Author: jcarrigan

September 22, 2019 TAHLEQUAH, Okla. —

Relentless determination and commitment to his game plan paid off big for Carl Jocumsen, who turned in a catch of 19 pounds, 12 ounces on Championship Sunday and scored a career-defining victory at the Cherokee Casino Tahlequah Bassmaster Elite at Lake Tenkiller.

His four-day total weight of 54-15 was worth $100,000 and made a nice birthday gift for the Queensland, Australia angler, who turned 35 Sunday.

Jocumsen said his first Elite win — which is also the first by an Aussie — has been a lifelong dream.

“Since I was four years old, I’ve loved fishing and I’ve dreamed of the day I would do this,” Jocumsen said. “Today is that day. This is a lifetime of work; a lifetime of passion and loving this sport with every ounce of my body.”

Yesterday, after placing third and trailing leader Kyle Monti by 4-8, Jocumsen boldly stated that he believed he was on the fish to win. He predicted he needed five keepers to have a legitimate shot, and he blew away that expectation with a limit of 19-12 that ranked as the tournament’s heaviest single-day catch.

Jocumsen’s winning program stood out from much of the field, in that he committed his tournament to fishing offshore. Relying heavily on his electronics to break down the lake and identify the most promising spots, he targeted six different offshore drop-offs with brush and other cover.

Day 3 revealed a particularly productive piece of cover that delivered his final-round magic.

“I used my Humminbird 360, side imaging and mapping to break down this lake in two and a half days. I stayed out here from daylight until dark,” Jocumsen said. “Yesterday afternoon, I found this one tree off this island. It was one late in the day, and I caught one keeper. But I said, ‘I want to hit this early on the final day to see if they’re biting.’”

His intuition was spot-on, and Jocumsen experienced a phenomenal morning that saw him catch four quality largemouth by 8:30, including three in span of approximately seven minutes. Jocumsen would suffer through a long dry spell before completing his five-fish limit, but the 4-pound smallmouth that sealed his fate gave Bassmaster LIVE viewers a look at pure bass fishing emotion.

“I’ve waited my life to catch that fish,” said a visibly emotional Jocumsen. “I had gone three hours without a bite and I said, ‘It can’t go down this way. I have to finish it.’ When I caught that smallmouth, the weight of the world came off my shoulders.”

Adding a 5-pound largemouth late in the day increased Jocumsen’s total and gave him a 3-pound, 10-ounce margin of victory.

Jocumsen, who will marry fiancee Kayla Palaniuk in two weeks, caught all of his bass on a 3/4-ounce Molix football jig with a green pumpkin Strike King Rage Craw trailer. He made a couple of brief visits to fish the bank, mostly to let his offshore sites rest, but did all of his heavy lifting offshore.

In second, Day 2 leader Chris Zaldain of Fort Worth, Texas, switched tactics Sunday and caught a limit of 14-7 to finish with 51-5. After focusing mostly on running shallow points for smallmouth the first three days, Zaldain spent the first half of the final day throwing a 1/2-ounce Santone wobblehead jig with a green pumpkin creature bait trailer.

“I caught two 16-inch-plus largemouth in the morning, and that kind of relaxed me to go fish all new water and search out those smallmouth,” he said.

Zaldain added three smallmouth to his final bag. He caught those with a Megabass Spark Shad swimbait on a 1/8-ounce Megabass Okashira Screw Head.

Cory Johnston of Cavan, Cananda, finished third with 48-6. For the first three days, he spent most of his time working covered boat docks with jigging spoons and a Neko rig. But today’s conditions kept the fish from positioning in predictable spots, so Johnston switched to his backup pattern.

“With the cloudy skies, the fish didn’t position on the boat slips like I needed them to, so I ended up cranking rock banks with squarebills,” Johnston said. “I caught one in a boat slip on the Neko rig and the rest came on squarebills.”

In the Toyota Bassmaster Angler of the Year Race, Scott Canterbury took the lead with 761 points. Canterbury finished 19th this week, but maintained a slim advantage in the points race, which will be decided next week at the Toyota Bassmaster Angler of the Year Championship on Lake St. Clair.

