2021 Bassmaster LIVE at St. Johns River - DAY 1 (THURSDAY)

live coverage of the afco bassmaster elite at st john's river is sponsored by yamaha [Music] the bass master league okay now we're ready to go with the bass master elizabeth yet we're not ready to go the first step of this long incredible journey that's going to be the 2021 bassmaster elite series well we're still sort of right in mid-step right now because as you can see right now not unusual for this time of year in the state of florida early in the morning you are going gonna get a fog delay and uh that's what we're experiencing right now day number one our turn of director lisa talmadge i think is out right now checking on the situation seeing uh when and if we can get things started on this special day tommy sanders here with you for bassmaster live man so great to have you back for 2021 so great to have mark zona in the house uh mark i'm sorry i was i was not i was not uh hearable for for a time there and i that was a little switch that needed to be put on there by yours truly i know i got to tighten it up we all got to tighten it up okay we have time to tighten it up and uh we're just waiting for the conditions to make it possible for our 99 anglers to get out there for the first day of four days of fishing and uh you know that's the way it goes it could could go for a while we could go at any minute and uh you know as we look at now we're going to take a look at our humminbird unlock the lake and we take you down to the state of florida we'll take you to the longest river in the state of florida 310 miles of the saint johns river of course you see that big lake there on the way is lake george lake george is the second largest lake in the state of florida but there's a hundred miles of fishable water among these 310 that will take us uh from down uh uh near deltona all the way all the way up to jacksonville but uh the fishing starts basically just a couple of lakes down from lake george you can go all the way to the 95 bridge in jacksonville 99 anglers out there and ronnie moore we uh we've been to this place before it has several different faces it can put on we're kind of expecting maybe a little more friendly face when it comes to catching big bass this time around yeah tommy it seems like every time we come here it's going to be oh ho-hum st john's river same places are going to factor same techniques are going to factor last year that was not the case we got to see all the way down in woodruff and dexter way below lake george and all the way up as you're approaching jacksonville with paul mueller so a lot of different places in store a lot of different techniques and the fish are going to be on the move again this year tommy absolutely and a lot a lot of great expectations this time around we never know until we get right into it and we hope that we get into it very very soon so great to have you with us here on bassmaster live coming to you from the bassmaster studio sponsored by marathon man oh man it's been the shortest wait time to get a season one season to the other started but it seems like it's taken a long time but we are ready to go tommy sanders here with you we've also got ronnie and such will introduce them to you in just a little bit the mark zona is at his remote location he'll be joining in just a minute we get a couple of issues everything's squared away but as we say we're waiting right now for the fog delay to uh to uh dissipate and we can get underway here we can't wait for that to happen mike sutsukan is in the house ronnie moore and ronnie you've given us a good rundown on facebook live earlier today and we've got a new expanded field we've got great expectations we've just got to get some fishing going today we do and that's the thing in florida this time of the year it's cold leading up to these events and then all of a sudden you have a couple warm nights and the atmosphere hadn't quite caught up and the fog is going to happen but that just jars and bottles up that energy and we've got 13 anglers joining the elite series this year we've pushed our number from 75 to 88 now up to 99. we're missing two anglers this week due to some hardships and and recovering from different things and surgeries and whatnot so we we don't have quite a hundred but ninety-nine angler suits and they're all ready to go no matter when we take off from the st jones thirteen guys a bunch of new names this fishery is big in bass history this is a 23rd event here and uh some big names six classic champions have won here including rick clint twice at age records for lead winners and last year paul mueller won with about half the weight from the year before so what fisheries going to show up this year yeah what fishery well right now we're waiting for any fishery to show up and that's not unusual when you have a fog delay it's just not safe to run out there all of our all of our headlines are most of them on bassmaster.com leading up to this tournament weather is the key weather is the key to what's going to happen and i can tell you the weather this time around albeit a fog delay on this day is so so different from what it was a year ago a relentless cold front blowing through those first two days wind that would never stop we had to we had to really just wash out their two first days of our tournament that's right tommy we postponed the event two different days and then we canceled one of the days of the event made it a three-day tournament didn't quite get to the expectation everyone thought but a fish like this for kyle welcher not only made his tournament jumping in from outside the top 20 and into the top five going in the final day but it made his career so far giving him superstar status immediately and we've seen guys who start well can carry that all year like jake whitaker did last year top five here in top five in aoy of course paul mueller was the contrarian there most of the anglers are taking the right turn going upstream paul mueller taking a different attack going north or downstream on the saint johns river down