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While the first three years of the Elite Series have consistently produced outsized catches, the venues have changed slightly each time. Even if the schedule had remained the same, though, no two years would be exactly alike – changes in their order, the weather and the players would see to it that new developments would occur. This year’s schedule includes nine bodies of water that have hosted Elite Series tournaments, one (Dardanelle) that has not formally hosted the full Elite field but has been the home of both Elite 50s and an FLW Series, and one that has not seen BASS tour-level competition (Mississippi River in Iowa). Some of the quirks of this year’s schedule won’t be known until it’s completed – for example, who could have known that horrible flooding would require the relocation of last year’s Iowa event -- but the following are six characteristics of this year’s slate that promise to influence who does well and what the memorable themes are when the history books are written.
No Florida
For the first time since 2006, there are no Florida lakes on the schedule. In 2007, the season ended on Toho. Last year, the pros started at the Harris Chain and then took a short drive over to Kissimmee the next week. On the whole, the very beginning of the 2009 campaign doesn’t reflect a major change – Amistad the season-opener, played that same role in ’06 and ’07, in addition to hosting the fourth stop in ’08 – but the absence of Florida will no doubt please some anglers and frustrate others.
Florida has always been a wild card – just when you think you have a tournament wrapped up, like Brian Snowden did last year, the bottom falls out. Just when you think that ultra-slow is the only way to catch them down there, KVD comes along with a lipless crank and earns a title. It’s the unpredictability of the state’s waters that make it a challenge for pros and fantasy fishing fans alike. A Bobby Lane can struggle to catch a limit of swimmers one day and then whack nearly 30 pounds the next.
The concerns about the weather that plague early season Florida events will be transferred to the anglers competing at the Red River Classic. While they’re being understandably tight-lipped about what they found during their pre-practice period, to a man they seem to think that more than any Classic in recent history this event will be determined by the regional weather (particularly precipitation), in the weeks immediately prior to the event.
Century Club Leap Year?
Each of the first two Elite Series seasons produced 100-pound plus catches in two events. In 2006, there were two of them at the season-opener at Amistad and then six more at Santee Cooper, when a massive wave of spawners enabled Preston Clark to beat the record Dean Rojas had set in 2001 by seven pounds. In 2007, the year’s first event at Amistad produced four Century Club belts. Less than a month later at Clear Lake, there were seven more, including two that broke Clark’s mark – Steve Kennedy’s 122 pounds and Skeet Reese’s 117.
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This past season produced a record twelve Century Club members in a single event at Falcon, including four limits that totaled 132 pounds from Paul Elias. There likely would have been even more had more anglers been able to fish the fourth day of competition. Todd Faircloth, who ended up in 41st place, averaged 25 pounds a day for three days. But that was the end of the century mark for 2008. To be fair, the Amistad tournament the week after Falcon was shortened to three days, after which Faircloth, Clark Reehm and Kevin Short had 76, 76 and 75 pounds, respectively, but the fishing for quality fish was markedly tougher than in the prior two years. Did they just hit it at the wrong time or is the fishery in decline? That may prove to be a salient question since Amistad seems likely to be the only event on this year’s schedule with a meaningful chance of producing a hundred pound catch. |
One wild card might be Bay de Noc. Kota Kiriyama caught 93 pounds of smallmouths on Erie last year, and if the rumors are true Escanaba, Michigan may be just untouched enough to produce a record-setting catch of smallmouths, but conventional wisdom would seem to indicate that that’s unlikely and would take a “perfect storm” of conditions and performance to produce such a mind-boggling feat. Furthermore, there’s a decent chance a day may be canceled there, thereby precluding the possibility altogether.
The Tennessee River Tour
The Tennessee River Chain of Lakes have been stalwarts of BASS competition for decades, and for good reasons – not only are they historically some of the most productive and varied waters in the country, but they also sit right in the BASS breadbasket, central to many of the anglers’ residences and close to the presumed core of their fan base.
