Scott Martin Wins FLW Tour Lake Champlain

Scott Martin has developed a habit of ending FLW Tour seasons with a flourish. Last year, the Floridian wrapped up his first Angler of the Year Title with a 6th-place finish in the finale at the Potomac River. This year he notched his record-setting sixth career victory and third at Lake Champlain, becoming the first Tour competitor to prevail three times at the same venue. He led this one from start to finish after boxing a tournament-best 22-05 on day 1. He doubted that his 16-pound stringer on the final day would be enough to keep him at the top, but his 74-10 total left him a pound clear of runner-up Jason Meninger. His son Reed turned 16 on Sunday, so he had extra incentive to finish what he started. He mentioned on stage that a portion of his $125,000 check might go toward buying the kid a car. Following are some of the details of how Martin dominated a venue that, despite its lack of proximity to his residence in the Sunshine State on the shores of Lake Okeechobee, has become a home lake away from home.

Although the 3-day practice period was windy, competitors had no trouble recognizing the potential for catching smallmouths from the spawning beds. Brown fish participating in the reproduction process could be easily seen anytime the surface disturbance was reduced to a mild chop. Tour-level events at Champlain are never won strictly with bronzebacks, though, and Martin knew he needed a largemouth program that would produce some kickers. With the water about 3 feet below full pool, he located some of those on scattered cover (mostly rock, but also some grass and wood) adjacent to the banks in massive Missisquoi Bay on the lake's northern end. "We had really good weather for looking on the last day of practice, but I didn't really find a lot of big ones," he said. "I only found a handful of spawning fish that were over 3 pounds. "I knew I'd have to stretch the largemouth bite a lot further because I didn't have a lot of smallmouth to fall back on. I really wanted to use the smallmouth for filler-fish when I needed them."

Competition:

Martin's plan for day 1 was to try to catch a couple of big largemouths right away and he picked up a 5-pounder on a crankbait at his initial stop. A jig produced a similar fish a couple hours later, and then another one around lunchtime. "I started thinking that I was two more good largemouth bites away from a big bag and I wanted to save the smallmouths anyway, so I stayed with that," he said. "I ended up catching another almost-5-pounder late in the day and one other good one." Holding a lead of a little over a pound when day 2 started, he went with the same game plan, but it wasn't quite as productive. "They weren't biting as good that day. I caught one pretty good one in the morning and then moved up on some wood and caught another good largemouth. "I (eventually) got up around 16 pounds, but I had a couple of 2 1/2-pounders that I wanted to get rid of. The largemouth stopped biting at around 12 o'clock, so I went to a place where I had a couple of 3 3/4-pound smallmouths on beds to try to get up to 18 or 19." He caught both of those, then spotted a 4 1/4 nearby and hoisted it into his boat as well. "That gave me 20, so I spent the rest of the day looking around. I found the ones I had marked and a handful of new ones. I thought there was another 16- to 17-pound bag there and I was hoping to not have to use them until day 4. His advantage was a little more than 2 1/2 pounds to begin day 3, but that round started inauspiciously for him. He suffered a mechanical issue shortly after he arrived in Missisquoi and had to trek back to the launch in Plattsburgh, N.Y. to swap out boats. "It was too far to run all the way back up there, so I decided to use my smallmouth as a survival bag," he said. "I caught close to what I thought I had there (his weight would've been 16-09 that day, but he incurred a 4-ounce dead-fish penalty) and then I went back to the largemouth water later in the afternoon. "I had about an hour to try to get one big bite, but it was just kind of dead. Looking back, it was a really good day to go and get those smallmouth."