Zaldain follows closely in second with 752, while Johnston is third with 747. Stetson Blaylock of Benton, Ark., is fourth with 741 and Drew Cook of Midway, Fla., is fifth with 733.

Cook also leads the DICK’S Sporting Goods Rookie of the Year race.

September 12, 2019Bassmaster Elite Series 2020 Schedule Puts Emphasis On Big Bass FisheriesBIRMINGHAM, Ala. —

B.A.S.S. officials have announced the schedule for the 2020 Bassmaster Elite Series, a nine-tournament slate that will take the world’s best bass anglers to six states and some of the most storied fisheries in the sport’s history.

For fans who love watching professional anglers catch giant bass, the schedule is likely to be love at first sight.

“This year, we unveiled the mantra ‘Big Bass. Big Stage. Big Dreams.,’” said B.A.S.S. CEO Bruce Akin. “We’ve certainly delivered on that in 2019 — and with the schedule we’ve put together for 2020, we’re ready to take another giant step on that path.

“Fans will have an opportunity to see our anglers compete on some of the best big-bass lakes in America.”

The season will start once again in Palatka, Fla., with an event at the St. Johns River on Feb. 6-9. Last year’s tournament on the St. Johns was one of the most exciting in B.A.S.S. history, with legendary angler Rick Clunn weighing 34 pounds, 14 ounces — a bag that included two bass over 9 pounds — on Championship Sunday to come from behind and win with 98-14.

That amazing tournament, along with an in-depth study of weekend tournament results on the fishery, earned the St. Johns River a fourth-place ranking in the Southeastern Division of Bassmaster Magazine’s annual list of Top 100 Best Bass Lakes.

It will be B.A.S.S.’s third trip to the Putnam County, Fla., fishery in five years — and the organization’s 21st visit to the St. Johns, dating back to 1973.

“We are extremely pleased to welcome back the B.A.S.S. Elite tournament to Putnam County,” said Dana C. Jones, president of the Putnam County Chamber of Commerce. “It’s a great way to start 2020, and we are grateful that they continue to choose us as a partner.

“Tourist Development Council members carefully evaluate the return on investment of all the events they fund, and it was an easy decision to host the B.A.S.S. Elite. The economic impact into our local economy by an Elite event easily equates to over $2 million dollars, and the media value of well over $500,000 is a huge value-add.”

After visiting one big largemouth factory in Florida, the Elite Series anticipates shifting to another fishery that was recently ranked as one of the best in the country on Bassmaster Magazine’s annual Top 100 Best Bass Lakes list. That event is scheduled for Feb. 14-17, but the site won’t be announced until a later date.

The Elite Series schedule will pause during March for the Super Bowl of Bass Fishing, the 2020 Bassmaster Classic. Competition will be March 6-8 on Alabama’s Lake Guntersville (second place overall, 100 Best Bass Lakes), with daily weigh-ins and the annual Bassmaster Classic Outdoors Expo in Birmingham.

When Elite competition resumes, B.A.S.S. will take a trip down memory lane with a return visit to Alabama’s historic Lake Eufaula (12th place, Southeastern Division, 100 Best Bass Lakes) in Eufaula, Ala., on April 2-5.

B.A.S.S. hasn’t visited the 45,000-acre Chattahoochee River fishery since a Southern Open was held there in 2006. But the lake on the Alabama/Georgia border has been the site of 18 major B.A.S.S. events, dating back to 1968 — just the second year of the Bassmaster Tournament Trail.

With the emergence of abundant aquatic vegetation, Eufaula has evolved through the years from a place where nearly all big-money tournaments were won on the ledges into a fishery with a little bit of everything. Options should be especially diverse during the early April visit, when temperatures in the Chattahoochee Valley should be as pleasant as they’ll be all year.

“Anyone who follows professional bass fishing is familiar with Lake Eufaula’s reputation for producing big bass,” said B.A.S.S. Tournament Director Trip Weldon. “As an organization, B.A.S.S. has had some great events there through the years, and it’ll be a lot of fun going back.”

The fourth Elite Series event will be in Manning, S.C., on the Santee Cooper Lakes April 16-19 (ninth place overall, 100 Best Bass Lakes). The fishery has hosted 13 major B.A.S.S. events, but none since the 2009 Southern Open.

