Last week's Chickamauga FLW Tour major presented an extraordinary number of climbs and falls within the field. That's because the rapidly changing conditions shut down some bites, but also opened some new doors.
One climber who stood out in particular was Scott Martin, because his monster 20-pound sack on day 2 moved him up from 48th into the Top 10 at 8th. He improved that standing to 5th the following day, then eventually finished 7th.
He said the key to his day-2 climb was he returned to his best area, which he left early on day 1, and focused solely on it.
"I found a few areas up the river in practice that had a lot of spawning activity going on," Martin said. "But when the water fell throughout the rest of practice, and even the first day of the tournament, it left all those beds high and dry. My gameplan the first day was to go into that area and fish for a little bit. I did and caught two fish there, then left and never came back. That was a mistake on my part.
"The second day I stayed focused in there and treated the area like it was its own little lake. I got real familiar with it and how the fish were setting up and milked it for everything it was worth. The fish weren't spawning on the banks – it was too shallow. But those big females were staging on the big laydowns, and when I say big, I mean like pole timber or logs, not bushy trees, that were coming off the bank at a 45-degree angle. I was taking a crankbait and ChatterBait and making real precise casts right down the length of the log. If you threw to the log at an angle, or skipped underneath, you wouldn't get bit. It had to come straight down the main beam of the log."
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