the special spot and fishing in deeper water under those pads caught a six pound plus on the final day which anchored the winning weight a weight of barely over 50 pounds compared to rick klum uh previously had almost knocked on the door for a hundred pounds one thing that's going to be interesting and we mentioned it the the size of the field this year we're used to having 100 anglers on this body of water but the last two years we've had 75 and 88 so the guys have had a lot more room to run around and explore well with it being tough last year we saw the far reaches of north play we saw the far reaches down south rodman wasn't a factor but it's in play this year such with a hundred anglers fishing we haven't heard of anyone fishing tight together everyone's spread out crescent lake george dexter woodruff rodman and above palatka plus the actual saint john's river itself there's a lot of water to fish this week and a lot of guys have tried new things well it days past lake george was like you know the galleries of boats were just on top of each other trying to fly and sight fish uh out in lake georgia and it it got a little testy at times people push pulling through there and finding their their fish in the in the beds and the holes of the grass and it was uh you know now we're able to spread out especially since a lot of that grass is gone and it's not gonna be those fields of specific spots where everybody goes a pseudo social distancing you're saying yeah absolutely best place to social distance on earth as we look back on last year of course one of the anglers we'll be following a very closely today in fact we'll be in the boat with him all day long is clark when last year's angler of the year for 2020. mark windlett got his start here and a good start last year right here on st john's clark fishing his third year back from an extended absence from the top level of the bassmaster for sure he was one of the guys who uh made his heyday with bassmaster early in his career won a couple angler of the years with flw came back and hey was actually very disappointed in his first year missing out on the classic getting in the top 15 points but missing out on that just missing out yeah starts strong in florida last year 16th place and then we saw him do something different he says he always fishes the bank at lake eufaula and always gets beat he said i'm not doing that i'm gonna fish some brush piles gets a top 10 there we got to see him on camera a couple days that uh at that event and that was really where we kicked off some expanded coverage which leads us into fox sports one this year and we'll be able to see we'll be able to see clark today on bassmaster live absolutely he's one of six anglers we will be with all day long plus bonus coverage from a host of other anglers during the course of the day clark wendlandt just kept on and on the st lawrence river that performance there very very important that eighth place on the st lawrence was important and he was one of those guys who went to lake ontario obviously the takeoff a little different not in waddington down in clayton the lake was in play he loves big water and he went and put that to his advantage and a place that we really expected him to thrive a great venue for him lake champlain he just never really got it going we have to watch him on camera the first day caught some on a spinner bait caught some small mouth just not the size and that was one of his worst finishes of the year and it kind of made him have to work for it the second half of the season down south i think we got mart zona back with us now we're watching of course as you can see clark winlet that spectacular 2020 season there this was something he wanted [Music] tommy sanders and if you looked at by the way i think we're starting to get the wheels back on i if you looked at clark's year last year i said it the end of the season i said clark what did that angler of the year title mean to you he said it was the biggest accomplishment don't get me wrong the other angler of the year titles that i won with flw that's a big deal he said but this was by far the biggest of his career and as i was listening what what young ron moore was saying is it was just stunning to watch last season with clark that he did not win an event and was so close so many times this was probably one of the key days tommy of his season we saw him struggle on guntersville all day on day one and the last hour until he put it together which is probably the reason that he got to win angler of the year when we looked back at it they told me there were several of those days where he was struggling and came on got it done of course we had to do uh lake guntersville chickamauga all of these places had to be changed up on our schedule simply because of all the health concerns and the disruption of everyone's schedule during the season last year it certainly made all these playing fields a very very different ballpark for everyone santee cooper was no exception santee cooper cooper a very different place clark got it done man top 20 finish there that was so integral to his overall effort in 2020. exactly and really after that tournament we all remember that fish right there and that was a critical bass at the time clark was having a his worst tournament of the season by far right here and you were like man he's kinda let a lot of points slip we thought it at chickamauga especially the way that tournament fished it was potential that clark would have put it away there and the native texan gets his final shot at it at a fantastic lake fork what a tournament we had it was a blowout tournament at the top of the leaderboard but this was some critical stuff for clark winlet down in his spot you're 20 bassmaster elite series angler of the year clark wendlandt tense final hours in that event well there's clark and as we say we'll be with clark all day long and z welcome to you this morning good to see you today at last good to hear everyone and see everyone today and clark wendlandt will be among our anglers that we're