2024 St. Croix Bassmaster Open at Lake Okeechobee Day 1: Scott Martin Drops 30 Plus Limit!

Martin mashes 33 pounds, 2 ounces to take Day 1 lead at Okeechobee

Clewiston resident Scott Martin smashes 33-02lbs to grab
leaded on Day 1. (Photo Andy Crawford/BASS)

David A. Brown

BASS Press Release 

CLEWISTON, Fla. — Local knowledge certainly helped, but Bassmaster Elite Series pro Scott Martin said patience was the key to his massive limit of 33 pounds, 2 ounces, which leads Day 1 of the St. Croix Bassmaster Open at Lake Okeechobee presented by SEVIIN.
Martin, who grew up fishing Florida’s largest lake, heads into Day 2 with a lead of 5-12 over Tucker Smith of Birmingham, Ala.
“When you fish in Florida, you have to be slow and methodical and make accurate casts and pitches,” Martin said. “That’s the only reason I caught ’em — I stayed very patient.”
Noting that he did not fish the same places he targeted during the 2023 Elite Series opener on his home lake, Martin said he dialed in his main area late Wednesday afternoon. Knowing how to exploit what he found was the difference maker.

2023 Tackle Warehouse Invitationals Clark Hill Lake Day 2: Ebare Continues to Lead!

Sean Ostruszka

MLF Press Release

APPLING, Ga. – Fifty boats will be taking off for Day 3 of Toyota Stop 2 Presented by Lowrance on Clarks Hill. In reality, most eyes will be on just one of them.

Dakota Ebare has absolutely dominated the second event of the Tackle Warehouse Invitationals through two days. After weighing in the biggest bag of the event yesterday – 23 pounds, 13 ounces – he brought in another 18-6 today to be the only angler to cross the 40-pound threshold (42-3 to be exact).

In a tournament where weights are stacked together, his 5-5 lead going into the final day is quite the cushion. Yet, as positive as today looked, he may need all of that cushion come tomorrow if things continue as they do.

You see, a day ago Ebare was beyond excited about a deep and shallow one-two punch he’d executed to near perfection on Day 1. Day 2 was an entirely different story.

“It was a struggle,” Ebare said. “I know I could’ve went and caught some spotted bass, but I wasn’t really fishing for that. And I knew the largemouth weren’t really biting good, but I said if I’m going to grind out a couple bites I’m going to try for a big bite. Well, that didn’t work out either.”

A big reason, Ebare thinks, is the weather and pressure had the fish completely turned off. He said his areas were just “dead,” as he could watch fish on his forward-facing electronics not budge or even acknowledge his offerings. He compared it to hunting in the woods and not hearing a single sound or seeing anything moving.

2022 Bassmaster Elite at Lake Fork Day 1: Prince Takes Narrow Lead On Windy Lake Fork

BASS PRESS RELEASE

QUITMAN, Texas. — Early success gave Cliff Prince the comfort and confidence to look for the big bites he needed to amass an eye-popping Day 1 limit of 32 pounds, 5 ounces that leads the Simms Bassmaster Elite at Lake Fork.

 Hailing from Palatka, Fla., site of the Elite season opener on the St. Johns River, Prince leads last year’s Lake Fork champion, local pro Lee Livesay of Longview, Texas, by 5 ounces.

 

“I had one place when I was working my way to the back of a pocket, and I caught 25 to 26 pounds off of that spot by about 9:30,” Prince said. “I caught everything I had off that first spot in about 20 minutes.

 

“I caught 10 fish there and they were still biting when I left.”

 

Knowing he had positioned himself well, Prince transitioned to a more aggressive strategy. Essentially, he became more discerning, as he sought quality over quantity.

 

Crowding throughout the lake, plus a strong Southwest wind blowing 15 to 20 mph, compelled him to remain in the creek where he started and diligently seek its greatest potential.

 

“Having 25 pounds early allowed me to go find what I found this afternoon,” he said. “I wasn’t in a hurry to go anywhere because I knew the wind was going to wipe out a lot of the stuff. I knew (big fish) live in that creek, and I knew it was the right place to be.

 

“I fished around in that area and tried to find something else and, late this afternoon, I tried to duplicate (my morning spot) and I ran across two other points that had some fish. On the second one I fished, I caught two 7-pounders. That’s what made the difference.”

2020 FLW Pro Circuit Lake Martin Day 3: Jason Abram Continue Lead with 41-06 lbs!

Shallow largemouth key for top anglers 
By Sean Ostruszka

FLW PRESS RELEASE

Shallow bite and skinny dipper key to larger bites for Abram
(Photo: FLW)

About 2 1/2 pounds separate Kerry Milner in 10th place and Ron Nelson in second. That’s the same amount separating tournament leader Jason Abram from Nelson going into the final day.

In what has been a remarkably tight Tackle Warehouse Pro Circuit event on Lake Martin, Abram did something very important today: Despite losing a 5-pounder and a 3-pounder, he still found a way to separate himself from the pack. His 12-6 limit was the third largest of the day, and it pushed him to 41-6 total.

As was showcased on day one, Lake Martin does have some kickers swimming around in it, and just one from any pro in the top 10 tomorrow could make a close tournament all that much closer. In talking with many of the guys chasing Abram, it sounds like they’ll be swinging for kickers tomorrow to try and catch him.

