By John Johnson
BassFan Senior Editor
Everybody who fishes at the professional level has high-quality equipment that they know how to use. Where and when it's employed is almost always the determining factor that separates success from failure.
David Dudley, the No. 1 angler in the BassFan World Rankings, is going all the right places and doing all the right things these days. For his latest notable achievement, he totally obliterated
the strongly held notion that the Lake Champlain FLW Tour Major would be won out of Ticonderoga – the largemouth mecca at the southern end of the big lake that straddles the New York/Vermont border.
He eschewed the 140-mile round trip to Ti that cuts into an angler's fishing time and can get extremely dicey in even a moderate wind, and instead opted to pursue largemouths up north in Missisquoi Bay. Some big ones reside there, too, but they're more scattered, and most considered boating five each day that averaged in the neighborhood of 4 pounds apiece an order that was too tough to be fulfilled.
It wasn't too difficult for Dudley, who notched his second victory of the season and won his second straight Angler of the Year title (and record-tying third of his career) in the process. He led from start to finish, and his 78-08 total for 4 days eclipsed runner-up Jacob Powroznik by a little more than a pound and a half.
Here's how he did it.
Practice
Dudley has fished many events at Champlain, and in the past he's always run to Ticonderoga. As a heavy-gear, chunk-and-wind-type, it's a better fit for his style than the smallmouth-infested northern end.
He avoided Ti this time, though, for one simple reason: He knew it would be crowded. He steeled himself to stay up north, and if he didn't win or even make the cut to the Top 20, he'd know a lot more about that portion of the lake by the time he left.
He said he was on the water from dawn to dusk on the first practice day and saw just about everything that Missisquoi had to offer.
"I went over every nook and cranny and I caught about 18 pounds that day, so I knew there was some good fish there," he said. "I was happy with what I saw."
He spent most of the next 2 days trying to develop a backup pattern with smallmouths, but that didn't go nearly as well. He said he took on too much of a "video game" mentality – relying on his electronics to show him where the schools of bronzebacks were located.
"You get so addicted to that graph, but I couldn't make it happen and I was too stubborn to switch. The few guys I talked to who were catching them were doing it casting and winding. My hat's off to the guys who had good finishes on smallmouths, because I was stumped.
"I couldn't have caught 10 pounds of them. That turned out to be kind of a blessing in disguise because all I had was the largemouths and I wasn't tempted to go to (the smallmouths)."
Competition
> Day 1: 5, 24-00
> Day 2: 5, 18-15
> Day 3: 5, 15-09
> Day 4: 5, 20-00
> Total = 20, 78-08
The north wind that had blown for several days leading up to the start of the event had pushed some water out of Missisquoi, and Dudley believes the slight drop in water level caused some of the bigger fish to move away from the banks. He caught his massive day-1 bag off of rockpiles using a dropshot rig. The fish were in 4 to 8 feet of water and some of the piles were hundreds of yards offshore.
Rain that night and winds that had shifted to blow from the south boosted the water level in Missisquoi back up for day 2. He was able to pull a couple of solid keepers off the rocks, but that was it.
"The water was up 5 or 6 inches and those offshore fish were gone," he said. "Once I'd made some casts and wasn't catching anything, I realized what was happening. It only takes a few inches of water for those fish to say, 'Let's go to the banks.'''
He moved toward shore and started throwing a swim-jig and a wacky-rigged worm at any and all visible cover – grass, rocks, docks, wood, etc.
"It really wasn't complicated. I just put the trolling motor down and started casting."
Dudley took command of the event with a 24-pound bag on day 1 and led the rest of the way.
His sack, just an ounce shy of 19 pounds, added a half-pound to the 3 1/4-pound edge he began the day with. He lost about a pound of that the following day when he weighed his lightest stringer of the tournament.
"I knew the offshore stuff was totally done and I tried to fish some brand new areas – stuff I didn't even fish in practice. Those areas didn't pay off, but I learned more about what I needed to be concentrating on and I expanded on my day-2 stuff a little bit more."
The final day unfolded in pretty much the same manner that day 2 had, except that the fish were holding a little bit farther away from the bank.
"I the morning I went really shallow and caught 23 in like 30 minutes, but they were little. Then I moved from 1 foot out to the 2-foot range, and that's when I started connecting with the better quality of fish.
"By 9:00, I knew I was done with the real shallow stuff. I knew what they were doing and I knew where I needed to be, and I just kept pounding them out."
Winning Gear Notes
> Dropshot gear: 7' medium-heavy Abu Garcia Verdict spinning rod, Abu Garcia Revo Premier spinning reel, 10-pound Berkley Trilene 100% fluorocarbon line, 1/4-ounce round dropshot weight, unnamed 3/0 hook, Berkley Havoc Bottom Hopper (watermelon).
> Wacky-rig gear: Same rod, reel and line as dropshot, unnamed 3/0 straight-shank hook, unnamed worm (watermelon).
> Flipping gear: 7'11" heavy-action Abu Garcia Veritas flipping stick, Abu Garcia Revo MGX casting reel (7:1 ratio), 17-pound Berkley Trilene 100% fluorocarbon, 1/2-ounce weight, unnamed 5/0 hook, unnamed creature bait (watermelon).
> He also caught a few fish on an unnamed bladed jig with a Berkley Havoc Rocket Craw trailer.
The Bottom Line
> Main factor in his success – "Making the adjustments along with the fish."
> Performance edge – "The drag on the Revo reels. When you're catching big largemouths on spinning gear, it helps if you're not breaking off fish."
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