By John Johnson
BassFan Senior Editor

Justin Lucas' two-tour 2022 campaign got off to a really rough start. He logged a 101st-place finish at Sam Rayburn Reservoir in the MLF Pro Circuit opener in late January and then was 77th in an 80-angler field as the Bass Pro Tour kicked off its season on three venues in Louisiana.

"I felt a little rusty to start the year," he said. "I had a lot of family stuff last year – we had a baby born, my mom got sick and my grandma passed away. There was just a lot going on.

"I hadn't been on the water much and when I went to those first two tournaments, I was not very confident. I didn't know how I was going to fish and I figured that I was going to end up doing things that I'm not that great at."

He turned things around with an 8th-place showing in the BPT derby at Lake Fork in late February and kept the momentum rolling across the next seven months. In 14 tournaments after Louisiana, he ended up no lower than 40th. His run included a pair of runner-up finishes in April (in the BPT Heavy Hitters tournament at Lake Palestine and the Pro Circuit event at Pickwick Lake). Ten of those placements were among the Top 20.

"At Fork I picked up a dropshot and a Texas rig with a (Berkley) Power Hawg, along with some other soft plastics, which is what I have the most confidence in," he said. "The first day of practice I had a great day and I ended up having a good tournament, so it was like okay, we're right back on track.

"I just got my confidence and my momentum back. If you look at my whole career, when I miss a check I'll usually miss a couple in a row, and then once I make the cut again I can keep that rolling. It's always been like that and I've always struggled in the prespawn. That's always been the hardest time of the year for me."

He'd assumed the Louisiana tournament, being a chilly-water event, would be dominated by crankbaits and the like. He got a wake-up call when he learned that competitors such as Jared Lintner, Bradley Roy and Josh Bertrand had done well on patterns like fishing docks and flipping cypress trees.

"I went to Fork and instead of doing things I'm not good at, I targeted fish on that kind of stuff and everything changed," he said.

He pointed to Heavy Hitters, the big fish-oriented all-star event, as the highlight of his season, but it was a bittersweet feeling.

"That one was a big deal for me. I lost a fish (a 5- to 6-pounder) in the last hour that would have won it and potentially could have been the big fish of the day (which would have garnered a $100,000 bonus). I caught almost every fish in that tournament on a swim jig.

"The tournaments I've won have all been on smallmouth or on tidal fisheries and I want to win one on a lake really bad. That was a really good opportunity and I Iet it slip out of my hands."

For 2023, he'll put his focus entirely on the BPT with the exception of the upcoming Toyota Series event at Florida's Harris Chain and possibly a couple of other Toyota outings. He's fully in favor of the BPT's switch from the all-legal-fish-count scoring format to the traditional five-fish mode.

"The only thing I really changed with the (previous) MLF format was I backed off or downsized some of the swimbait stuff I've done in the past," he said. "I'm excited to mix some of those bigger baits back into the arsenal."