with all day long an expanded field of 99 anglers and today as we look forward to getting out there and fishing once this fog delay is uh is done the fog lifts and we can get started what are you looking for what secret would you like to unlock today what would you like to see happen that will clue you in is what's going to happen the rest of this tournament you know i really listened to to ronnie's hummingbird unlock the lake and what what him and such were they were talking about really if this is the saint john's is a different monster now there there's not there's hardly there's zero vegetation basically except lily pads it's more of a lot of hard cover whether you're fishing trees or canals like we saw last year um it's a different playing field but we've had warm nights and talking to the anglers that i got to talk to yesterday tommy they came up shallow on late on tuesday let's get this fog delay over with because this could be this could be potentially one of the best st john's tournaments that we've ever had here it's gonna look a lot different than some of those heavyweight st john's tournaments from the past and i think a lot of the ways the guys are gonna catch them outside of sight fishing there's gonna be a lot of fish caught up beds they are gonna maul them today when they get out there is it going to be good for everybody or are the ones that the chosen ones the blessed ones going to just really go to town and leave some guys kind of scratching their heads i think the guys with the uh low boat numbers the guys first today uh i think they are gonna they're gonna blast them and uh hopefully we have a camera hey the one thing great thing davey height is gonna be with uh one of the anglers that was pretty optimistic that uh he could catch a big stringer so look for some big fireworks one of the favorites maybe we can look forward to yes with davey dave the rest of our clue crew here once again we are in a fog delay if you're just checking in with us on bassmaster live uh we don't know exactly when that's going to happen the the fog to lift the field to get underway but we're keeping our fingers crossed and hoping it will happen especially in light of this very optimistic these rumblings we're hearing from mark zona and the rest of the anglers we are corresponding with about the conditions leading up to the first day of the afco bassmaster elite at the st johns river we'll be back when the fog lifts live coverage of the afco bassmaster elite at st john's river is sponsored by yamaha word on the river is we may have a fishing tournament breaking out here got our fingers crossed here we've been in a fog delay since the uh schedule start time at 7 am local time in palatka florida for this aftco bassmaster elite on the st johns river our 99 anglers itching to go full field fishing today and tomorrow and you can see there things are starting to look way way better less less pea soupy by far than it looked an hour and a half ago or two hours ago and uh well i'll tell you what we uh we can't wait for it to happen so great we get we get started here we got our gang in place we got our cameras in place and we have you in place now and so that's really good welcome to the bassmaster studio sponsored by marathon i'm tommy sanders we got the full crew ready to go and i imagine we'll push on to the the the finish up time the weigh-in time that we have today and mark zona you gave us uh when we were on much earlier a pretty good assessment of what you're expecting on this first day and it was it was an encouraging one well coming off of 2020 this is how you would expect the 2021 season to start tommy sanders but but really the main thing whenever you go to florida we we talk about this every time we cross that florida line warm nights when you look at those low temperatures and if they're hovering somewhere in the 60s big ones are going to get caught in fact the best way to put it every single angler i texted yesterday got to talk about you know hey are the big ones pushing up to a man every one of them said oh yeah we're gonna knock their lights out and the weather outlook looks good earlier in the week it looked like it was gonna some of this cold air that's in the midsection of the country was gonna push in there that doesn't look like it's going to be the case again and so we we have a good outlook for the full four-day uh schedule of this tournament right i think this is going to be one of the most unique bassmaster tournaments on the st john's that we've ever had and the other thing is it's really a different st john's river system than any tournament we've had here in the past in fact a lot of guys like greg hackney said i had to relearn this body of water in three days of practice we're gonna really break down how different it is and there's some some areas of this system that i think we're gonna get to see today that maybe we have never seen in years past that that sounds like fun it is a complex and changing place would you unlock the lake force or in this case the st johns river and our humminbird unlock the lake mark zona tommy it would be an absolute pleasure my friend taking off in palatka florida like we do every time we come to the st john's river do you fish in the main st john's river itself or do you go to an area like lake george where usually 90 of our field fishes i do not think you will see 10 of our field in lake george we'll break that down but if you look at all crescent lake dexter but rodman reservoir somewhere we have not had many top 10 finishes in i think that's going to be a major player and we will talk about why very soon crescent lake now we haven't had crescent lake play uh in recent years we've seen it one in crescent lake before is this the year that it comes back into the full rotation we had some guys at the end of last last year's tournament finding some things out down there exactly and i really don't think that's going to be a big player we're going to talk about the reasons why the main thing is whenever you come to florida you want to find stable water