He still led by more than 2 pounds once the weigh-in was complete and the field had been reduced to the Top 10, but he was certain he'd need a bigger stringer on the final day. Meninger and Bryan Schmitt were catching stout bags of largemouths from the Ticonderoga area at the other end of the lake and he anticipated at least one of them coming back with 20 pounds on Sunday. He figured he'd need to return with at least 18 pounds to close out the victory. "I caught a lot of 3 1/4s and 3 1/2s on day 4, but I couldn't get that 4- to 5-pound bite I'd been getting every day. I lost one fish that looked like about a 4, but other than that I fished clean." He started out by popping a couple of 3-pound-plus bed-fish from near the take-off ramp and said that relieved a bit of the pressure he'd begun to feel. An isolated patch of grass on the way to Missisquoi surrendered a 3-pound largemouth. He added a couple of smaller keepers shortly after arriving at his main area, then added a 3 1/2 at 10:30. "That gave me probably 14 1/2 pounds and I knew that wouldn't be enough. I made a run up a creek and caught another 3 1/2 off a piece of submerged timber I'd found the day before. "After that I ran through my rotation all the way back to the ramp and made a few 1- or 2-ounce culls. They weren't much, but they kept the momentum and the enthusiasm going. I was still looking for that 4- to 5-pound bite, but I never got it." As it turned out, he didn't need it."

Winning Pattern:

The largemouths, which Martin caught on a combination of the crankbait, the jig and a finesse worm, were hanging out in 2 to 6 feet of water. "It was pretty straight-up fishing," he said. "The real key to it was timing. "They were post-spawn fish and I think they were set up there for the duration of the summer. It wasn't overrun with pressure this time because it wasn't that loaded - you had to pick it apart to get the bonus bites. I wasn't catching them like gangbusters - I was getting probably 10 to 12 bites a day." The super-aggressive bedding smallmouth could be enticed with just about anything - eventual 4th-place finisher David Dudley even suggested cutting up pieces of a banana peel and using them as baits just to disprove the old superstition that the fruit is bad luck to have on a boat when trying to catch fish.

Winning Gear:

Cranking gear: 7'11" medium-heavy Okuma Scott Martin Tournament Series Power Crank rod, Okuma Helios casting reel (7.3:1 ratio), 12-pound P-Line fluorocarbon line, LiveTarget Threadfin Shad (metallic pearl/blue shad).

Jig gear: 7'6" Okuma Scott Martin Tournament Series Flipping/Jig rod, same reel (8:1 ratio), 17-pound P-Line fluorocarbon, 1/2-ounce M-Pack Lures Flipping Jig (green-pumpkin, skirt trimmed), 4" Tightlines UV Jig Trailer (green-pumpkin).

Worm gear: 7' medium-heavy Okuma Scott Martin Tournament Series APC rod, same reel (7.3:1 ratio), 12-pound P-Line fluorocarbon, 1/4-ounce jighead, Tightlines UV Finesse Worm (green-pumpkin). He also used an unnamed white crawfish imitation on his worm rig.

Main factor: "I made some really good decisions about where to go and when to leave and that kind of stuff.

Performance edge: "My Garmin Panoptix allowed me to stay off the submerged vegetation and rocks and see exactly where I needed to cast every time - every cast I made I considered to be in the strike zone and it helped me catch a bunch of extra fish. The other thing was the 10-foot Power-Poles; I could pole down in 7, 8 or 9 feet of water and pick apart the grass beds very quietly."

Lake Champlain Winning Pattern BassFan 6/29/16 (John Johnson)

Multi-day events at Champlain in the early summer are often won on the backs of the big largemouths that live near Fort Ticonderoga at the southern end of the lake, but Jason Meninger was the only Top-5 finisher who fished there exclusively this time. The result was his best-ever Tour finish and a lot of good vibes to carry him into the offseason. Far out of Cup contention when the derby began, he opted to treat the tournament as his personal championship and focus entirely on quality bites, throwing quantity to the wind. He could've fished just about anywhere he wanted to at Ti because he had almost no company on competition days, but concentrated on a 200-yard stretch of bank that he worked over and over again. Although the area got almost no pressure from Tour competitors once the tournament got under way, it was beaten up pretty good on the preceding days by anglers fishing Federation Nation and Lake Champlain International events. That prompted him to downsize his offerings, and a 3/16-ounce weight was the heaviest he flipped. "I practiced some up north and I like catching smallmouths, but I didn't find those 18-pound bags that you need," he said. "I was catching like 14 to 15 and I knew that wasn't going to get it done. I wasn't getting a lot of bites at Ti, but when I did get one, it was a good one. "I was consistent, but I never broke 20 pounds, and that hurt me." His key stretch consisted mostly of milfoil, but had a few rocky points and a little bite of wood mixed in. He said that fishing at an extremely deliberate pace - "really soaking the bait" - was critical. "I'd throw it out and let it sit, and then pull it off a piece of rock. I was making a cast every 3 or 4 yards down the bank." He had two quality bites pull off and another break free on day 2, which cost him his chance of overtaking Martin at the end.

