Stetson Blaylock Wins BASS Elite Winyah Bay

When Stetson Blaylock won the Lake Norman FLW Tour as a 22-year-old in 2009, he had no inkling that a decade would pass before he'd achieve victory at the sport's top level again. "I did not think it would take this long," he said a day after claiming the trophy and the six-figure paycheck at the Winyah Bay Bassmaster Elite Series. "I've had quite a few 2nd-place finishes since then, but the bottom line is that it's just hard to win. "You just have to believe that if you keep putting yourself in that position and making top-10s and top-5s, eventually it's going to happen." There was a prevailing opinion that the tournament would be won from the Cooper River, which required a grueling run in excess of 90 minutes along the Intracoastal Waterway from the launch in Georgetown, S.C. That's where Britt Myers caught his winning fish the last time the circuit visited the sprawling venue in 2016, and at least half of the 75-angler field ventured that way last week with the belief that that the Cooper harbored the largest, most numerous and easiest-to-catch bass of the five rivers that were in play.

That assessment may be true, but Blaylock proved that the long journey through Charleston Harbor, which cut fishing time about in half for competitors who undertook it, wasn't the only possible route to victory. He compiled the vast majority of his weight from a small, man-created backwater off the Waccamaw River. The area he fished is known as "The Fingers." It was also utilized by fellow top-10 finishers Jason Williamson, Koby Kreiger and Clent Davis. "You come off the river into a straight canal that's 200 to 300 yards long, and every 50 yards or so there's a small canal to the right and one to the left - like four canals on each side," he described. "When you get to the very back, it hooks to the left and there's another 50-yard canal. At the end of that it opens up into a 20- to 30-acre sand pit, and at the back of the pit there was 20 to 25 feet of water in there. "I went in there in practice and I only fished about half of it because there were two other boats in there. I got a few bites and I knew it had the potential for me to catch enough to make the top 35. I figured I could fish it for two days and (surviving the first cut and earning a $10,000 paycheck) would be about as good as it would get."

Late Limit-Filler was Key:

Blaylock started the first competition day with no inkling that he could come anywhere close to replicating - much less improving upon - his 2nd-place finish from Lake Hartwell the previous week. He caught an 11-06 stringer that put him in 11th place. "I was extremely thrilled with that," he said. "When I left my area I only had four fish and when I was running back to take-off, I passed a canal where I'd caught one fish in practice. I had enough time for 10 casts, and I pulled in there and on my 6th cast I caught a 12-incher. Without that fish, I don't win the tournament (his final margin over runner-up Scott Canterbury was 9 ounces)." He caught that fish on a homemade jig, but the rest had been enticed by a wacky-rigged YUM Dinger, which was his primary bait for the derby. His boat was the 66th to leave the launch on day 2 and he was pleasantly surprised that nobody else was fishing the sand pit when he arrived. He caught 12 1/2 pounds (four fish on a Dinger and one on a topwater plug) by 10:30, assuring he'd make the cut, and went on an unfruitful search for fish that hadn't been pounded on for day 3.

Not having anything else to turn to, he returned to the pit on day 3 and managed to load up again, leaving with his best haul yet that included a 4 1/2-pounder. He decided to troll through one of the small canals on his way out and spied a 5-pound female on a bed with a much smaller male. He caught the male, which drove the female from the bed. "I went back after a little while, after the tide had switched, and when the water came back she got aggressive and I got her to bite," he said. The entire ordeal played out over a 30- to 45-minute time span. "I had plenty of time and I knew that fish was a huge difference-maker. I would've spent the rest of the day on her." That one pushed his stringer to 17-15 - tops for the tournament - and into 1st place with one day remaining. He had severe doubts about his potential for the final round, though. "Not only did I catch over 17 pounds, but Davis had two big ones, Kreiger had 15 pounds and Williamson had a decent bag. Four of the top 10 had caught several fish, if not all of them, from that one particular area. It was like, 'Yay, I'm in 1st,' but I knew there probably wasn't enough fish to go around for another day." He was right about that, as the quartet all saw their weights plummet on the final day.

9 was the Magic Number:

Blaylock said things didn't feel the same as the previous three days when he got to the pit on day 4. "It felt like I was out of fish," he said. "I did get some little bites and caught a couple keepers, and that let me know there still were a few bass in the area. I took my time and picked it apart and caught another keeper, then I lost a nice one, probably a 2 1/2-pounder. "I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to make up for that fish and things started to go downhill performance-wise. I wasn't making good casts and I was hanging up a lot and it felt like everything was unraveling in front of me." A couple more keepers gave him a limit of squeakers and he pulled out at 11:30 to try the small canals. In the same channel where he'd caught the 5-pound bedded fish the previous day, he pulled a 21/2-pounder from a dock that he'd fished three times during the event with no success. He went about 2 hours before catching his final fish - a 1 3/4-pounder. When he opened his livewell to make the cull, his smallest fish, weighing well under a pound, appeared dead. When he laid it on his deck, it gulped twice and he took off the cull tag and placed it in the water. To his amazement, it swam away.

