Aaron Martens' Wins Lake Champlain Bassmaster Elite Series

Aaron Martens had 18 anglers between him and the top of the standings sheet when the final round of the Lake Champlain Bassmaster Elite Series got under way on Sunday. But from a weight perspective, he knew that his deficit wasn't all that great. "My wife told me that morning, 'Hey, you can still win this thing,''' he said. "I knew I needed 23 pounds to have a really legitimate chance." He got that - and 5 ounces more. What was easily the heaviest stringer of the tournament vaulted him to victory at the weather-shortened event that had 51 anglers competing on the final day instead of the usual 12. It was an epic comeback that, due to the unusual circumstances caused by the cancellation of the opening round, might never be repeated. In any case, it was Martens' fifth full-field win on the circuit, putting him into a four-way tie for the second-most ever (Kevin VanDam has nine). His three mixed bags containing both largemouths and smallmouths combined to weigh 58-12. He edged out runner-up Seth Feider by 14 ounces.

The weather along the New York-Vermont border during the 3 practice days was mostly cold, windy and rainy. "Those are my least-favorite conditions for practice," Martens said. "The fish were still biting pretty good, but I wish we'd had the conditions we had for the tournament (during) practice. You can learn a lot more, a lot quicker. "Most of the time when it's windy at the lake is white-capping, it's hard to get a good look at everything you want to see with your eyeballs." He found a big flat in the Inland Sea that seemed to be holding a lot of fish. He used a spinnerbait and a Duo Realis 120SP jerkbait to gauge their abundance, size and specific locations. He also threw a dropshot around, and it was that technique that would end up enticing each of the 15 fish he took to the stage during the event. "I caught them really good out deep, but I didn't want to hit them too hard," he said. "The (30-foot range) had a lot of fish and I was catching 18- to 19-pound bags in practice, but the biggest bags were around 14 feet. "I figured if I stayed out I could catch a bunch and eventually get to 20 pounds."

Competition:

In hindsight, Martens said he didn't spend enough time in the shallower depths on the first 2 days - only about one-third of each day. He weighed in four largemouths and a smallmouth on day 1, then all smallmouths on day 2. He hit the shallower stuff much harder on the final day and it paid off in a big way. "I piddled around on the morning of day 3," he said. "I went to a new area and didn't catch anything and I ended up wasting an hour and 15 minutes." At that point he opted to make the 12-mile run to his flat in the Inland Sea, where he was certain he could amass another high-teens bag. "I caught a 3-pound largie right away and that told me the smallies weren't there. I noticed that birds were still flying around in there and I'd see the occasional boil up shallower. It wasn't a big schooling thing or anything like that, but it was sporadic on different parts of the flat." He gradually worked his way toward the bank, making long casts in all directions with the dropshot. He kept getting his bait tangled up in the grass (there was a lot of it, and several varieties), so he increased the distance between his hook and weight. When he reached 16 feet of water he felt a solid pressure bite and boated a 4 1/4-pounder. Two or three casts after that, he caught another one that was close to 4. "It seemed like the fish were roaming," he said. "I'd cast this way and cast that way, and it went on for an hour and a half to 2 hours like that, and then I stopped getting bit."

It was about 12:30 and he had about 20 pounds in his livewell - a good bag, but not nearly enough to carry him past the entire plethora of competitors in front of him. he came to a thick grass clump and free-spooled his bait down into a hole and hooked another 4-pounder. As he pulled it away from the vegetation, he saw a much larger fish right behind it. "My knees got weak when I saw that one," he said. "I let the boat drift off and got the 4-pounder in, but it didn't get rid of my smallest one." He returned to the clump and pitched to the outside of it in case the monster was hanging on the edge, and that throw produced a 4 1/2-pounder. That one helped, but he was certain it wasn't the one he'd seen just minutes earlier. He put a fresh worm on and got lined up with the center of the clump, and then dropped the bait back into the hole where the 4-pounder had come from. "I felt like I was bed-fishing for a 10-pounder," he said. "That big one had come up like a torpedo and I knew it was catchable. The whole time, my knees were shaking." It seemed like quite awhile before he felt the bite. He set the hook and tried to pull the fish away from the bottom, but it would have none of that for the time being. "I put the trolling motor on 10 and started following it. It eventually did a big tail-walk right next to the boat and I was thinking oh my gosh, I've got a chance to win! "I looked to see how well it was hooked and I could see the point had come through its mouth and the worm was up the line. I said, 'I've got this fish.' It was a really mellow, comfortable feeling after that." He made his final cull with that 6-02 bruiser, and it was an upgrade of more than 2 pounds. The second pound ended up being unnecessary.