Massive lakes Marion and Moultrie, which measure 110,000 and 60,000 surface acres, respectively, have been on fire recently. A BFL event held on the Santee Cooper Lakes in March was won with five bass that weighed just over 30 pounds.

The next fishery on the schedule is known for producing some of the biggest crowds in B.A.S.S. history — the Sabine River in Orange, Texas. The fifth Elite Series event on the 2020 slate will be held at Orange on May 29-June 1 and could challenge the Elite Series fan attendance record of 36,200.

It’ll be the fourth time the Elite Series has visited the Sabine River system — and in three previous visits, the crowds totaled more than 96,000.

For earlier events at the Sabine River, catch rates were somewhat low. But the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department has worked tirelessly to create a zone that is good for both the Orange, Texas, area and anglers. Thanks to those efforts by TPWD, tournament waters for the 2020 event will be expanded to include that new five-county zone.

“The Greater Orange Area Chamber of Commerce is excited to partner with B.A.S.S. to bring the Bassmaster Elite Series to Orange County once again,” said Ida Schossow, president of the Greater Orange Area Chamber of Commerce. “This tournament has brought Orange County waterways to the forefront in the fishing world. The tournament is an economic boost to our community and creates a sense of pride for our citizens.”

The site for the annual Toyota Bassmaster Texas Fest benefiting Texas Parks & Wildlife Department will be announced at a later time. But the dates have been tentatively set for June 5-9 — just before the Elite Series makes its New York swing.

That swing will begin with another trip to smallmouth bass fishing’s holy country, the St. Lawrence River in Waddington, N.Y., on July 23-26. The fishery was named the top bass fishing destination in America on Bassmaster Magazine’s list of Top 100 Best Bass Lakes, and this year’s Elite Series event on the river was won by Georgia pro Micah Frazier with an average of more than 20 pounds of smallmouth each day.

The pros will leave Waddington and head to Plattsburgh, N.Y., for an event at Lake Champlain (sixth place, Northeastern Division, 100 Best Bass Lakes) on July 30-Aug. 2. When B.A.S.S. last visited Champlain — for an Eastern Open on Aug. 2-4, 2018 — Vermont angler Bryan Labelle won with an average of almost 20 pounds of largemouth per day.

With the Bassmaster Angler of the Year title and numerous Bassmaster Classic berths hanging in the balance, the Elites will finish their season in Macomb County, Mich., at Lake St. Clair (eighth place overall, 100 Best Bass Lakes) on Aug. 20-23.

It will mark the eighth time B.A.S.S. has brought a major event to St. Clair since 1994, and the last three — in 2014, 2015 and 2017 — were all won with better than 20-pound daily averages.

“We set out to put together a schedule that would be pleasing to our anglers, our sponsors and the fans who’ve supported us for more than 50 years as an organization,” Akin said. “This is a schedule that takes us to some incredible fisheries, and every single weigh-in will be held lakeside.

“That means history will be made in some of the best settings imaginable.”

2020 Bassmaster Elite Series schedule

Feb. 6-9, St. Johns River, Palatka, Fla.

Feb. 14-17, TBA

March 6-8, Bassmaster Classic, Lake Guntersville, Birmingham, Ala.

April 2-5, Lake Eufaula, Eufaula, Ala.

April 16-19, Santee Cooper Lakes, Manning, S.C.

May 29-June 1, Sabine River, Orange, Texas

June 5-9, Texas Fest, TBA

July 23-26, St. Lawrence River, Waddington, N.Y.

July 30-Aug. 2, Lake Champlain, Plattsburgh, N.Y.

Aug. 13-16, Elite makeup date

Aug. 20-23, Lake St. Clair, Macomb County, Mich

SYRACUSE, N.Y. —

The Basspro.com Bassmaster Eastern Open at Oneida Lake attracted its share of local legends, and two of the biggest were in the Top 12.

But Oneida crowned a possible legend-in-the-making Saturday when Grae Buck brought his 15-pound, 6-ounce limit to the scales and clinched not only the trophy for the Oneida event, but an even bigger prize as well — a berth in the 2020 Bassmaster Classic.

