BassBlaster

Don’t Count Out the Cajun Baby

Has your 2011 fantasy fishing campaign been an outright suckfest so far? Don’t worry. You’re not alone.

If you’ve got lots of ground to make up in the BassParade fantasy league you might want to take a hard look at Group D. As it stands now, Chris Lane and Peter Thliveros make up 64% of all fantasy players’ D selections. Are those smart picks? Probably. But if you’re a basement-dweller in desperate need of making a move, Lane and Thliveros aren’t of much value to you. Cliff Crochet, on the other hand, is only on 1.8% of players’ rosters.

The Cajun Baby cashed five checks last year in his rookie campaign, and missed a victory at Clarks Hill by just 2 ounces. At the Clarks derby he milked a frog pattern while everybody else was chasing blueback herring. Last week at the Harris Chain he scored a Top-12 finish with a power-fishing combo of flipping and frogging. See a pattern here?

News flash: Crochet likes to toss a toad. Power-fishing is his game. A frog bite could certainly come into play at St. Johns, and if it does, look for the Cajun to catch ’em. But that’s not all he’s got working for him.

Crochet cut his teeth fishing the Atchafalaya Basin in Louisiana. Calling the Basin a sprawling fishery is like calling the Mariana Trench a deep hole (look it up). Imagine if you took a rainforest and replaced all the tropical plants with cypress tress and then filled it with water. That’s the Basin. A river system like the St. Johns shouldn’t intimidate Cliffy one bit. In fact, when I talked to him at the Bassmaster Classic he said he felt one of his biggest strengths lies in his confidence that he can break down any body of water quickly, no matter how big.

Make no mistake, Crochet represents a gamble in Group D. He logged a couple bottom-of-the-barrel finishes in 2010 (78th at the Cal Delta and 90th at Fort Gibson), but his only other two finishes outside the money were close calls with a 56th at Smith Mountain and a 57th at Kentucky Lake. With a year of experience under his belt, momentum from a high finish at Harris and an event that’s shaping up to play right into his wheelhouse, you might want to consider taking the chance.

Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Gitcha Bassin' Fix

To Top