Winning Gear:

Dropshot gear: 6'11" medium-heavy Enigma HPT rod, Shimano Stella 2500 spinning reel, 12-pound Sunline Siglon PEx8 braided line, 8-pound Sunline Super FC Sniper fluorocarbon leader (15 to 20'), No. 1 Gamakatsu G-Finesse Heavy Cover hook), 4 1/2" Texas-rigged Roboworm Fat (Aaron's magic red flake, 1/4-ounce tungsten dropshot weight (cylindrical).

Main factor: "I was really fortunate to find that group of fish - they were large. The Inland Sea is full of flats and a lot of guys overlooked that one. There was really nothing special about it - it was just a straight bank."

Performance edge: "That hook is special - it's really strong and it's the best hook on the market. I'm very impressed with it. I only lost one fish that would've helped me in 2 weeks."

BASS Lake Champlain Winning Pattern BassFan 8/2/17 (John Johnson)

Feider's combo pattern of flipping grass for largemouth and dropshotting around deep rocks for smallmouths came within a pound of giving him his first victory in a full-field event. His weights went up on each succeeding day, but in the end he couldn't quite keep pace with Martens' 23-05 mega-bag. He fished the Inland Sea in the northern portion of the lake and had very little company all week. "In practice I was going down a grass line flipping a jig and I found four hard-bottom places in the milfoil (where quality largemouths were grouped up)," he said. "Most of my weight came off two of those." One of those hotspots was on a large flat and the other was on a point. Nine feet was the key depth. His reel was spooled with braided line, but he said it was critical to attach the jig to a 3- to 4-foot fluorocarbon leader. "I couldn't get bit on just straight braid," he said. The smallmouth were in 16 to 30 feet of water, with the 22- to 25-foot range being ideal.

Flipping gear: 7' medium-heavy Daiwa Tatula Elite Brent Ehrler signature series rod, Daiwa Tatula SV TW casting reel (8:1 ratio), 40-pound Sufix 832 braided line (main line), 20-pound Sufix fluorocarbon leader, 5/8-ounce Outkast Tackle Stealth Feider jig (green-pumpkin), Biospawn VileCraw trailer (green-pumpkin).

Dropshot gear: 7'1" Daiwa Tatula Elite Brent Ehrler signature series rod, Daiwa Tatula 4000 spinning reel, 6-pound Sufix 832 braid (main line), 8-pound Sufix fluorocarbon leader, No. 2 VMC Neko hook, 1/2-ounce VMC cylindrical weight, unnamed tube (clear or purple with green flake).

Main factor: "Having both largemouth and smallmouth to fish for. There were times when one was biting and the other wasn't and I'd go back and forth."

Performance edge: "My Humminbird graph. I was catching those smallmouth out deep and I was able to see if the boulders had fish on them, and in the grass where I was fishing for the largemouth it helped me find the hard bottom."

Bass Lake Champlain Patterns 2-5rn BassFan 6/31/17 (John Johnson)

Brandon Palaniuk, the Angler of the Year leader who extended his points advantage from eight to 40 with his second 3rd-place finish is as many weeks, was another angler whose weights increased day by day. He was tops among competitors who weighed only smallmouths. He's not even sure he was every around any largemouths. "I had a 7- or 8-mile stretch I was running with five or six stops along it," he said. "It was stuff I found in practice and I learned it a little bit better every day during the tournament. "The biggest thing for me was keeping my trolling motor down and keeping my line in the water. It seemed like those fish moved a lot to different subtle places along the stretch. I could usually find them concentrated on a different sweet spot every day." He threw both a spinbait and a jerkbait and also employed a dropshot "Most of the fish were in 10 to 20 feet of water and they were kind of spread out within the one general area, and I'd ease back and forth between the spots." The majority of his locales featured a rock/grass mixture.

Dropshot gear: 6'10" medium-action Alpha Angler Rods DSR spinning rod, Daiwa EXIST spinning reel, 15-pound Seaguar Smackdown braided line, 8-pound Seaguar Tatsu fluorocarbon line (leader), No. 2 unnamed dropshot hook, Zoom Z Drop (green weenie or green-pumpkin), 3/8-ounce unnamed tungsten dropshot weight (teardrop).

Same rod and reel as dropshot, 6-pound Seaguar Tatsu fluorocarbon line, Storm Arashi Spinbait (green gill).

Jerkbait gear: 7' medium-action Alpha Angler Rods Slasher rod, Abu Garcia Revo MG Extreme casting reel, 12-pound Seaguar Tatsu fluorocarbon, Rapala Shadow Rap Deep (haymaker).

He used a Sharpie pen to draw a lateral black line on the jerkbait in an effort to better imitate a perch.

Main factor: "Deciding to concentrate on smallmouths and kind of focus in on one area."

