Three separate attack plans emerged at the recent Champlain FLW Tour, and each of the three was represented in the Top 10. Some pros chose to make a massive run south to Ticonderoga to target largemouths. Some pros ran to the north end of the lake to target largemouths. And some pros fished from mid-lake to the north end and targeted smallmouths.
In the end, Ticonderoga couldn't hold up. Half the guys never made the trip there on day 3, and the bite was wishy-washy on day 4.
The smallmouth guys got blown off their spots on day 3 and never could recover.
Instead, Scott Martin's north-end largemouth pattern carried the day.
Martin weighed 10 largemouths the first 2 days for 35-13 and made he cut in 9th. He was the only pro to catch over 18 pounds on day 3, then followed up with 17-12 the final day (again, all 10 were largemouths).
He edged runner-up Anthony Gagliardi by a little more than 2 pounds and dedicated the win to his maternal grandmother, who passed away suddenly the night before competition.
For Martin, it was his second consecutive Champlain FLW Tour win, and the third Tour win of his career. It also pushed his total FLW Outdoors winnings over the $1 million mark. Here's how he did it.
Competition
> Day 1: 5, 19-02
> Day 2: 5, 16-11 (10, 35-13)
> Day 3: 5, 18-08
> Day 4: 5, 17-12 (10, 36-04)
Martin has the Champlain mojo for sure. His Tour record there now includes two victories and two 4ths – something he happily pointed out to BassFan, because we didn't name him as one of the Top 10 to watch as this event.
"The motivation to win this tournament for my grandma was No. 1," he said. "But No. 2 was that you guys didn't pick me in the Top 10. That ticked me off."
He fished a flat in Missisquoi Bay that was littered with milfoil and scattered rock.
His primary weapon was a crankbait, and he used two different ones for different applications. He used a medium-diving Strike King Series 4 "in more open water, where there was very sparse grass and scattered rock," he said. "And there were occasionally some stumps I could deflect the crank off and go back to and catch more fish.
"When I got into thicker milfoil areas, I'd take a shallow-running Lucky Craft Big Daddy Strike (BDS) 3 and fish that through the heavier grass."
After he thoroughly cranked an area of the flat, he'd mop up with a Texas-rigged Berkley Chigger Craw. "It was my cleanup lure," he said. "I'd throw it in these areas and work it through the areas after I caught fish on a crankbait."
Notable too is that he added a sight-fish in the closing moments of day 2 that moved him into the cut. The sight-fish was located nearer the launch, and he stopped there while returning to weigh-in.
In the Missisquoi, the flat he fished ranged generally from 3 to 6 feet deep, but sometimes sunk to 8. He said his fish were pretty fat, so he thinks they had been done spawning for a while. "These were some of the first fish that spawned. I did catch some that were skinny, but for the most part they were thick fish.
"It was kind of a non-traditional July," he added. "And I think one of the keys to my tournament was the cold weather kind of held the fish back. There were still a few fish on the beds. But the biggest thing was the grass wasn't matted up really thick yet, and that allowed me to throw the moving baits.
"When the grass is really thick you have to be throwing a frog through it or flipping or pitching," he added. "A lot of guys did that at Ticonderoga, but you can't cover a lot of water that way. With the grass not being up and thick – being more scattered – that allowed me to cruise around and find these fish."
One key to his pattern, he said, was keeping a "clean" crankbait. Milfoil can be brutal to crank since it seems to collect on the lure like iron filings on a magnet. He noted that the combination of his Kistler Argon rod and 15-pound Berkley Trilene 100% fluorocarbon allowed him to feel when grass hampered lure action.
Key for Martin was that, with a cold July, the grass was not yet fully grown and matted, which allowed him to fish a moving bait.
"With that combo you can instantly feel the littlest vibration change when you get a little piece of moss or grass on there," he said. "When that happened, I'd clean it off (by snapping the rod) and when I got the vibration back, I'd know the bait was clean. And that's when I got bites. I got a lot of bites after I cleaned the bait off after it was snagged up in the grass. I never got a bite when the bait was fogged with grass."
Winning Gear Notes
> Cranking gear: 6'10" Kistler Argon cranking rod, Abu Garcia Revo Premier casting reel, 12- and 15-pound Berkley Trilene 100% fluorocarbon, Strike King Series 4 and Lucky Craft Big Daddy Strike 3 (both in shad colors).
> He used the 12-pound line on the Series 4, since the grass was more sparse.
> He swapped out all his crankbait hooks for No. 2 Owner Stinger trebles.
> Chigger Craw gear: 7' extra-heavy Kistler Helium rod, Abu Garcia Revo Premier, 17-pound Trilene 100% fluorocarbon, 3/8-ounce weight, 4/0 Gamakatsu hook, Berkley Chigger Craw (green-pumpkin).
Winning Gear Details
Martin said several aspects of his equipment were crucial to his win.
Electronics – "Definitely, a major key to my success was my Garmin electronics. I'm not just saying that because they're my sponsor, but because they make the most accurate GPS. In practice and over the first 2 days, my Garmin was deadly accurate. It allowed me to really refine the area and fine-tune exactly where I was fishing. I was able to GPS individual stumps out on the flat, or a rock, or underwater grass half the size of my boat. It's super accurate." (He couldn't fish with his Garmin the final 2 days since the Top 10 switch to FLW-supplied boats with Lowrance units.–Ed.)
Line – "The Trilene 100% fluorocarbon is great stuff for a lot of reasons, and really important at this tournament was I was banging into zebra mussels, getting nicks on the line from pike, and I never broke my line on any fish during the tournament."
Boat – "I want to thank Ranger Boats for making a good boat. I run a Z520, and it was blowing so bad (on day 3) that seriously, if you didn't have a big Ranger, I don't know if you could have went out. You might have flipped over or something."
Trolling Motor – "People hardly talk about Minn Kota, but if we didn't have a trolling motor, we'd catch nothing. My Fortrex 101 is reliable and super quiet. But most important it's also efficient. Out there in 20 mph winds, and using it on 70% to 100% all day, it was still powerful."
Boat Position – "I was 9th in the qualifying round, and I caught a fish that second day that culled a 2-02. It was a 3-01 fish on a bed that I'd found in practice and was still there. She was very skittish. The wind was blowing a little bit, but not hard, and I was able to put the dual PowerPoles down and literally sit there for 15 minutes while she settled down. I was able to catch the fish after 20 minutes. It was one of those fish you weren't supposed to be able to catch, and I wouldn't have been able to do it without those two PowerPoles. And that fish basically put me in the cut. Without that fish I would have finished 11th."
Notable
> Martin also thanked his National Guard team and his wife Suzanne, who he said has the hardest job of the two "by far" and "the most important one – taking care of (their) four kids."