His three-day winning total was 50-10.

“I’m ecstatic,” Buck said, shortly after he left the stage a winner. “I can’t believe I made my dream come true of fishing the Bassmaster Classic. I fished all the Bassmaster Eastern Opens this year just to come to Oneida Lake, because this is the lake I know the best in the country. It’s about 3 1/2 hours from my house, and I’ve made a lot of money up here.

“I remember being 7 or 8 years old. I played ice hockey, and I remember being at an ice hockey game and all I wanted to do was watch the Classic on the TV there. It’s always been my dream.”

The bite turned tough Saturday — a factor of the relentless fishing pressure, as well as wildly shifting winds (they were stiff and out of the West). Four of the final Top 12 failed to catch a limit, and only one pro weighed more than 17 pounds during the Championship round.

Buck not only had to move ahead of Day 2 leader Kameron Harbin of Abbeville, S.C., he also had to fend off local hammers like Jamie Hartman and Stanley Sypeck Jr., both of whom struggled Saturday. Hartman finished in third place, where he started the day. Harbin finished ninth.

Brisbane, Australia, pro Dean Silvester weighed the day’s heaviest bag at 17-5, which pushed him all the way from ninth to second. He fished a green pumpkin Z-Man ChatterBait all three days.

Buck hails from Harleysville in eastern Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. He won a BFL here at Oneida four weeks ago, and another several years ago. He’s got the lake wired, and he fished the same pattern that earned him last month’s win.

“I was fishing between 6 and 9 feet all tournament,” Buck said. “I was throwing a drop shot with a Cornerstone Baits Shimmy Shot. It’s been a strong pattern here for a month. When you get around the fish, they eat it.

“The only difference from how I won the BFL is that this week, I switched to the ghost color, which is white. I think before they were eating a lot of perch fry and gobies. Now they were probably focused more on shad. I also caught quite a few yesterday on a Ned Rig, which was a Shimmy Shot on a 1/10th-ounce Hyabusa Brush Easy jig.”

Buck made long casts with the Ned rig and precise drops with the drop shot into mixed areas of rock and grass.

Buck drop shotted with a Dobyns 7-foot, 3-inch Champion Extreme drop-shot rod and Ardent C-Force 3000 spinning reel. He used a size 2 Hyabusa DSR hook, 1/4- and 3/8-ounce Eco Pro Tungsten drop-shot weights, 18-pound Ardent Gliss braid in hi-vis yellow and 8-pound Seaguar Tatsu fluorocarbon as a leader.

“I think the most important thing for me was finding concentrations of fish,” Buck said. “I had three spots I found in practice and they held through the tournament.”

Sylvester, with his second-place check money, now faces a decision. He sold his house in Brisbane and used the proceeds to fund his four-event experiment in the Eastern Opens.

“I’m amazed I finished second,” Silvester said. “I had a really good practice and a really good tournament. My goal was to catch a limit each day, and I did that. But I think I probably cost myself on Day 2, when I lost three or four fish that really could have helped me.”

Silvester said his Eastern Open campaign cost him more than $35,000. He still has $8,000 left from selling his house, but needs to purchase a bass boat in order to keep competing. He said he’s going to start looking for financial sponsors immediately.

White was a key color all week, along with the ever-effective green pumpkin, and most pros fished some form of white at least part of the time, whether it was a ChatterBait, drop shot, frog, topwater or swim jig. Buck was fairly alone among the top finishers in his 100 percent reliance on plastics.

This was the final 2019 Eastern Open. The Top 5 finishers in the points standings, who are not already qualified through the Elite Series, will earn a berth in the 2020 Bassmaster Elite Series. Anglers must have fished all four Eastern Opens to qualify.

Alex Prince of Blue Ridge, Ga., won the co-angler division. Prince’s 8-4, three-fish limit today pushed his three-day total to 26-6.

“I don’t know what to say,” Prince said, with trophy in hand. “This means the world to me. I live in Georgia. It took 17 hours to get here. I’d never caught a smallie before this week. To come here and get a check like this — I didn’t expect that.”