Performance edge: "My Humminbird 360. For what I was fishing, I had to make a real specific cast and it was really difficult to stay on that just going by waypoints or whatever. It wasn't a big enough drop to follow on your contour line."

Bass Lake Champlain Patterns 2-5rn BassFan 6/31/17 (John Johnson)

Jacob Wheeler went to Champlain knowing that he'd focus on the north end. At a previous tournament he'd made the long run to Ticonderoga at the southern end and it resulted in a poor finish, and he vowed he'd never go again. He opted to pursue the more abundant smallmouth, as he'd watched their average size continually increase over the past several years. "I fished out deep (in practice) and I fished the in-between stuff, and I came to the conclusion that the better quality smallmouth were in 8 to 15 feet of water," he said. "I didn't feel like the majority had moved deep yet." He caught a decent bag the first day, and then a big one the following day (which would've been an even 21 pounds if not for a 4-ounce dead-fish penalty) that rocketed him from 30th place to the top of the standings. He came up a couple pounds shy of his 20-pound objective on the final day, and that ended up being his eventual deficit to Martens after all of the numbers were tallied. "I was so excited to get out there on day 3," he said. "I was leading by a pound and I thought that if I caught every fish that bit, I'd have 20 pounds again and even 22 was a possibility. "I had the bites to have 19 1/2. It was sort of a relief when Aaron busted the huge bag because I knew the two fish I lost didn't cost me a win." He said the fish he was after traveled in wolf packs most of the time and he could pick off a couple with a swimbait. Then the packs would break up and he'd resort to a Carolina rig. He also used a jerkbait to catch some fish from rocks that were deeper than 10 feet.

Swimbait gear: 7' medium-action Okuma Helios rod, Okuma Helios casting reel (6.6:1 ratio), 12-pound Sufix fluorocarbon line, 3/8-ounce VMC Neon Moon Eye jighead, 3 1/2" Storm 360 GT swimbait (herring or white).

Carolina rig gear: 7'6" heavy-action Okuma Helios rod, Okuma Helios casting reel (7/3:1 ratio), 17-pound Sufix fluorocarbon (main line), 3/4-ounce VMC egg sinker, plastic bead, 14-pound Sufix fluorocarbon (2 1/2- to 3-foot leader), 3/0 VMC offset-shank hook, Gene Larew Hammer Craw, Gene Larew Biffle Bug or Zoom Speed Craw.

Jerkbait gear: 6'6" medium-heavy Okuma EVX rod, Okuma Helios casting reel (7.3:1 ratio), 12-pound Sufix fluorocarbon, Rapala Shadow Rap Deep (mossback shiner) or Megabass Vision 110+1 (gill).

Main factor: "Sticking with the smallmouth. A lot of us didn't expect them to play as much as they did."

Performance edge: I'd say it was selecting the right rods and reels for the applications. Fishing the slower reel with the swimbait was key because it was important to keep in contact with the bottom and the shorter rod on the jerkbait let me jerk it fast with hard, erratic motions."

Bass Lake Champlain Patterns 2-5rn BassFan 6/31/17 (John Johnson)

Kelley Jaye compiled almost all of his weight for the tournament from a main-lake point that sat just outside a spawning point in the Inland Sea. "It was actually the last flat before you got to the main channel," he said. "Those fish were transitional ‰ÛÒ they were spawning when the (FLW Series) was there about a month ago. I was catching them in between where they'd been and where they were going." A jerkbait was his primary weapon for the first 2 1/2 days. "I made long casts, trying to get it down as deep as I could. For the first day and a half I was jerking it pretty hard, which you normally do for smallies. Then (late Saturday) I noticed a lot of fish following it but not eating it, so I slowed it down and just kept it constantly moving. It was almost like 'walking the dog' under water." He switched to a large Zara Spook after he'd amassed most of his weight on the final day and enticed five quality bites, but landed only two.

Jerkbait gear: 6'10" medium-action Cashion ALX prototype rod, Team Lew's Magnesium Speed Spool casting reel (7.3:1 ratio), 14-pound Bass Pro Shops XPS fluorocarbon line, Megabass 110+1 (perch).

Main factor: "I think just knowing the fish were there and sticking with it. I knew I was going to get a good early morning bite and then it would slack off until about 12, and then I'd get another flurry. I kept my head down and didn't panic; I knew the fish would turn back on."

Performance edge: "Probably that rod for handling the jumping smallmouths, and also changing my hooks to Mustad KVD Triple Grip trebles. I lost so many fish at the St. Lawrence from fish jumping and slapping at the bait and I didn't want a repeat of that."

Bass Lake Champlain Patterns 2-5rn BassFan 6/31/17 (John Johnson)