Jason Christie isn't about to quibble over his 11th-place finish at the Champlain FLW Tour Major – it was one spot higher than where he needed to end up in order to make the Forrest Wood Cup. It left him just outside the Top-10 cut for the final day, however, and he's confident that he'd have been fishing on Sunday if he'd spent more than 1 practice day at Ticonderoga.
Only on the final practice day did he venture to the fertile largemouth grounds at the southern end.
"That's the only regret I have, because I just ran out of stuff," he said. "I was just running the bank, whereas a lot of the other guys down there had found schools. I did the best I could with what I had.
"The fishing wasn't good enough for me to catch all my weight in a couple of hours (on tournament days) and then practice the rest of the day. It was all day, every day for me. I had to cover a lot of water and I was just catching one here or there."
All of his fish on the first 2 days were enticed by a Booyah buzzbait. That quit working on day 3, so he switched to a Booyah Pad Crasher frog.
His Cup-qualification situation wouldn't have been so tenuous had he not had two straight miserable finishes heading into Champlain. After a strong start to the campaign, a four-fish, 8 1/2-pound bag on day 1 resulted in a 125th-place showing at the Potomac River, and he had a boating mishap on day 2 at Kentucky Lake that prevented him from making check-in and gave him a zero for the day (he ended up 128th).
"It was about time something good happened. I was fighting with that all the way through the tournament (at Champlain) and I thought I was going to have to end up in the Top 3 or so to make the Cup.
"After day 2 somebody had figured it up and they told me I could make it if I finished 12th. Knowing that didn't change the way I fished, though – I just went out and caught all that I could."
The Big Bite Lookback, which focuses on the angler who's first out of the final cut at each tour-level event, is brought to you by the great folks at Big Bite Baits.
