There's a saying in the car business: The best time to sell a car is right after you've sold one. That's not necessarily how it works in fishing – in fact, back-to-back victories remain an extreme rarity – but there's no denying that a win delivers momentum.

Scott Martin feels it. The reigning Forrest Wood Cup champ is about a month off

his victory at Lake Ouachita, and he's soon headed up north for his second-to-last event of the year – the Champlain FLW Tour Open.

As Cup champ, Martin automatically has a berth in the 2012 championship. The Opens don't count toward Angler of the Year (AOY) awards. So the Champlain Tour Open presents a unique opportunity for Martin, who revealed to BassFan this week that his career goal is to be the FLW Tour all-time leading winner, much like his father holds the B.A.S.S. victory records.

In the brief Q&A that follows, Martin addresses Champlain, his momentum, as well as the aforementioned career victories goal.

Two of your five FLW Outdoors victories were at Champlain. Think you can make it three?

I definitely want to do well. I go into every event with the goal to win, but I feel like I have a lot of momentum right now. I'm making good decisions and I'm anxious to get up to Champlain.

But you know, Champlain's always different. It always seems to be a different month or time of year when we go there, so I know I have to stay open-minded. But I feel good about it. I'll always have a special connection with that lake and I feel very excited and very confident of doing well in this event.

There's no Cup berth or points on the line. Does that make a difference in your approach?

I've never been one to really calculate points and stuff. I probably need to focus on that more going forward, because the next thing I want to focus on is AOY. But I've always been focused on winning tournaments. Whether there are points to not at stake, I want to win. And Champlain's a big payday - at least $100,000 – and that's a big deal.

And I really want to win because then I can move up the ranks as far as the all-time winners and get my career earnings up.

You mentioned AOY as an immediate focus, but it seems that lifetime marks – total wins, total winnings – are a huge focus too.

I feel the light at the end of the tunnel. My dad had his whole career with the most wins at B.A.S.S., obviously the most AOYs and for a while he'd won the most money. Having the most tour-level wins in FLW is a very good, attainable goal for me. I want to keep winning more tour-level events and be, in essence, at the top of the FLW game. That would be sweet and it would make dad proud.

In terms of Champlain, you're facing a fall bite. Have you thought through practice? Will you spend at least a day south at Ticonderoga?

I'll probably keep Ti as an option. The thing about Champlain is it changes so much – you have such a short fishing season and every year it's just so different. So Ti is definitely an option and I'll have to figure out which day I'll go practice there. Maybe the first day, then work my way up. But I'll definitely spend most of my time in the lake itself and the north end. That's where I've done all my damage in the past.

My confidence is definitely in the north end of the lake, but you never can take Ti out of the equation. The minute you forget about Ti, it's going to win the event.

I just need to keep a real open mind – get up there, look at the current conditions. I heard the lake came up a lot from the storm, and they had an unseasonably warm summer. So there are a lot of factors that'll make it much different than in the past, in terms of how the lake fishes.

Are you thinking you'll be able to focus on a single species, or will this be a mixed-bag event?

This time of year you can expect the smallmouths and largemouths to be mixed together, so this year I think it's going to take a mixed bag. Unless it's all largemouths down at Ti, I think the guy who fishes the north end and does well will definitely have a mixed bag. There are just so many good largemouths in the northern end of the lake that it takes a couple of 5-pounders throughout the event to win.

Ounces separate getting a check and making the Top 10 and sometimes winning. So getting those fish well over 4 pounds is a very key part of winning an event there. Anytime we've been there in the past, you had to have those key fish over 4 pounds to put you over the top – the 2 1/2s and 3s are virtually meaningless.

Notable

> In the wake of his Cup victory, Martin hasn't yet signed any new sponsors, although he said he's working on "a couple really nice deals right now." One is with a shoe brand and a few others are with bait companies. The sponsorships involve both himself as a tour pro, as well as his Scott Martin Challenge TV show, he said.