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Norman,
OK – Bass tournaments are as much about decisions as they are about execution. The choice of starting spot and technique, as well as decisions whether to stay or go throughout the course of the day, frequently separate the haves from the have nots. This reality is exemplified by Kelly Jordon's performance during the recent Elite Series swing through Florida. When everything clicked, he dominated, but when things went awry he really struggled, even though he felt equally confident in what he had found during both practice sessions.
If there were a Horizon Award for tournament-to-tournament performance, Jordon would've claimed it hands down in Florida. At the Harris Chain, he finished a dismal 108th, ahead only of fellow perpetual Classic qualifier Greg Hackney. The next week, he moved up 99 spots. He had a substantial lead after Day 2 before a Day 3 meltdown caused him to slip, although not out of the Top 12 cut for the final day.
He's a go-for-the-win type of angler, so despite his five tour level wins (four with BASS, one with FLW), he does experience the occasional clunker, but he professed that it never changes his attitude.
"I just go and fish the next one," he said. "I learn from my mistakes and I've made every one you can make."
Such swings are particularly likely from one event to another in Florida because of the fickle nature of that state's strain of largemouths. "Florida is crazy," he said. "The way the fish bite, the way they change, it's hard to do anything consistent." The most obvious evidence of the truth of that statement is the fact that after two 20 pound plus bags on Toho, he came in with the goose egg on Day 3.
Harris Chain
"Harris should have gone well, but I made poor choices and bad execution," he said. He was around the same fish as several anglers who made the top 12, but the decision to chase several monstrous bed fish was his undoing.
"I drew number 11 and I wanted to go to a big bed fish, an eight or nine pounder that was ready to rock. There were also some five pounders down there. The only guy ahead of me was Alton Jones and he couldn't catch them all. The nine pounder, I'm pretty sure she was gone. She was right up against a seawall but overnight a carpet came in out to six or eight feet off the wall."
His bed fish were "pretty much gone," although he did hook and lose one five pounder. On the way out he saw a three pound male with a five pound female and managed to hook the big girl, but she came off. By the time he made the long run up to his secondary area, it was 12:30 and "guys had gang tackled my favorite spot."
He made two seemingly interminably long idles and the area he wanted to fish was trolling-motor only, so he spent 30 minutes on the troller to get back there. Along the way, he flipped the reed points and missed his first six bites. Once he reached the back, he caught a five and a half and "two little bitty ones" for a total of 7-04, but then had to allow enough time to get all the way out, which essentially ate up the rest of the day.
He didn't regret his decision, noting that "if I had caught the two fives, I would've had 17 or 18 instead of 7."
"On the last practice day, I had told Boyd Duckett, who was staying next door, that I could've had 25 to 30 pounds in just an hour. Maybe I should've stayed there. Early in the morning, the water is slightly cooler and maybe they just weren't aggressive yet. I had the opportunity to pick off a big fish and be done with it. But Alton stayed down there all day and caught a six or eight pound limit."
Kissimmee
Despite the dismal showing at the Harris Chain, Jordon moved up the road to Kissimmee with a clear mind and the results bear out that he turned it up a notch and got his game together.
But first he had to put his past on the Kissimmee Chain behind him.
"It seems that whenever we go to Toho, I want to fish Kissimmee. Whenever we go to Kissimmee, I want to fish Toho. Toho is the best lake there. I get burned every time on Kissimmee. The only time I've done well was when I fished Toho and came in about 12th in an FLW. I lost two big fish that would've given me the chance to win. It got cold and I missed the top 10 cut. I was flipping and it got cold and I knew that would hold up better than the guys fishing a frog."
Practice
Despite his belief that Toho is the best lake in the chain, Jordon spent two of his three practice days in Kissimmee.
"On the first day, I found them on a frog. They weren't that big, but there were some big ones in with them. I was getting lots of bites and it would be no problem to catch an eight or ten pound limit."
He spent the bulk of the second day on Toho, much of which he spent looking for bedding bass. "I found the big ones bedding real quick. I looked for four or five hours, not all day, and I found three big ones, a six, a seven and an eight."
He also found a frog bite in Toho, where "you could call your shot, just like in Kissimmee. I was getting four or five bites an hour. You'd see them coming at your bait, they'd wake at it, but I never saw that in the tournament."
He spent the final practice day, the short day, in Kissimmee, where he found a bundle of additional small frog fish, which "solidified (his) decision to go to Toho."
Day 1
"I knew right where I was going. I ran right up to Toho and caught the seven pounder first. Then I caught the six, but the eight wasn't there," he said.
But when things are going your way, you make all the right moves. Scarcely a hundred yards away from his pre-located bedders, he found another fish close to eight pounds, which he also caught, and added two small bucks.
