Special thanks to our friends Picasso Lures for sending out the tweet that prompted this article. Be sure to check them out on Twitter @picassolures.
The 2012 season will kick off with the Classic which will be held on the Red River out of Shreveport, La.The dates are February 24-26 and will feature some new twists, not the least of which will be the inclusion of the Bassmaster College Bass Champion.
From there, the series will go to Palatka, Fla., for the season opener on the St John’s River. The dates for this event are March 15-18.
The second stop for the pro’s will be just a few hours down the road at Lake Okeechobee. From March 22-25, they’ll battle it out on one of the largest lakes they fish. At almost 500,000 surface acres, the “Big O” could be in prime spawning mode.
Bull Shoals Lake in Arkansas will be the next tournament covering the dates April 19-22. Some folks don’t know that in 1975, Dee Thomas, the inventor of flippin’, won this event using his “secret” technique. It wasn’t long afterwards that flippin’ was being utilized by most of the pro’s on the tournament trail as well as avid anglers. Obviously, it is still used today and continues to be one of the mainstays in a lot of anglers arsenals.
Next up is Douglas Lake out of Dandridge, Tenn. Rick Clunn won here in 2001 for his 13th career victory. The dates for this event are May 3-6.
June 7-10, the pro’s will head back to La to fish historic Toledo Bend Reservoir. A lot of the current pro’s have had success here and big weights are not uncommon.
It’ll be time to head north for the sixth event of the season. La Crosse Wis., is the site for a battle on the Big Muddy, the Mississippi River June 21-24. We’ll have to see what the anglers can put together, but that far north, the weights could be less than stellar.
The Return Of The Mystery Lake
This next event from June 28-July 1 is the one, in my opinion, that holds the most promise for the unexpected to happen. By this time in the season, the points race for the AOY(Angler of the year) are really heating up with the pressure on the front-runners to hold their positions if not move up. On the schedule, it simply says to save the dates. That means that there won’t be a lot of time for information gathering or practice ahead of this event. I’ll get back to this event in a minute. For now let’s finish the schedule.
The final stop for the Elite series will be Syracuse N.Y., at Oneida Lake. The AOY will be crowned here after the event August 23-26 as well as berths being decided for the 2013 Bassmaster Classic.
Event number 7 is the one, if I had my druthers, that I would choose to attend above all the others. Why? Because the pro’s won’t find out where it is until just before practice. No, it’s not the same as the first six Classics where they didn’t find out until they were aboard a plane en route to their destination, but it will be a strange enough format that some fireworks are bound to go off.
This tournament will highlight some very special talents and separate those anglers who can really put together a pattern quickly from those who can’t. What will this do to these guys? We’re gonna have to wait to find out but, it will be more like the rest of us who go to a strange body of water and have to put something together quickly to have a good day. What are the adjustments going to be that end up making the difference for the winner? Again, nobody knows yet. Will they be scrambling to put fish in the boat? Surely, some will.
I just hope that the coverage is geared towards showing the fans precisely what, why and how the winning strategy was put together. These learning opportunities don’t come around all that often and when they do, you gotta soak in everything you can.
Anyway, here’s to a great season, and as always …
See ya’ on the water …