conditions the the you say clear water but really here you just want clean er water combined with hard bottom and when you find those combinations tommy i'm just going to come right out and say it i got to talk to guys like john cox i talked to guys we have cameras with uh clark wendlandt drew benton almost all of them to a t and we've had so many bassmaster tournaments where on that final day of practice not the final day of practice the final few hours of the final day of practice big ones started showing up everywhere and i think there's potential if those lows do not drop into the low 50s i think there's potential that this could be the biggest potentially the biggest weight st john's event that we've had all right let's put it right up to the president right now in your opinion as we restart this tournament three hours plus late today who has the advantage the guys in the first flight are the guys in the last flight could you imagine look everybody's been a little bit on edge today i think that's fair guys is that fair yeah um i think the main thing could you imagine being a rookie this is your rookie morning sitting there at the takeoff um i i look like any tournament where you have a lot of sight fishing that's going to take place the lower boat numbers are generally they are generally the ones to land right on them but trust me there's plenty of big ones to go around shallow right now that are locking down well that's encouraging news ronnie we talked to you just a little bit ago and you had an opinion about who has the upper hand well and not to be different from zona but i mean the the later flight guys today the ones who maybe want to lock through to rodman or go down to the bottom into a george or go into crescent somewhere they might have to take a little longer to get to they're gonna have more time and they're not gonna have to rush back necessarily at three o'clock they'll fish till four o'clock eastern time but as we bring it into the screen of knowledge i wanted to talk about who we do have on live today we haven't seen a fish catch happen because takeoff is happening right now local time they're just starting to take off boats but our camera coverage today patrick walters we've seen him do well here his first two years on the elite series john cruz two top tens as well back-to-back hank cherry our reigning classic champion clark windlard our reigning angler of the year cliff prince he is the saint john's local the one to keep our eye on four top 20s in the last five elite series events we've had there and then brandon pollinik always a figure and and he broke that florida curse for him last year had a great finish here at the st john's and as we also get into raffle of bassmaster fantasy fishing a lot of new things this year a lot of twists and turns more prizes up for grabs for people and i'm just gonna go here's my five people and i'm picking two of those rookies z you're talking about they're very nervous they're waiting three hours for their first day of competition on their elite series career and i've got two of them josh strasner and kj queen i've mixed in canterbury scott canterbury and bucket a he was a lower percentage pick surprisingly because he's got two top tens here the last two seasons on the elites brandon lester is great in florida and i had to go with one high pick cliff prince he's kind of one of those sure bet guys and when we get into who those guys that were really picked highly it is a florida lineup except for rick klun and he's obviously a two-time champion here on the elites over the last three events but cox cook benton and prince all owning the bucket percentages there and that brings us into something different for the folks at home wanting to look at bass track we've been looking at bass track and everyone's tied at zero they're tied for first and they're tied for last with zero right now because no one's caught a bass on the elite so far this year but when we take a look at that bash track you're going to be able to see online it's going to look a little different there's a couple tabs now you have your standings and your little drop down where it expands you've also got a tab for the phoenix boats big bass that top 10 list that's actually going to have every fish listed i believe also the catch times you want to see the most recent guys who've caught them you can click that tab as well but tommy when we're looking at some of these guys especially guys who have been on the elites and you click on let's just say a matt arie because it's alphabetical it'll show you his five fish that he's caught today or his three fish or however many fish he's caught and it'll also have more information about the angler if you want to know get to know some of these newer guys the second year guys the third year guys you can check out videos that are related to them there'll also be photo galleries stories any related content to them will be right here so not only are you getting your fish info from bass track you're also getting videos and stories photo galleries about our field of anglers because it is a star-studded field we got 13 anglers joining the elites from the opens and joining the 88 anglers that we already had it's going to be a great season time we also got a fascination national champion yes you along with those guys from the basspro.com you know bass track is like oxygen to us so i feel like we're going to be we're going to be stronger we're going to be beached up this year the story lines are going to be so incredible such as already digging up things when it comes to that and as we watch guys take off now it's only going to add more info to our fans and it's going to make our story and our picture a little clearer sometimes or it's going to add some more logic and sense to why these guys are doing well well z as we watch this now you set us up this is going to be maybe not sight fishing per se or certainly not sight fishing like maybe we've seen it in years past right well i you know the really the first thing tommy is i was hoping such would have some