Terry Bolton was in 51st place after day 1 of last week's FLW Tour regular-season finale at Lake Champlain. If he hadn't leap-frogged a bunch of competitors on day 2, he wouldn't have qualified for next month's Forrest Wood Cup at Wheeler Lake in Alabama.
The Kentuckian followed up his 15-12 first-day stringer with an 18-13 haul that propelled him all the way to 13th place. He eventually ended up 17th to finish at No. 28 on the points list and punch his ticket for the Cup.
"Last year I went to the Potomac as the last man in and I really stepped in it there and fell out," he said, referring to his 135th-place showing in the final 2015 derby. "I tried to do too much.
"This year, being just out (38th and needing to move up two places), I knew I had to catch them to get in. I made some good moves on each of the first 2 days. With this (Cup) being on the Tennessee River in August, I really wanted to get in."
During the windy practice period, he found only two or three stretches of bank that had a significant number of spawning smallmouths. The breeze died down for the first 3 tournament days, however, and he discovered there were many more than he'd previously believed.
"It was more like 30 miles of them," he said. "And with the wind in practice, most of those fish never got bothered."
The big difference between days 1 and 2 occurred during the morning hours. He had just one fish in his livewell after the first 2 hours of the first day and spent the next 5 hours working his way up to 15-plus pounds. The next day he caught 15 pounds right away, and then methodically used the flipping stick to make some significant culls.
For the smallmouths, he utilized a topwater walking bait and a fluke – sometimes they'd eat one or the other and other times they'd just take a swipe at them, but give their locations away in the process. Then he'd troll over and catch them on a Zoom Fluke Stick attached to a new VMC Neko-rig system that'll be introduced next month at ICAST.
He flipped clumps of milfoil in 3 to 5 feet of water with a Zoom Z-Craw outfitted with a 3/4-ounce VMC weight.
The Sunline Strong Performer, which focuses on the angler who makes a significant single-day move in the standings at each tour-level event, is brought to you by the great people at Sunline.