Heavy flipping gear: 7'3" medium-heavy Halo Fishing rod, Shimano Metanium casting reel (8:1 ratio), 16- or 20-pound Sunline Super FC Sniper fluorocarbon line, 3/16-ounce bullet weight (pegged), 4/0 Owner straight-shank hook, Zoom Z-Craw (black/blue sapphire). For lighter cover in calm conditions, he employed either a wacky- or Texas-rigged Z-Man Finesse WormZ (green-pumpkin or junebug) on 10-pound PowerPro braided line with an 8-pound Gamma Edge fluorocarbon leader. He inserted a nail weight into the worm for wacky-rigging and used a 1/8-ounce bullet weight for the Texas rig.

Main factor: "Basically just slowing down and going with a lighter weight."

Performance edge: "I located a lot of that hard structure in practice with my Garmin units with the SideVu. There's various pieces of concrete and all kinds of stuff in that lake."

Lake Champlain Winning Patterns 2-5 BassFan 7/1/16 (John Johnson)

Shinichi Fukae was in 35th place after the day-1 weigh-in, but made a steady climb up the standings from there. He jumped to 9th on day 2, 7th on day 3 and third on day 4, when his 19-10 stringer was the best of the final round. He spent the first 2 days primarily focused on catching spawning smallmouths in the northern end of the lake. It turned out that he'd underestimated his largemouth-laden backup area - he didn't realize the quality that the shallow milfoil contained until very late on the second day. "If I'd had one more day, I might've been able to beat the Top 2 guys," he said. He caught most of his bedding bronebacks on a 4-inch Senko on either a dropshot rig or shaky-head. A Yamamoto Swimming Senko or a Flappin' Hog on a flipping stick was effective for the largemouths. "I think one of the keys of the tournament was using the green-pumpkin baits with gold flake in them. I tried different colors, but that was what got the most bites."

Dropshot gear: 6'8" medium-light Shimano Zodias rod, Shimano Sustain 2500 spinning reel, 14-pound YGK sinking braid (main line), 8-pound YGK fluorocarbon (leader), 1/0 Gamakatsu Swivel Shot hook, 4" Yamamoto Senko (green-pumpkin/gold flake), 1/4-ounce weight.

Wacky-rig gear: Same rod, reel, line and bait, 3/16-ounce Gamakatsu G-Finesse jighead, 4" Yamamoto Senko (green-pumpkin/gold flake).

Main factor: "Decisions and timing. I practiced for 15 hours on all 3 days and I had a lot of waypoints."

Performance edge: "I had lots of confidence in the baits and all my equipment was perfect."

Lake Champlain Winning Patterns 2-5 BassFan 7/1/16 (John Johnson)

David Dudley caught some largemouths from the same rocky ridge in Missisquoi Bay that Martin utilized Ð the place had played a key role in previous Champlain victories for both of them. As Martin mentioned, however, the place wasn't loaded with fish this time, and both had to resort to catching bronzeback spawners to fill in the gaps. The vast majority of the areas that Dudley fished were places that had been productive in the past. "I've been to the lake five times and just about everything's familiar," he said. "There really isn't much of the lake I haven't fished." He caught his largemouths with both a flipping stick and a wacky rig. There were sitting in 3 to 5 feet of water and there had to be grass around. Most of his smallmouths came from the vicinity of Point Au Roche on the lake's northwestern shore. "The first 2 days I weighed all largemouths and I was sticking with those, but I kind of sensed them fading a little bit in the area I was catching them. On the third and fourth days, it eased my mind to go get some 3- to 3 1/2-pound smallmouths and then go play with the largemouths for the rest of the day."