trivia you know while we were buying time on who actually invented fog because it seems like the road that he might go down early in the season but but here's the way every time that we've come to the saint john's before you know there was massive storms that took a lot of the vegetation out of this system a lot of the eel grass that and that eel grass was always a filter it was a filter to really keep the water clean and a lot of that eel grass would grow in areas they would spawn in hard bottom with that eelgrass gone i remember the ver one of the very first tournaments we covered here james overstreet posted a picture we were driving together tommy and we looked at this photo where there was like 60 guys within a half mile of each other on lake george with that eelgrass gone i do not think you'll see more than a dozen guys on lake george but with that said with that being said there will be some good ones caught there and we're gonna kind of go into why and how the fish really they live different in lake george right now and the stuff that they relate to is stuff that we have not seen in the past yeah good interview with drew benton on bassmaster.com he touches on some of those things too we can we can talk about that a little later on because we'll be following some guys out the lake george no doubt about that but right now let's uh let's concentrate on one of the six anglers we'll be with all day of course that would be the man who racked up the angler of the year prize most consistent performance of 2020 and that is clark wendlandt well the outlook's good we had a little bump in the road uh safety's a huge concern and fog's the scariest thing to a bass fisherman on the water so we had a fog delay we're taking off at 10 15. they've been letting boats go now for about five minutes and it's going to make it really really interesting i mean if it wasn't already interesting with the warm weather we had yesterday fish moving up now there's decisions like can i really run a long way i've got manatee zones to negotiate idle zones to negotiate and there's also a lot some guys can lock so it's going to make it a total crapshoot as to what you do but i mean i think you just use your gut your instincts and and you go fishing and hopefully you end up in the right spot the problem with a fog delay is is it cuts all the wiggle room out you don't have the ability to go try something different you've got to go with what you think at that time and you just can't change you just don't have enough time and so i'm probably going to lock today got to get to the lot by 11 it's 10 21 i think i can get there in time um i'm not gonna have much time to finish two and a half hours i got two and a half hours out of an eight hour day that's all i'm gonna get but i feel like it's my best place what i'm gonna do clark wendlandt they're talking about the the the the minuses of this fog delay and of course there certainly always are those things but these guys have the ability to formulate a new game plan right see no doubt about it tommy and i think clark's gonna be one of the guys going we said there's one area of this system really firing and i believe clark's headed there and a lot of other anglers and i believe our own davy heights gonna be there a little bit later this morning look for big fireworks early and we're going to break down what part of the nexus of the system that is well the big ones have been moving up for a couple of days now and the big time fishermen are moving out on the st johns river for boy for the first time here in 2021 our fog delay is done and we'll be back with the action live coverage of the afco bassmaster elite at st john's river is sponsored by yamaha see right there and you can see it playing through at playing through the the commercial break there our anglers are taking off with finally getting them out on the lake after about a three hour and 15 minutes fog delay that's good news goes to four hours you really can't really get your day in so we uh at this point it looks good for four days of fishing there's some fall concerns tomorrow but that could change we're not even going to worry about that right now but i got to tell you we need to look at one of those fans ronnie was talking about fantasy a few minutes ago one of the fantasy chalk favorites and of course he's always anytime we come to palatka his palatka native cliff prince sixth place last year what will he do this year what'll he do today hey man you know starting off here on my home water i mean what better place to start the angler of the year on your home lakes let's start this thing off with 100 points go to the next one make it another 100 points so hey we might as well start it off with a bang how nice was it waking up in your bed early this morning well i didn't sleep a whole lot last night you know thinking about this thing but uh it is nice to roll over and say well i am at least five minutes from the boat ramp so i don't have very far to drive home and then in comparison to last year how's it fishing uh it's pretty tough but you know uh the weather's shaping up good it's gonna be really good this first couple days um these guys are gonna weigh in some big fish so uh you guys come and check out the weigh-in we'll see in that and as we take you out live we've got some guys already fishing there cliff prince he's always a favorite mark zone does this situation now favor him or is it does does it not work in his favor i i think really the most stunning thing was talking to cliff prince yesterday as he said he does not think this will be a slugfest and is totally going to ignore a lot of the fish that are up shallow spawning out on the water right now with brandon pollinick live later start than we had planned on due to our little fog delay but we're up and running and i'm stuck dang brad and pollinate the 2017 bassmaster angler of the year what a remarkable season for him last year santy cooper wins champlain wins two in a season is just phenomenal and really like cliff prince pollinick said man i'm gonna go after all