He described the six pounder as "a real idiot, the type that'd bite on the first flip." Early in the day there was another boat on it. It turned out to be Preston Clark, who Jordon described as "an awesome sight fisherman." So when he later ran to that bed he was shocked that Clark hadn't caught the fish. "He would've bit on the first flip. I took two or three minutes to catch it because you want to make sure those suckers are choking on it so they have it inside their mouth and don't come off."
Later, he ran into Clark and asked how he could not have caught that fish. They knew it was the same one because it had white spots all over its back, "some sort of fungus. It looked like it had barnacles on it." All he could figure is that sometimes this time of year the fish don't get aggressive until the water heats up a bit.
Day 2
"On the second day, I had two big ones about 50 feet apart on real deep beds. One of the females was real spooky so I eased over to the other one, about a six pounder. She had built the bed under some pads and it was hard to get a bait in there so the first day I popped some of those pads out. There was a hole there, so I eased over, pitched in blind. It was about five feet deep," he said.
His line tightened up quickly, but he realized that immediate action was necessary because he had the fish on 17 pound fluorocarbon. "That's not real heavy line with a six pounder around pads, so I set the hook and pulled her straight up to the top, through the Kissimmee grass."
He couldn't catch the other big fish, but caught the male, which weighed two and a half pounds, and added three more bucks to fill out his limit.
"Then I found a big, big one. If I had caught it, I would have won the tournament," he said. "She looked like a ten pounder, as long as your leg. But she would never stay. I worked on her for probably 30 minutes, then left, then came back."
After a while he left to run some of his frog water. He was disappointed to only get two bites in a two hour stretch, but they weighed five and a half and seven and a half pounds and substantially increased his weight, up to 21-05. He later added another fish close to three pounds on a worm.
"I thought, cool, my frog bite is working," he said. "I was leading by eight pounds and I thought I could get a limit on the frog no problem, with a shot at a big one."
Day 3
"The third day had bluebird skies and was real windy," he said. He headed straight to the ten pounder.
"She was under a dock, right by a certain pole. I tried a bunch of things, but I kept throwing in a big Mission Fish (swimbait) on a flipping stick with heavy Spiderwire. I'd fish for a while, then leave to fish the frog and look and then come back," he said.
The third time he returned, "something hit the snot out of the Mission Fish. I'm not thinking it was the male, he was a little bitty sucker. I set the hook and there was nothing there. It could have been him, I can't confirm. I think I felt it go over her back, too. I left for 15 minutes, eased back over."
"I pitched in a Senko, a perfect pitch, set the hook and caught the male. I put him in the livewell. Sometimes if you hold onto them for a little bit, the female will get real mad. But I kept flipping in the same spot and never got another bite. Finally I let him go and I never had another bite there."
What really shocked Jordon was that his frog bite had evaporated: "It blew my mind," he said. "In practice you could call your own shot."
He roomed with Zell Rowland, who had caught 17 pounds the day before in Kissimmee on a Chatterbait, and invited Jordon into his area.
"I had such a big lead, so it was a conservative move on my part to go down there at 12:30," Jordon said. "Zell had told me how they were holding, where they were, how to fish the Chatterbait. I had four fish pop it, but I didn't hook up one time."
"I got that slow sinking feeling. The big old zero"
Despite the dramatic change in his fortunes, Jordon suffered no loss of confidence. "It didn't hurt me mentally at all," he said. "Nothing like that rattles me. I know how to lose good, if that makes any sense. I don't question my ability as a fisherman, but it causes me to examine my decisions."
Day 4
He went out on the last day still well within reach of the win, and winning was the only thing on his mind.
"I picked out the one thing that I thought I could do to catch a 20 pound bag, even though it turned out that I only needed 15 pounds. The only way I knew how to do that was to throw a frog in Toho," he said.
"I threw a 10 inch worm for 15 minutes, a Chatterbait for maybe a combined total of 25 minutes and a buzzbait for 10 minutes, but everything else was the frog."
The gamble didn't pay off. He had five solid bites, caught three of them, for a total of just over seven pounds.
"One of them should have been five or six pounds, but she was all lips and fins and only weighted three and a half. I caught a two and a half that was also all spawned out. I caught them both in 15 minutes in the same area where I caught the five and a half on Day 2. They live there, and if you can get them going you can smoke them."
Late in the day he ran to an area where he felt certain he could catch a limit of one to two pound fish in 30 minutes. He caught a third keeper, but no more. Still, he has no regrets: "One seven or eight pound fish and I would have won."
Aftermath
Of Jordon's five tour-level wins, two were in Alabama, with one each in South Carolina, Maryland and Florida (an FLW on Okeechobee). The next two BASS events are in his home state of Texas.
"I'd love to win won there. It would be awesome. Everybody wants to win in their home state," he said.
He'd especially like to win on Falcon, because "it would mean I'd have another century belt."
But at the same time, he cautioned that he's not truly a local: "My house is about as close to Falcon and Amistad as it is to Old Hickory in Tennessee."
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