Prince drop shotted a 4-inch Berkley Power Minnow in green pumpkin the first two days and threw a white swim jig the final day.

SYRACUSE, N.Y. —

Smallmouth bass ruled a slick-calm day at the Basspro.com Bassmaster Eastern Open on Oneida Lake, and Day 1 leader Grae Buck of Harleyville, Pa., bagged 17 pounds, 12 ounces of brown bass to establish the lead pace.

He holds a 4-ounce advantage over second-place Ben Nielsen of Lowell, Mich., and Patrick Walters of Summerville, S.C., both of whom weighed five-fish limits for 17-8. Walters actually anchored his bag with a largemouth, which was the only green bass caught by the Top 3.

A strong storm front swept through the area mid-week, which colored the water, and overcast conditions gave way to sun and slick-calm conditions most of the day. The famous schools of Oneida smallmouth failed to materialize, and several of the day’s top limits were caught junk fishing, while several others came through slow and meticulous finesse fishing.

Only 12 pros will earn the right to fish Day 3, and such tough conditions should paint a backdrop full of drama during Friday’s second round, as the junk fishermen battle the finesse fishermen, again under high, clear skies and light winds.

Buck has only fished one previous B.A.S.S. event at Oneida, an Open in 2013 that produced a 16th-place finish. But fans who follow Oneida events closely will no doubt recognize his name because he’s won two BFLs here, the most recent of which was four short weeks ago.

Buck has a lot of Oneida history, which he said helped him after missing more than a day of practice due to his cousin’s wedding. Overall, Buck described his practice as “tough.”

“In practice I checked two main areas I knew — one had them, one didn’t — so I fished that one today and hit them hard,” Buck said. “There were a few other boats in there, but I was the only one who caught them, so I hope I can fish there tomorrow.

“I’ve spent a lot of time here, and I’m just sort of out there picking at them. The lake has mixed rock and grass, which I love, and I just hope I can keep catching them.”

Buck caught most of his weight during a morning flurry, but added a 4-plus-pounder around 1:30 p.m., which he caught in deeper water. His goal is to make the 2020 Bassmaster Classic, he said, and a win here would put him in.

“Overall, I’m very happy with how the day went,” he said. “I drop shotted a Cornerstone Baits Shimmy Shot, which is what I won the BFL on.”

Nielsen made the trek from Michigan and things started slowly for him this morning, he said. But he eventually moved into one patch of water that produced four of the five smallmouth he weighed. With a fairly decent sack of fish, he decided against going to his remaining two areas, in anticipation of Friday.

There were a few other boats in his primary area, but given his competitive position, Nielsen hopes he’ll have some room to move around more there tomorrow, in addition to fishing his two other spots held in reserve.

He noted he’s fishing a moving bait and he’s “fairly optimistic about tomorrow.”

Walters, a Bassmaster Elite Series pro, likewise mentioned the slow nature of the fishing overall, and estimated he boated just one fish per hour. He culled only four times on his way to 17-8, and each time he replaced a largemouth with a smallmouth.

“I fished half-half,” Walters said. “I fished half the day on my practice water and half the day on new water. I have 14 rods on my deck — seven casting, seven spinning — and I’m junk fishing. You just have to run around and work hard and hope to get lucky.

“I’m going to do the same thing tomorrow,” Walters added. “I feel good about it. Sometimes you cull 10 times and things don’t work out. Sometimes you cull five times and they do work out. Today it worked out.”

Kyle Welcher (Opelika, Ala.) and Chris Kingree (Inverness, Fla.) tied for the Phoenix Boats Big Bass of the Day with a 4-13.

Japanese angler Dai Kitajima leads the co-angler division with a three-fish limit that weighed 11-14. He doesn’t speak English, but his pro Trevor Fitzgerald did note that Kitajima is a “remarkably patient and skilled finesse angler, and he spent the day dropshotting.”

Also notable is that Elite Series pro Jamie Hartman, a native of nearby Baldwinsville, N.Y., continues his roll and currently sits in fourth with 17-6. He has won two of the past three Elite events (Cayuga Lake and Lake Guntersville).