pre-spawners i'm gonna i'm gonna really ignore the sight fishing that's gonna go on here and he said man i love to sight fish i just don't like to do it in tournaments because it is so time consuming we don't have the ideal conditions for it with the flat calm cloud or sun not ideal but they should still bite tommy you mentioned it two wins for watching last year still finish your opponent and suck fish out here not even close to winning angler of the year barely in the top ten that's how tough it was man you know something else that pollinic said he said you know what what's really scary anytime you're in the state of florida generally you need to be around a group of boats to win in the state of florida a lot of these fish are are in groups together and a lot of different anglers find them where guys are on top of each other which you know we talked about that already we've seen that in years past and pollinic said boy a lot of times if you're fishing alone in the state of florida especially on the st john's more than likely you are really not on them very well for the way brandon likes to fish fishing offshore using his electronics maybe not sight fishing like you said z last year set up perfect and that makes sense why that was his best florida finish he's probably ever had getting a top 10 at the st john's given the tough conditions given the offshore nature of it last year so sticky actually caught them you know rhonda and connected to that the bass masters is three things big bass big stage big dreams we know that right now looking at that commercial with swindle do you really think he's been to france i don't know i was just curious three hours of pondering during a fog delay and that is what z came up with hey he's got more where that came from don't you worry patrick walters exactly where that's at talk about the man if he can carry momentum from season to season he should be the guy lake fork last year 30 pound winning march in the biggest ever in elite series history almost 30 pounds and one thing that's really surprising patrick walter said he is catching him here i think we're going to see patrick in rodman he's catching the same way he did it for well we have just got out here just got on the water i've stopped at a quick shell bed hadn't even fished with some practice uh it's been good in years past and so wanted to come right here we're waiting on the rodman lock yep we're going to still lock through with a short day i just figured that's my best chance of catching a good bag of fish today and just in general so killing some time really just trying to go fishing for a minute calm the nerves first tournament of the season you know everybody's all jittery and fired up and we're just here to just go fishing just catch a fish so everyone counts you never know you just pull up and might get a good bite so we're just starting out here early real quick as we work our way over to the rodman lock-in we'll probably fish for about five minutes and then get a little closer you know just kind of play it by ear that's what today is really going to be about right now and you heard patrick talking about that lock i believe davey said they're going to open that lock at 10 45 to where all of our anglers are going to be able to get through we've seen walters do well his first two years in the elites here at the st johns one year around the island i believe that's drayton island right at the mouth of where it turns into lake george coming south down st johns and then all the way down in dexter and woodruff last year and now we're going to see him fish in the river and then rodman so three different areas three different ones one there just long all right yeah third place last year 2024th and 2019. i'm sorry third and a white last year was 10th last year here excuse me that i catch around here he had the big bag of the event last year tommy 22 15. and he had a pound bags were hard to come by he had over 30 only a handful in 2019 but he's missed another one same thing you know he lived with his electronics at lake throwing a jerkbait really the entire tournament and said that's pretty much exactly how he's catching them in rodman and i said are you getting a lot of bites that one was way off no banks the chances are oh don't worry i won't run out of fish another jerk bait enthusiast on your right there that's right but it wasn't like a champion at least i had something pecking at my cricket won the classic on guntersville last year a little less than a year with the really with the void of vegetation from gosh some of the great events that we had down here with the lack of vegetation you're gonna see a lot more hard cover you're gonna see a lot more boat docks i think in this event cypress trees seawalls nobody wants to bite i guess we are the two old farts you talk about that eelgrass deficit that's been the case here for the last few years that interview that we referenced with drew benton say you know lake george it used to be eel grass luxurious on both sides you could no matter which way the wind blew you could go to one side or the other and fish pretty much the way you want it to that's just not an option anymore it's really not an option but there are other options in there and i think we're gonna end up seeing that through this tournament you know there's still there's still pencil reads you know lily pads throughout this system gosh dang but we're talking about you know you talk about hardcover and and i think somewhere through today all the way to sunday you're gonna see wood play a lot bigger factor this time around than probably years past trying to keep myself focused and on the target at hand but dude you just don't know and when you don't know as soon as you slick up every time you know what i mean they'll get you every time you just have one little lapse they'll eat you up again if you're just joining us this is bassmaster live and we are coming off a three hour plus fog delay a day number one elite afco bassmaster elite on the saint johns river thankfully we are should have our full