By John Johnson
BassFan Senior Editor
Scott Martin needs a solid finish at this week's Lay Lake Bassmaster Eastern Open to achieve one of the objectives he set for himself at the start of the current campaign. He needs a victory to knock down both of them.
The longtime FLW standout and 2015 Angler of the Year hasn't competed in a tour-level event in 2020 as he switched over to B.A.S.S. in a quest to capture the Bassmaster Classic triumph that eluded his legendary father Roland. His only shot at making the '21 Classic is to win at Lay, but a showing in the Top 30 or so should be enough to get him in next year's Elite Series field, which was his other goal.
"Now that we're down to the last event of the year, I'm going into it with tremendous purpose," he said in a phone interview on Monday evening. "When it all started at the beginning of the year, we all had certain expectations and goals for a normal year, then of course, COVID hit and everything got disrupted. It's obviously affected everybody so much.
"I'm excited about this opportunity, though, and I feel really good about being here. I feel like we're though the whole fall transition time and we're back to a normal type of fishing. I joked with somebody (on Monday) that I caught more fish that day than I had in the last three tournaments."
In a Good Place
Martin, an eight-time FLW Tour winner and former Forrest Wood Cup champion who sat atop the BassFan World Rankings for several months in 2016, has pocketed a little over $23,000 in seven Opens this year competing in both the Eastern and Central divisions. He has two 5th-place finishes (the Kissimmee Chain and Lake Hartwell) along with a 42nd at Cherokee Lake on his Eastern ledger and goes into the Lay derby at No. 4 in the AOY race.
If he remains among the Top 4, he'll be assured of an Elite slot for next year. That cutoff position could drop to 6th as two of the anglers in front of him (current Elite competitor Patrick Walters and 2020 B.A.S.S. Nation champion Pat Schlapper) already have their berths in hand.
Martin said he loves the venue at which his fate will be determined.
"It's awesome – I might buy a house here," he said. "It's got a good population of both largemouths and (spotted bass) and a lot of grass and other good shallow stuff. It's a diverse lake that fishes good everywhere.
"Some lakes you go to and they're half silted in at the backs of the pockets and you can't get around, but that's not the case here. You can win a tournament anywhere on this lake. The colder weather could be a curveball for the shallow bite, but these fish are used to that – they live shallow and if you get something in front of their face, they're going to bite it."
Needs Trend Reversal
Martin's second Top-5 showing of the year occurred at Hartwell in late September – a tournament that was won by Walters. He hasn't cracked the Top 50 in any of his three outings since and had a miserable time at Lewisville two weeks ago as he caught just one keeper over two days and finished 125th.
"Some of it's obviously been my fault, but we just hit those fisheries at the weirdest and the worst times," he said. "Local people were saying they'd never seen them that tough and that was at several places.
"I like to move around and run a pattern of some sort, but how these last two or three were won, it was basically just buckling down on one spot and milking it. It was different than the way we normally fish. At this one, I think we're all going to be able to go fishing."
Regardless of what happens this week, he said he's still fully committed to the career decision he made a year ago.
"Absolutely – 100 percent," he said. "Hopefully one day I can pull off something that my dad wasn't able to do, and to do it while he's still around would be awesome."
