Chris Zaldain has had a difficult year on the Bassmaster Elite Series. He appeared headed toward yet another poor finish after day 1 of the recent event at Lake Dardanelle in Arkansas when he brought a bag to the scale that weighed less than 9 pounds.
"With everything being flooded, all through practice and day 1 of the tournament I spent a lot of time up on the shallow flats with water willow," he said. "The water finally stopped coming up and slowly started falling, and the fish I'd been catching in practice left those areas.
"I noticed late on the first day that the level was going down, so I did something I always did back home on the California Delta on a falling tide. I stayed in the same big creek, but instead of fishing the water willow, I went to the channel-swing banks that had rock and current."
That move resulted in him moving up from 81st place to 28th on day 2 with a hefty 17-10 stringer. The bag included two fish in excess of 5 pounds each.
He dropped two places on day 3 and ended up 30th – easily his best finish of the campaign.
"We had the opposite effect on day 3 – the water was coming up again. The first thing I noticed was there was zero current and the lake was backing up. By the end of the day the water had risen a good 4 inches.
"The No. 1 factor I needed was the current sweeping up against those rocks. There were still some in there swimming around, but they weren't in a feeding position."
He caught all of his fish on a black and blue jig.
"I was using an Arkie-style with a Trokar hook. Anytime you're in Arkansas, an Arkie jig works well on rock."
Despite the good finish, he's still mired in 101st place in the Angler of the Year standings.
"My season got derailed early and I put so much pressure on myself to try to make up for it. Now, with a zero percent chance to make the Classic and almost no chance to make the Top 50 (and qualify for the season-ending Angler of the Year Championship), I can fish more comfortably the rest of the way and hopefully make more of those good decisions."
The Sunline Strong Performer, which focuses on the angler who makes a significant upward move in the standings at each tour-level event, is brought to you by the great people at Sunline.