fields taking off now on all four flights sir the first fish of the day tommy shane lineburger two and a half pounder what do you think of that i think i think great yes and now we get to see the changes on bass track he's now labeled as the phoenix boats big bass leader obviously that's not gonna stand there's gonna be bigger ones but at the moment of all the fish caught which is only one it would label him as that so as soon as we see a two-nine then it'll uh pop up and they'll take the lead but some different features and you can check out he's got a couple different videos below his link as well remember this now for trivia come st lawrence who's first fish in the 2021 season what's the bonus that you get for that such uh early leader early leader personal pride trivia yeah i think as soon as that lock opens to get into rodman 10 45 we were told we got to talk to terry scroggins too before this tournament and and i said look man what area will play because yeah and you know this tommy in years past whether it's like george or going down to dexter it almost seems like every time we've been here one general area is better than the rest of the body of water and he did not hesitate he said without a doubt they are going to catch him in rodman i think it will be one in rodman because he said i think there's four days of fish there and he said the water is just more stable he said there's so much dark water on the st john's right now which generally you don't want that in the state of florida he said man if you go in a crescent you can't see down a foot to two feet of water which was different tommy when you and i were there in years past it was glorious oh yeah it was it was typical florida perfect water and and one one angler that we talked to yesterday john cox i said are you on him oh he said oh yeah yeah yeah yeah and our own davey height is gonna get really close with john today and he said rodman fighters a swimming pool of giants swimming around my boat wow just for context rodman basically comparatively is right around the corner from palatka compared to some of the other places these guys can go fishing so it'll probably have more traffic today than any of these four days right but you know but it's never it's never really shined a lot of guys throughout the years have gone into rodman and just got burned you catch two bass that weigh seven or eight pounds i mean they've always been there's been good quality in there but there's no doubt about it this time this time around rodman's gonna be a much bigger player than in years past looking forward to that as you say see that that lock should be uh starting to function here just moments away and see what happens how about some strikers daily trivia as we take a break here here's the question at last year's bassmaster elite event here on the st johns river how many bags weighed over 20 pounds we've touched on that in our little conversation here but uh are you gonna guess three or five or seven or nine it's going to be our remember last year was tough last year was an atypical year for the st john's river so you may want to think about this or you may want to reach back into the memory banks a long way and we'll answer that trivia question when we return on bassmaster live coverage of the avco bassmaster elite at st john's river is sponsored by yamaha day one of this afco bassmaster elite series on the st john's river had a three-hour plus fog delay to start this day so a short day that these guys are going to be functioning with today let's uh take a look now at what we teased you with as we went to break now it's our striker daily trivia first question of the year who's going to answer correctly the first trivia question striker daily keeping record we'll keep records i'm going to keep recording okay ronnie's going to be keeping records okay how many 20-pound bags last year at a very top st johns river 2020 tournament here on the st john's was it three five seven or nine z i put it to you i think we will actually see more today than all of last year's turkmen i'm going to go i'm just going to throw a dart i'm going to go five okay i'm saying i'm saying seven i was going b uh five okay all right sushi ding ding yep too quickly out of the box for 2021 mark zona and ronnie moore sweet trivia sweet sweet we look forward to it brandon pollanick we visited with brandon a little bit earlier looking for the right situation as a fish for his pre-spawners that's his game plan for today that was a two-time winner last year's fast master elite series fishing line brandon pollinick said he's gonna really just concentrate on the main river wasn't gonna go into any of the lakes jeez like an old crab trap or something i'm i think you're getting a look right there clark one lin making his way to rodman i believe that's the canal yeah yeah it's like back there huh i'm just looking for a bite i've never fished here so mike rodman behind that clark said he go ahead see clark said he found quite a few fish locked on beds that i believe we'll see him going to on on his next stop but he said i really think a lot of other guys in this field found those same fish and i said where are they the right ones he said oh they're the right ones but you're gonna he said you're gonna be playing bumper boats the majority of the day in the area you found them buddy gross and bob downey you've made it on bass track buddy gross with a 2-7 was he that delayed explain how that affects a game plan a guy's mental approach to the day some guys may really sweat that huh well especially such you know and all of our viewers that you know fish this time of year or if you fish any time of year that the fish are spawning when you're sight fishing man it is time consuming you are against you're really against an hour glass uh you know and a lot of times they're not really tight on the beds they're loose they're not locking on and i think that could affect today if those fish are really not you know the guys that are looking at them and we're gonna see some of that um boy it eats a lot of