“I fished very settled today,” Hartman said. “I caught probably 25 bass, and I never felt any pressure out there. It was a great day.”

The tournament resumes Friday with takeoff at 6:30 a.m. ET from Oneida Shores Park. The Friday weigh-in begins there at 2:30 p.m. The final weigh-in on Saturday is at 3:30 p.m. at Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World in Auburn, N.Y., near the north tip of Owasco Lake.

The event is hosted by Visit Syracuse and Onondaga County Parks.

UNION SPRINGS, N.Y. —

On Sunday afternoon, for the second time in three tournaments, Jamie Hartman claimed a Bassmaster Elite Series victory.

Both were special. But he couldn’t deny this one meant just a little more.

Fishing in his home state of New York, Hartman caught five bass that weighed 22 pounds, 4 ounces Sunday and jumped from fourth place into the winner’s spot at the SiteOne Bassmaster Elite at Cayuga Lake with a four-day total of 80-13.

After all the bass had been weighed, Hartman carried the blue trophy into a boisterous crowd of fans who were eager to hug and high-five their hometown favorite. It was a stark contrast to the celebration he was basically denied when he earned his first victory two months ago at Lake Guntersville and a severe thunderstorm rolled through just as he was handed the trophy.

“It just couldn’t be any better than this,” Hartman said. “For it to happen right here in my home state with all of my family here, it’s incredibly special.

“This is where my heart is. It’ll be hard to top this — ever.”

Hartman was one of the few anglers all week whose trajectory was consistently headed upward. He caught 16-14 Thursday, 19-9 Friday, 22-2 Saturday and 22-4 Sunday.

He spent all week fishing with two baits — a 4.75-inch Synth Worm from Riot Baits in green pumpkin neon on a drop-shot rig and a shad-colored crankbait he said is no longer in production.

He said his weights went up every day because he slowly learned the sweet spots of the area he was fishing on the North end of the lake.

“I had found a place on the South end during practice that was just loaded with them,” he said. “That’s where I started, and they just weren’t in there. I left there with only about 14 pounds and went back up to one little area of grass I found back up North.

“I decided to stick with that the rest of the week, and I learned which parts of it I needed to be fishing and which ones I didn’t have to bother with.”

Hartman said the green pumpkin neon pattern, which is a two-toned worm with green pumpkin on one side and chartreuse on the other, seemed perfect for the water color at Cayuga. He dyed the tail chartreuse to add even more color.

His crankbait bite was best when there was at least a little wind blowing. So, when he found slick calm conditions Sunday morning, he panicked and decided to run to the South end of the lake in an effort to catch one more big bass fishing boat docks.

After fishing 15 docks without a bite, he ran back North.

“As I was running to the South end, I could see that wind was finally putting a little bit of a ripple on the water,” Hartman said. “I started to just turn around and go right back to fish the crankbait. But I knew I would be able to tell pretty fast if the dock bite was happening — and it wasn’t.”

His decision to leave the docks proved to be the right one as he quickly landed a 4-pounder on the crankbait that put him over the top.

“Everything happens for a reason,” he said. “If I don’t make that run to the South — if I just stay where I was — maybe I don’t catch that 4-pounder. It worked out just right.”

Without that final big fish, Hartman would have come up short at the scales. His final total of 80-13 was just 10 ounces better than that of second-place angler Jeff Gustafson (80-3) and less than 2 pounds better than third-place pro Chris Zaldain (79-0).

Hartman’s second $100,000 first-place check of the season brought his career earnings with B.A.S.S. to just over $458,000. He only joined the Elite Series three years ago, and he missed several tournaments last season with back issues.

“The first win was awesome, coming back after everything that happened last year,” Hartman said. “I had missed everything that I had worked so hard for my whole life.

“This is all I’ve ever wanted to do — and to have this happen here today in New York, is literally my dream coming true.”

The Phoenix Boats Big Bass award of $1,500 went to Derek Hudnall for the 8 pound, 1 ounce giant he landed on Day 1 of the tournament.

Hartman earned $3,000 in Toyota Bonus Bucks for being the highest placing angler to drive a Toyota, while Brandon Lester earned an extra $2,000 for being the second highest-placing pro to drive a Toyota.