Matt Pangrac recently finished competing in the 2020 Bassmaster Central Opens learning some valuable lessons along the way. Matt checks in this week to share the top 4 things he took away from this season.
1. EVERY FISH IS IMPORTANT, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU ARE STRUGGLING
Each Bassmaster Opens Series tournament works on a 200 points system where the winner of each tournament receives 200 points, second 199 points, until points run out. Total points at the end of the year determine your Angler Of the Year finish, with the top four finishers earning an invitation to the Bassmaster Elite Series.
I finished the first day of competition on the Arkansas River in 60th place with four bass weighing 8 pounds, 4 ounces. On Day Two, I didn’t have a keeper in the boat with less than 30 minutes left to fish. I ran to a dead-end slough and caught two keepers that weighed 4 pounds, 13 ounces. I finished the tournament in 63rd place with a total weight of 13 pounds, 1 ounce.
Those fish on the second day were critical to keeping me in the AOY points race. Without those fish, I would have finished in 120th place (a difference of 57 points) and virtually eliminated any chance of qualifying for the Elite Series after the first Open of the year.
Every single bite is important, especially when things aren’t going your way. Going into the final Central Open in 14th place in the AOY standings, it would be easy to point to my 11th place finish on Neely Henry as the reason why I was in a good position in the point standings. In reality, it was the decision that I made on Day Two on the Arkansas River four months earlier that kept me in the hunt.
2. FISHING PRESSURE IMPACTS EVERY FISHERY DIFFERENTLY
Over the course of the 2020 Bassmaster Central Open season, the field was comprised of anywhere from 154 to 215 competitors. While anglers spread out on a 100,000+ acre fishery like Sam Rayburn, there was immense fishing pressure on 11,000-acre Neely Henry and 29,000-acre Lake Lewisville.
In addition to the three official practice days, many Bassmaster Open anglers practice for upwards of a week before the tournament starts meaning that there are over 100 boats on the fishery for seven consecutive days prior to the first competition day. Throw in the fact that there is no off-limits for information until the Monday prior to the tournament, and you have a lot of good anglers pounding good areas for an extended period of time.
Even on a giant lake like Sam Rayburn, I noticed that the bite changed as practice progressed (I believe) because of fishing pressure. When I got bites in practice, I found myself trying to figure out whether I was catching resident fish that were living on a single spot or catching roaming fish that were utilizing an area.
On Neely Henry, I got an early boat draw on Day One and decided to start in a shallow backwater that I had gotten several bites in during practice but had ruled out because I thought that fishing pressure would ruin the area. I caught two nice largemouth early and then left the area and spent the rest of the tournament targeting roaming spotted bass relating to seawalls that I felt were less prone to fishing pressure. It turned out to be the right decision.
The opposite thing happened on Lake Lewisville, where I had caught one big bass out of shallow brush on the main lake during practice but thought that fishing pressure would kill that bite during the tournament. It ended up being the wrong decision as a lot of anglers had solid finishes fishing shallow brush while I struggled to put anything together and finished in 91st.
3. FIND SOMETHING CLOSE TO THE RAMP
I can’t think of a single Open this year where at least one of the boats with an early draw didn’t start right next to the off-limits sign. While it may not have been the winning area, I remember thinking, “What the heck are they fishing right there?”
Over the course of the year, I never launched at the same ramp where the tournament was going out of, and I never explored the area in the immediate vicinity of check-in. On Day One at Rayburn, I returned to the check-in area with 20 minutes left to fish and had no idea where I should finish the day. The same thing happened at Neely Henry where I had a good bag on Day Two and returned early to make sure that I wasn’t late.
If I had spent just a couple hours of practice learning the area around check-in, I might have been able to make a cull late in the day instead of basically fishing blind.
4. DO YOUR HOMEWORK
Even though I live in Oklahoma, I had only fished the Arkansas River three days in my life. I fished one other tournament on Sam Rayburn in 2019, had never been to Neely Henry, and hadn’t fished Lewisville since 2008. I spent a lot of time looking at each fishery on Google Earth, watching YouTube videos, reading articles, and talking with guys who know the fisheries.
My goal was to get a general understanding of each fishery and put myself in a productive area that I knew had a good population of fish and the potential for a solid finish. I found that the most beneficial homework was really picking the brain of someone who knew the fishery and then looking at Google Earth images to find a section of the lake that I wanted to target and would feel comfortable in.
Once practice started and I felt like I was in an area of the lake that held potential, I would basically pretend that the rest of the lake didn’t exist and just focused the entirety of my practice in that general area.