Flipping gear: 7'6" heavy-action unnamed flipping stick, unnamed casting reel (7.3:1 ratio), 20-pound Gamma fluorocarbon line, 1/2-ounce tungsten weight, unnamed 5/0 straight-shank hook, unnamed creature baits (green-pumpkin).

Wacky-rig gear: 7' medium-heavy unnamed spinning rod, unnamed spinning reel, unnamed 10-pound braided line (main line), 10-pound Gamma Edge fluorocarbon (10' leader), unnamed 1/0 hook, unnamed wacky-rigged worm (green-pumpkin).

Main factor: "Catching those smallmouths on the last 2 days helped me relax when I went to fish for the largemouths."

Performance edge: "The accuracy of the GPS on my Lowrance was important when I was sight-fishing in 3-foot rollers and the trolling motor was coming out of the water. Out there on that rocky flat I was looking for very tiny clean spots - the beds were like swept-off pebbles and they were extremely hard to see. I could get right over top of them with the Lowrance and look straight down and see the bed."

Lake Champlain Winning Patterns 2-5 BassFan 7/1/16 (John Johnson)

Chris Johnston concluded his spectacular debut Tour campaign with his second Top-5 showing of the season (he was 3rd in the opener at Lake Okeechobee). He wrapped up the Rookie of the Year title and landed at No. 2 in the Angler of the Year race. On the first 3 days he picked off smallmouths in the mornings, then bounced around to various big-fish locales in the northern end of the lake in search of kicker largemouths. Some of the smallmouths he caught were on beds and others were suspended in water as deep as 12 feet, suspended along with carp. The post-spawn largemouths came from 3 to 6 feet of water. "I got two good ones from a deep milfoil bed that always produces good fish," he said. He caught his best bag of the tournament on day 1, then saw his weight fall off by more than 2 1/2 pounds on day 2 and another 2-plus pounds on day 3. That prompted him to shift gears and head in the other direction to Ti for the final day, where he caught enough to maintain his 5th-place position and clinch the Ranger Cup championship over Jacob Wheeler with two places to spare. A wacky-rigged Senko and a small swimbait produced his smallmouths. He flipped up his largemouths with a jig.

Senko gear: 7'8" G. Loomis GLX Jig and Worm rod, Shimano Chronarch Cl4+ casting reel (7.3:1 ratio), 15-pound Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon line, 3/0 Gamakatsu round-bend hook, 5" Yamamoto Senko (green-pumpkin).

Swimbait gear: 6'8" medium-action Shimano Zodias rod, same reel, 8-pound PowerPro braided line (main line), Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon leader, 1/4-ounce jighead (open hook), Keitech Swing Impact Fat 3.8 (ayu).

Flipping gear: 7'5" heavy-action G. Loomis GLXrod, Shimano Metanium casting reel (8:1 ratio), 65-pound PowerPro braid, 9/16- or 3/4-pound Punisher Mini Jig (black or black/blue), Zoom Small Salty Chunk trailer (black).

Main factor: "My biggest decision was going to Ticonderoga (on day 4) after my weights had been going down every day in the north. It was a gamble because I could've caught 10 pounds or 20, but in the end it was the right call. If I'd had another hour, I think I could've had an 18-pound-plus bag."

Performance edge: "The Ranger/Evinrude combo for getting me down to Ticonderoga and back and the Power-Poles Ð without them I wouldn't have been able to hold on those weed beds and nose in and dissect them."

Lake Champlain Winning Patterns 2-5 BassFan 7/1/16 (John Johnson)