By John Johnson
BassFan Senior Editor

It took Brock Mosley a few years to find his groove on the Bassmaster Elite Series, but he broke through in 2019 (his fourth year on the tour) to qualify for his first Bassmaster Classic with a 36th-place finish in the final Angler of the Year (AOY) standings. He followed that up with even better showings – 4th in 2020 and 14th in 2021.

His fortunes have backslid this season, though, and with two-thirds of the campaign in the books he sits in 63rd place in the points – well outside the cut line for 2023 Classic qualification. He has a runner-up placement on his ledger (at Lake Chickamauga in April), but he went 2-days-and-out in the other five derbies, with those finishes ranging from 57th to 74th.

He said he's used the same approach that he did over the previous strong campaigns and feels like he's making solid on-the-water decisions. It's just been one of those seasons when too many key fish have come unhooked before he got his hands on them, whether by happenstance or poor execution.

"I've lost more fish this year than I did in the last 3 years combined," he said last week as he started his journey from his Mississippi home to Clayton, N.Y. for the tournament on the St. Lawrence River that begins next week. "It's not like I've had the fish on to have great tournaments or lost a bunch that would've given me a Top 10, but when you lose 10 points in this tournament and 15 in that tournament, it all adds up as the year goes on.

"It's hard to hard to finish in the Top 10 or Top 15 of the points every year – some guys do it and they're great at it, but it's kind of hard to do. I've even asked some other anglers if I needed to change something, but it's really just one of those deals where I gotta fish through it.

"The thing about it is I haven't really had a total bomb," he continued. "Most of the time I've just been a couple of fish away from being in the cut."

Slapdown at Santee

The 33-year-old Mosley posted his lowest finish of the season (74th) in the event at South Carolina's Santee Cooper Lakes in March. That was a tournament in which the loss of a key bite was absolutely his own fault.

"On day 2 I had a bed that had three fish on it and two of them were females," he said. "I finally got one of the females to bite after shaking off the male about 25 times. It was a 4 1/2- or 5-pounder and, being stupid, I tried to boat-flip it and it went right back in the water. After that, neither one would stay on the bed anymore.

"Catching that fish would've bumped me up 10 or more places and if I'd caught her, I probably could've caught the other one, too. Some of the ones I've lost this year have been because of stupid stuff on my end and others were stuff that was out of my control. I even had a marshal ask me if he needed to follow me home once because my luck was so bad that day."

Not Giving Up Hope

Mosley thinks he can make a run at a fourth consecutive Classic berth if he averages a 25th-place finish or better in the final three tournaments. The St. Lawrence event will be followed by derbies at South Dakota's Lake Oahe and the Mississippi River in Wisconsin, both in the latter part of August.

"I think that would put me kind of where I need to be and give me a shot," he said. "I have a decent track record up there and I'm looking forward to the cooler weather than what we've had (where he lives). The fisheries haven't had as much pressure as the ones in the southern part of the country.

"Maybe I'll have some change of luck up north."