How Fisher Anaya won the Martin Bassmaster Elite

Won just his 2nd Elite ever! Wgat else can you say except – really dang impressive. Here’s how he did it.

Going in and practice

> “I felt really good after practice. I had a really, really good practice. I knew going into it if my fish would stay I had a shot to win…and they all kinda left [in the tournament].

> “I had [largemouths] staged up back in some muddier pockets [in 0-3′]. Shallow docks, shallow laydowns, I caught ’em swimming a jig – all that good fun stuff…that bite kinda just disappeared.

> “I don’t know if people caught ’em and put pressure on them, or if the fish just moved back out because they realized it’s a little bit too early to be getting ready.”

Tournament

> “[Day 1] I started off the morning really slow. I think most of my fish left during the night before…. I don’t know where they went. They weren’t there, I wasn’t seeing them, I wasn’t getting the bites.

> “I tried to force [it] all of day 1 mostly. I moved back out a little bit later in the day and caught a lot of my fish in the mouth of the pocket I was catching them in.

> “I picked up on that. The 2nd day I ran back into the deep end of the pocket again…for 3-4 hours that morning I just had a struggle bus. I moved to a marina and…that’s where all the big largemouth went to. I couldn’t catch them but I was seeing them.

> “I think there was a lot of pressure in that marina. …those largemouth were big, 4-5 lbers – they didn’t get that big being dumb.

> “They were suspended dead flat underneath this giant marina. I had to throw over cables, pontoon boats, walkways just to try to get to them to force them to bite. I ended up catching 1, almost a 2-lber.

> “I made a move toward the main lake – I was just covering water with the trolling motor, going in and around points, humps, rocks…looking for staging spots….

> “I went in this one section of a creek, right in the mouth of it. There were some rockpiles…super-shallow, like 2′ deep rockpiles, and I could see them with my eyeballs swimming around.

> “I was just picking them off 1 by 1, and that’s how I caught the majority of my fish the end of the 2nd day and all of the 3rd day.

> “I would just go down the bank trolling. It was a pretty good-sized pocket and they were just all in there on the points on super-shallow rock.

> “They were pretty dumb. I’d just cast in there, it would land on their head and they’d swim up and eat it. I tried to lead some of ’em but it was so hard to be accurate with the little bait I was throwing.

> “Day 4 was the same area but it was so cloudy and had rained, a lot of the fish moved out to the 8-9′ deep range. So I couldn’t sight-fish ’em but I could still see them.

> “They went from shallow rockpiles to stumps, twigs, brushpiles, stuff like that. Still the same area, they just moved out a little bit. I had to put a little bit heavier nail weight in [the bait] and make it sink.”

Baits

> 13-14mm round fuzzy baits (gp) with a #5 VMC RedLine Treble Hook and 1/32-oz VMC Nail Weight, 16-lb braid to 12-lb Sufix Advance Fluoro, 7′ 4″ ML 13 Fishing Myth Rod.

> Why the treble hook: “It just keeps spotted bass pinned a little bit better. Their mouths are so small, and some were nipping at the bait. So the treble hook just helped your hookup ratio.

> “I had to reaction-catch some of ’em. Like sneak it up to them and almost hit them in their tail with it – like spawning-style fish – to make ’em loop around on it and react to it.

> “They were just extremely smart. The water was so clear.”

> Days 1-2 he also Scoped a 4.25 Rapala CrushCity Freeloader. He said he tried to get the spots to eat a Neko-rigged worm but they wouldn’t do it.

Electronics

He used Garmin LiveScope with a Garmin 1643 unit, said he doesn’t mess with the settings much and keeps the amber color palette.

> “I used my Humminbird [Lakemaster] mapping to pinpoint every little indention in the bank or ditch that I could find. A lot of these rockpiles are in little tiny bellies off a saddle on a point or a saddle on an island. It helped me locate these rockpiles a little quicker.”

Shoutouts

> “Shoutout to my family, my mom, dad, girlfriend, all of them for being there.”

More: Spotted bass lakes

> “I love spotted bass lakes. That’s right up my alley. I live like 20 minutes from Smith Lake, so I’ve been chasing spots my whole life.

> “Every [spotted bass] lake is a little different. At Smith, most of your big spots live on docks. A lot of them live on 100-200′ deep docks…they swim right under the floats. You can almost see them with your eyeballs.

> “On Lake Martin the bigger ones were holding on shallow rockpiles. I don’t know if it’s because there’s a lot of stripe in that place, running ’em off and making them live shallow there.

> “But it’s 2 different fisheries. Spots have a mind of their own. They do what they want to do. Day by day they’re different [so you have to fish for them] with an open mind.”