That makes the 5-pounder Abram lost today (and the 5-pounder he lost yesterday) all that much more important, especially since his pattern seems to be dying both because of a lack of sun and falling water.

“It [the falling water] definitely has been a problem for me,” says Abram. “The fish I’ve been catching have been dirt shallow; like in 10 inches of water.”

Despite the deteriorating conditions, he’s still getting the right bites. 

Just as he did the previous two days, Abram started out burning the bank in the mid-lake region in search of a quick limit of spotted bass.

“They’re just random banks I’m paralleling with a Reaction Innovations Skinny Dipper,” says Abram. “I think the spots [spotted bass] are just pushing bait up against the bank, because I’ll go a while and then catch three or four quick. It’s like a pod swam up and I’ll catch them.”

That gave him a “confidence-booster” limit by 9 a.m. today, and once the sun peeked out just a bit around 10:30, he immediately switched to his largemouth pattern, with instant results.

“The first bite I got was that big one I lost,” says Abram. “Then I caught two more after that within 30 minutes.”

Andrew Upshaw Wins 2019 Costa FLW Series Championship on Lake Cumberland!

2^nd Cumberland win for Upshaw in 2019

by Curtis Niedermier

FLW PRESS RELEASE

He did it again.

Fog delay and bluff walls key to win for Upshaw.
(Photo: FLW)

For the second time this season, Andrew Upshaw is an FLW champion thanks to consistent days spent targeting big Southern smallmouths. The Tulsa, Okla., pro won the 2019 Costa FLW Series Championship on Lake Cumberland in Burnside, Ky., with a three-day total weight of 42 pounds, 15 ounces. The win comes less than seven months after Upshaw won the FLW Tour event on Cherokee Lake in east Tennessee.

“I’m just going to call it blind luck,” says Upshaw about his recent string of success on smallmouth fisheries. “And I’m glad to have it, to be honest with you.”

Complete results

Upshaw calls it luck, but his recent performances say otherwise. He’s actually a smallmouth fanatic, and it showed this week.

“For the duration of my Tour career, we’ve fished enough smallmouth fisheries that I’ve kind of learned how they set up and stuff like that,” he says. “The other thing is, one of my favorite places to fish in the country is Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie. I really love catching smallmouth up there. Now, they set up totally different up there, but that love for smallmouth drives me to learn how to catch them in other places.”

Like up north, the smallmouths down here are aggressive fish. Upshaw had that in mind as he formulated a game plan. He knew that if he was going to win with smallmouths, he needed to find a pattern that would get him a lot of bites. Cumberland is full of fish, so if he wasn’t getting bit consistently, he wasn’t on a program that could win. 

He eventually found the right stuff down on the reservoir’s lower end.

“What I figured out was main-lake transition bluffs, but it had to have the river channel swing on it – true river-channel swings,” Upshaw says. 

The best transitions started at 45 to 50 feet deep adjacent to the wall and shallowed up to 22 to 24 feet deep. 

“Right where it started slightly flattening out, that’s where they’d be sitting,” Upshaw says. “I had about 15 spots, from about Conley Bottom down. Some of them didn’t ever fire like they did in practice, and some did better than they did in practice.”

Upshaw figures a lot of these fish are already in or near their wintertime holes. Some might eventually shift over to the deeper water near the bluffs, but others will stay put. More fish were transitioning into these areas during the tournament, which meant he had new bass coming to him. He was on so many fish that, yesterday, Upshaw actually left them biting after multiple culls for ounces. He was consistently on more fish than his fellow competitors, and by getting more bites, he eventually was able to assemble limits of the quality fish needed to win. 

2018 BASS Elite St. Lawrence River Day 2: Lester Leads with 50-01lbs!

Huge flip flop of the leader board!

By Thomas Allen

BASS PRESS RELEASE

In dramatic Bassmaster fashion, a new leader took the helm during the second round of the Huk Bassmaster Elite at St. Lawrence River presented by Black Velvet. 

 

Lester keeping consistent key to lead.
(Photo: BASS)

The fishing slowed down overall on the second day, but a staggering 52 limits exceeding 20 pounds on Day 1 will be hard to top. However, 34 limits were caught Friday that surpassed the 20-pound mark. 
 
Thanks to a five-bass limit of smallmouth bass that tipped the scales at 25 pounds, 13 ounces, Brandon Lester of Fayetteville, Tenn., took charge going into Saturday’s semifinal round. ester’s two-day total is 50-1.
 
The 107-angler field has been cut to the Top 50, and the 30-year-old Lester is looking to claim the $100,000 first-place prize money and notch his first Bassmaster Elite Series title with two days to go.
 
“Today was a lot of fun, and I'm super thankful for the big bass I was able to bring to the scales,” he said. “But it was a tougher bite. I caught a lot more little bass, which tells me there aren’t as many dominant, big smallmouth bass on each spot as there were yesterday.”

While still confident, Lester expects the weights to continue to decrease — a regular occurrence during multi-day bass tournaments.
 
“It’s no secret that almost everybody is catching bass on a dropshot, but I’m doing something a little bit differently with my presentation, which seems to be getting more attention from the larger bass,” Lester said. “My plan won’t change much, and I’m confident the right fish are still using the spots I’m focusing on.

"I’m excited to get back out there and hopefully catch another 20 pounds or more tomorrow.”