Having no idea that the rest of the top 6 had also struggled, he figured he was headed for a 5th- or 6th-place finish. But he'd made back-to-back top-10s and rationalized that he had nothing to complain about. He found out when he returned to the launch that seven of the top 10 had bags similar to his or smaller. He also learned that Scott Canterbury, who'd started the day in 8th place, had come back from the Cooper with a huge haul (just over 16 pounds). "After Canterbury weighed in, I did the math in my head and I knew I needed about 9 pounds, and I didn't think I had it. When my fish went on the scale and the first number was a 9, I didn't even read the ounces. I knew it was over. "After having such a terrible final performance but still coming out with a limit that was enough to win, it's hard to really describe the feeling."

Winning Gear:

Soft stickbait gear: 6'10" medium-light 13 Fishing Envy Black rod, unnamed spinning reel, 20-pound Seaguar Smackdown braid (main line), 10-pound Seaguar InvizX fluorocarbon (7' leader), 1/0 Gamakatsu G-Finesse Drop Shot hook, 5" YUM Dinger (green-pumpkin) with 1/32-ounce nail weight in head.

Sight-fishing gear: 7'3" heavy-action 13 Fishing Envy Black Series rod, prototype 13 Fishing casting reel (8.1:1 ratio), 20-pound Seaguar InvizX fluorocarbon, 7/16-ounce tungsten weight, 3/0 Gamakatsu G-Finesse hook, YUM Christie Craw (white).

Topwater gear: 6'7" medium-action 13 Fishing Envy Black rod, 13 Fishing Concept Z casting reel (8.1:1 ratio), 20-pound Seaguar Rippin' Premium monofilament line, Rebel Pop-R P-70 (Tennessee shad).

BASS Elite Series Winyah Bay Winning Pattern BassFan 4/15/19 (John Johnson)

Scott Canterbury, a two-time tournament winner during his long stint on the FLW Tour, left Georgetown, S.C. tied atop the Angler of the Year standings with rookie Patrick Walters just short of the midway point of his first campaign on the Elite Series. He had a decent day 1 followed by a lackluster day 2, and then turned in two hefty stringers (by Winyah Bay standards) on the weekend. He caught the vast majority of his weight from a 15-acre pond off the Cooper River, about a two-hour run from the launch. "I covered a lot of water in practice and had a few fish on beds that I caught the first day," he said. "One of them I had to run 5 miles and catch it on one cast or I wouldn't have made the (top-35) cut. "It was a great tournament and I fished the way I like to fish. I don't know what happened on day 2 - that really got me.

He caught his entire day-3 bag on a swimjig - a bait that produced one or two other weigh-in fish for him on previous days. On a hunch, he switched to a buzzbait on the morning of overcast, humid day 4 and used it to procure 80 percent of his bag, with the other fish coming from a bed. His final-round haul included one fish over 6 pounds and a 5 1/2 - the two heaviest specimens caught that day. "It was about making the right decisions," he said. "I went to the Cooper River because I knew it had bigger fish and it set up the way I like to fish. "There were seven or eight of us in the same area, but when I went farther upriver I got into some fresh fish that hadn't seen a bait in a few days. Getting away helped a lot."

Gear:

Swimjig gear: 7'6" or 7'3" Halo Titanium Series rod, Ardent Grand casting reel (7.3:1 ratio), 50-pound P-Line TCB 8 braided line, 3/8-ounce Dirty Jigs Tackle swimjig (bream or black/blue), NetBait Mini Kickin' B trailer (blue sapphire or green-pumpkin).

Sight-fishing gear: 7'11" heavy-action Halo Titanium Series rod, same reel, 25-pound P-Line TCB 8 braid, 3/8-ounce Flat Out Tungsten weight, unnamed craw-style bait (pumpkinseed).

Buzzbait gear: 7'5" heavy-action Halo Kryptonite Series rod, same reel, 50-pound P-Line TCB 8 braid, 1/4-ounce Dirty Jigs Tackle Scott Canterbury Pro Buzzbait, unnamed toad trailer (black).

BASS Elite Tour Winyah Bay Patterns 2-5 BassFan 4/22/19 (John Johnson)

Cory Johnston's pre-tournament research led him to believe that the winning fish would come from the Cooper River. That notion proved incorrect (Blaylock fished the Waccamaw), but committing to the long run propelled him to the best finish of his four-year tour-level career. "I spent all my practice time in the Cooper," he said. "I didn't even look anywhere else." He had quite a few spawning fish marked, and those carried him through the first two days. He didn't have much time to look for others during the event as they could only be spotted at low tide.

