By John Johnson
BassFan Senior Editor
Of the three REDCREST Championships that Dustin Connell has won, he ranks this latest one, achieved last week at Lake Guntersville, at the top of the list.
"First of all, it's just the fishery," said the Alabama resident who's posted all three of his REDCREST triumphs in his home state. "I consider Guntersville the granddaddy of all lakes. It's a historic fishery and it's world-renowned.
"When I won at Eufaula (in 2021), COVID was still going on and that kind of put a damper on the whole experience – it was a weird deal. Then Lay Lake last year was awesome, but I was pretty much expecting to do well."
His own confidence about his prospects wasn't nearly as high for this one, knowing how many different ways quality fish could be caught at Guntersville, and also knowing that he wasn't as proficient as some of his competitors at a few of the techniques that would be employed. But he was willing to take a chance, and it paid off handsomely.
From the middle of the opening day through the final lines-out call, he fished all alone at the extreme upper end of the impoundment, just below the Nickajack Lake dam. It was a portion of the venue he'd never visited previously, but he'd conjured up the idea to try it months before.
It was a one-man, triple-species party up there as he caught largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass on a variety of Rapala baits, primarily a Crush City Mooch Minnow and a Crush City Freeloader.
"I know that I can't sight-fish better than Bobby Lane and I can't drag a worm better than Mark Davis," he said. "And I just love fishing current and getting away from all the crowds.
"I wanted to separate myself, so I ran 70 miles to do it."
The ride was not an enjoyable one.
"It was about an hour and 10 minutes, wide open," he said. "It was terrible. The wind blew out of the south all week and it was against the current. There were 2 1/2- to 3-foot waves most of the way."
One trend that's developed across the first six editions of REDCREST is that it's an event that's won by anglers with experience at closing out high-level victories. Connell has bagged half of them, of course, and the other three anglers who've copped the trophy are Edwin Evers, Bobby Lane and Bryan Thrift.
Connell said that having been there and done that is definitely a factor when the final day comes around and the $300,000 top prize is up for grabs among 10 competitors.
"It's such a high-stakes event and there's a lot of pressure and a lot of strategy involved," he said. "You have to catch them every day and you have to manage fish and understand what's getting pressure and what isn't.
"I think just becoming more seasoned as an angler has really helped me. I started fishing professionally in 2017 and I was green, even though I got fortunate and won a tournament (a Bassmaster Elite Series event at Ross Barnett Reservoir). It's just in the last few years that I've felt like I'm hitting my stride.
"I'm not nervous anymore," he concluded, "and I can go out and make decisions on the fly, and that's a big, big deal. I don't look back. I'm not going to sit there and settle for a 36th-place finish. I'm going to run and try to find 'the juice', and if I don't find it, at least I went down swinging."
