.
Everybody was casually dragging baits up and down the lock’s wall and chatting to kill time. I was fishing a shaky head. At some point, I said it would take a miracle for anybody to get a bite.
I swear, the moment I said the word “bite” I got a bite and caught a 3 1/2-pound smallmouth. I was treated to a chorus of heckling about how lucky I was.
After finally locking through, I ran to an area I found in practice. Randy Howell was there too. I quickly caught a 12-pound limit. I felt confident I could catch some bigger ones by staying put.
But I was uneasy about the lock. After an hour of casting, my gut kept telling me to leave. I locked back up to Pool 8 and culled every bass in my livewell except for the smallmouth I had caught along the lock wall.
I weighed in 18 pounds — my best ever limit on the Upper Mississippi. I was in fifth place. Randy was ninth with 17-3.
Had I stayed in Pool 9 the first day and gotten into the quality of bass Randy caught, I would have returned there the second day. Instead, I stayed on Pool 8, sacked over 15 pounds, and dropped only one place in the standings.
Randy caught 18 pounds on Pool 9 but scored a zero because he was 20 minutes late due to a delay at the lock. Had I locked down on the second day, I might have suffered the same fate as Randy. That probably would have prevented me from making the Elite Series.
Add these fortuitous instances to my Leech Lake experience that I mentioned in my last column. Had I not snagged a ChatterBait there, I never would have seen all the smallmouth swarming in the shallows. That discovery carried me to a fourth-place finish.
I’ve had some lucky things happen to me on occasion throughout my bass tournament career, but nothing like I experienced this year fishing the EQs.
It feels like everything that happened to me was meant to be.