"Most of the time I was just casting out to where I knew there were bedding areas. When the sun was out on the second day I could see the holes in the hydrilla, but the rest of the time I was just blind-casting." He pulled the majority of his weight from a spawning flat that featured scattered hydrilla. The small places that featured a hard bottom held most of the fish. A wacky-rigged soft stickbait was his main offering, and a swimjig also produced.

Gear:

Stickbait gear: 7'3" G. Loomis NRX 872 spinning rod, Shimano Exsence spinning reel, 8-pound PowerPro braid (main line), 8-pound Seaguar Tatsu fluorocarbon (leader), size 1 Gamakatsu B10S Stinger hook, wacky-rigged Strike King Ocho (green-pumpkin).

Swimjig gear: 7'5" medium-heavy G. Loomis NRX 893 rod, Shimano Metanium MGL casting reel (7:1 ratio), 15-pound Seaguar InvizX fluorocarbon line, 3/8-ounce Punisher swimjig (green-pumpkin), Strike King Rage Craw trailer (green-pumpkin).

BASS Elite Tour Winyah Bay Patterns 2-5 BassFan 4/22/19 (John Johnson)

Jason Williamson chose to pass on the arduous trip to the Cooper River, choosing instead to spend his time much closer to the launch in the Waccamaw and Pee Dee rivers. He held the lead after day 1, but couldn't replicate his big opening-round haul over the remaining three days. "I was keying on marinas in the morning, flipping the banks, and then dropshotting deeper until I caught five," he said. "Then I fished the same series of canals that (fellow top-10 finishers Blaylock, Koby Kreiger and Clent Davis) were all in. "Fish live in the marinas and some of them get big, but they're not always the easiest to catch."

His flipping targets included wood, dock poles and reeds. Many of those fish ended up being replaced by bigger dropshot specimens from deeper water.

"I had two areas in the canals that had good depth to them (as much as 20 feet) and a pretty good amount of bluegill and shad. The water was deep enough that they could live in there Ð a lot of other backwaters were pretty shallow Ð the fish would pull in and spawn and leave and you could catch what was there at the time, but that's it."

Gear:

Flipping gear: 7'7" heavy-action Taipan J-Will Series rod, Bass Pro Shops Johnny Morris Platinum casting reel (8.3:1 ratio), 16-pound Gamma Edge fluorocarbon line, 5/16-ounce tungsten weight, 5/0 straight-shank worm hook, Zoom Brush Hog or Zoom Z Craw (tilapia).

Dropshot gear: 7'3" medium-action Taipan J-Will Series rod, Bass Pro Shops Johnny Morris Platinum spinning reel, 15-pound Gamma Torque braid (main line), 8-pound Gamma Edge fluorocarbon (10" leader), 3/16-ounce tungsten teardrop weight, 1/0 Roboworm ReBarb hook, Zoom Swamp Crawler (morning dawn).

BASS Elite Tour Winyah Bay Patterns 2-5 BassFan 4/22/19 (John Johnson)

John Crews had good practice days in both the Cooper and in the rivers closer to the launch, and that left him in somewhat of a dilemma about which direction to go as day 1 approached. He'd spent all three of his competition days in the Cooper during the circuit's previous visit in 2016, logging a 23-place finish. "I was really confused about where to fish," he said. "On the third day I went back over (to the Cooper) and found another new area, and I just figured that I had enough stuff over there that I'd be alright.

"I had had one area that was a big rice field that the fish seemed to key in on and some other stuff along the main river. There's a lot of grass over there - most everything seemed to be grass-related. The biggest thing was not getting locked into one particular area and mixing in different baits based on the tide and location." His key depth range was 2 to 6 feet. His bait lineup included a couple of different worms, a bladed jig and a jerkbait.

Gear:

Wacky-rig gear: 7'3" medium-action Cashion rod, Daiwa Tatula LT spinning reel, 12-pound Sunline Xplasma Asegai braided line, size 1 Gamakatsu Octopus hook, Missile Baits The 48 (green-pumpkin).

Worm gear: 7' medium-heavy Cashion rod, Daiwa Tatula 100 casting reel, 30-pound Sunline Xplasma Asegai braid, unnamed 1/8-ounce weight, 3/0 Gamakatsu Heavy Cover Worm hook, Zoom Speed Worm (green-pumpkin).

Bladed jig gear: Same rod and reel as Speed Worm, 20-pound Sunline Super FC Sniper fluorocarbon, 3/8-ounce Z-Man Evergreen ChatterBait Jackhammer (green-pumpkin), Missile Baits Shockwave 3.5 trailer (fisholicious).

Jerkbait gear: 6'9" medium-heavy Cashion rod, same reel as Speed Worm and ChatterBait, 12-pound Sunline FC Sniper fluorocarbon, Megabass Vision 110+ (herring).

BASS Elite Tour Winyah Bay Patterns 2-5 BassFan 4/22/19 (John Johnson)