In both 2006 and 2008, the Elite Series visited two Tennessee River lakes. The first time it was Guntersville and Kentucky Lake. This past year it was Wheeler and Kentucky. In the interim year of 2007, the only such stop was at Guntersville. But in 2009, four of the eleven tour stops will be on this storied chain. In fact, between April 2 and June 6, the pros will fish five Elite events and four of them will be on this chain. Only Smith Mountain Lake breaks up the string of Wheeler, Guntersville, Pickwick and Kentucky Lake.
| Some have speculated that this portion of the schedule should be called the “KVD Swing.” In the five Elite Series events on Tennessee River lakes, he’s finished first twice, along with 2nd, 3rd and 4th place finishes. That’s downright scary. While you can never rule out a local presumptively, the Tennessee River lakes have not been particularly kind to the Alabama pros, at least in terms of top twelve cuts. In the five past Elite Series events on the chain, on three occasions only one Alabama resident has made the cut, and twice there have been two, but never more. Tim Horton and Kota Kiriyama are the only Alabama residents to make the top twelve twice in those five tournaments. Pros from Kentucky and Tennessee, of whom there are fewer, have fared even worse. Kevin Wirth’s top twelve at Kentucky Lake in 2006 and Mark Menendez’s top twelve in 2008 at Wheeler represent their states’ only Sunday appearances. |
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Kermit’s Revenge
Many Elite Series pros were highly critical of the decision to move last year’s Iowa tournament to Old Hickory. They didn’t contest the decision to move the tournament from Iowa, which had been decimated by flooding. Rather they disputed the decision to relocate it to Old Hickory, which was seen as a poor stepsister to the otherwise stellar lakes they visited. Assuming there’s no flooding this year, they’ll get a chance to see if indeed the Iowa section of the Mississippi River can earn the right to be lumped in with the slugfest factories that otherwise populate the schedule.
Even if it doesn’t live up to its prior billing in terms of the quality of the fish, the question remains whether it’ll fish the way everyone expects. It has long been suspected that it will be a paradise for flippers and froggers and that anglers like Rojas and Brauer will leave with sore thumbs and big checks. Will that prove accurate? After all, many pundits predicted that Lake Murray would be won last year down lake on a Sebile Magic Swimmer or similar lure. You’d be hard-pressed to go back and find any pre-tournament analysis that claimed the victory would come up the river on a frog, where Fred Roumbanis had the winning limits all to himself.
Way North
The waters of Big Bay de Noc and Little Bay de Noc are not a complete unknown. As previously reported on the
BASS ZONE, several current Elite Series anglers fished in an EverStart tournament there less than four years ago and FLW Outdoors continues to hold weekend-level bass tournaments there.
Quite a few of the 2008 Elites left Oneida and headed straight for Escanaba, Michigan to find out what this place is all about. Some have said that this remote section of Lake Michigan has the potential to produce unprecedented sacks of smallmouths. Others said they don’t expect it to be as good as the Dunkirk section of Lake Erie. But they all agreed that it’s seriously BIG water and that they fully expect bone-jarring rides even on the days that aren’t canceled.
If the Tennessee River lakes play to KVD’s advantage, then surely a Michigan tournament should make him a prohibitive favorite, right? He certainly should do well, since he does well everywhere, but by no means is Escanaba in his backyard. MapQuest indicates that it’s over 400 miles from Kalamazoo.
New York, New York
Once again, the Elite Series will make two stops in New York, as it has every year. To date, the stops have always consisted of some combination of Oneida, Champlain and Erie. Indeed, in 2007, those anglers who qualified to fish the Majors got to visit all three. This year they’ll leave Erie off the list and hit Champlain and Oneida. Does this two-pronged return to the Empire State benefit northeastern anglers, or do the bountiful waters lead to a level playing field?
One angler who would seemingly benefit from the inclusion of Oneida over Erie is Dave Wolak, who has earned three straight 5th place finishes at Oneida – last year, at the 2007 Major and in 2006 – but has not cracked the top twelve in either Elite Series event at Erie. These fisheries would seem to play into KVD’s strengths, too, but he has failed to make a top twelve in New York since 2006.
The exclusion of Erie may hurt anglers like Edwin Evers, Kota Kiriyama, John Murray, Aaron Martens and Rick Morris, all of whom have made consecutive Sunday cuts there. Will their Great Lakes prowess translate to Bay de Noc or will they lose points in the exchange? Conversely, will the return to Champlain provide a boost to Tommy Biffle who finished a disappointing 57th in the AOY race in 2008? He finished 4th there in 2007 and 5th in 2006, while Erie has provided him with 98th and 80th place finishes the last two years.
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