time and eat it throws a wrench into the game plan big time buddy gross all of a sudden has three fish for four and a half pounds buddy gross another champion from last season the bassmasters returned there to that famed alabama lake for the first time good many years all right let's go i cannot believe i made that cake a few flips i really can i think there'd be one around that bush somewhere the weather finally turned in our favor today after as we say it three hour fog delay today's uh outlook for the rest of the day a high of 82 degrees low of 65. mostly cloudy that is what these guys are looking for right z you know i would say that is prime time florida i mean uh we've said this before the bass in the state of florida are a lot like the folks that live in florida they like to get warm you know you dip you dip below 60 degrees and everything tightens up a little pollenic said he's throwing at anything in the main river whether it's shell shell bars stumps laydowns uh really just targeting isolated cover like you see them right there but we have never been here though where the main river dominates ever in all the tournaments that we've covered um there's been you know there's solid stringers that get caught off the river but it's never really been dominated where you see a lot of guys in the top 10 doing that another player in recent years a environment similar to what we see cliff prince in right now the dug canals natural canals saw jake whitaker of course john cruz doing very well in that sort of environment last year all right too crowded over there almost looks like where drew bent was two years ago with the first fish of the season on camera that's right that was that's the best stuff over there but let's run over and see if they started spawning on that point buddy gross with his biggest fish a three-five he's got four the only guy with more than one seven and uh almost eight pounds today everybody coming off his uh rookie and name only season last year he said he was the oldest rookie ever moving into the lock there which is this is the intersection of the st john's in the oklahoma river comes in here and forms lake rodman behind those those gates right there and then the aklaha flows all the way to the harris chain it comes through griffin and then goes to eustis through harris i don't know if they fork off somewhere else but yeah i didn't know that yeah the aqua waha feeds into lake griffin on the far side of the harris chain wow a lot of boats headed there it appears the memo got out do you get priority at the front of the lock if you're the angler of the year well it's where we seem to be headed yeah that's uh he's like good eye i'll tell you what z when i was with my dad in florida we hooked into a gator that was bigger than our 18-foot bass boat right there in the canal of rodman once you get into rodman it was probably the biggest animal i've ever been within 20 feet of and absolutely terrifying i don't mind like hey you're sitting right next to me what are you talking about i don't mind two to five foot gators but 15-footer was uh he was a giant production meetings we were talking about cliff prince and you know some of the story lines coming into this tournament cliffs had a lot of opportunities to to you know hold that trophy in his backyard and has not come away with it yet and i i asked him i said man do you feel like you're you're gonna get many more shots on goal and he said look i'll put it as bluntly as it can get i feel more pressure every time we come back here than i did the last time he said i feel more pressure this time around than any tournament in years past because you know you're only going to get so many chances tommy with our schedule going to different venues he said i you know i know the clock is ticking against me here cliff is you're right he's had some opportunities here of course we've been here seven of the last 10 years and he's had some some bad luck too i mean that cost him possibly a win no way to tell it'll be cool to see how he managed with a short day it'll be really cool to see how he manages his the day the only thing is he said if he he thought his superiors would have worked with some different times if if they would have tried but i'm sure bass looked at that and thought there's plenty a lot of times i mean there's like five of them it doesn't seem that bad really but it's bad when there's a phone today oh me too it's big i looked at it on google i knew it was plenty big but yeah i wouldn't have thought it was going to be like this young rookie on our anglers watch list jason christie right there oh yeah another fresh face once in a while you'll hear a conversation about uh well about lock times inside a lock as these guys sit hey tap on their watch this isn't even nearly as bad as other locks where you have to have your proof of insurance and registration and show it and write it on a piece of cardboard form it didn't look like they had to go through any of that process even though you know obviously if you're an elite series pro with a wrapped boat the lock master knows all your paperwork's good but most still check you i know i know others in florida that will still make you do that procedure boy being in that lock at pickwick always scares the fire out of me it is absolutely intimidating [Music] we're gonna get settled in here tommy we're getting tightened up i think so i think we're starting to see a few fish catches guys are getting close to where they want to be there's a big lizard for you right there good to see the st john's river we've got a lot of fishing coming up today not as much as we would have liked but we're thankful for it all be right back coverage of the afco bassmaster elite at st john's river is sponsored by yamaha the day it all begins the nine tournament fast master release series for 2021 this is day number one finally gotten underway after an extensive fog delay buddy gross one of our champs from last year georgia angler on top right there making his home in tennessee now shane leinberger kobe krieger bob downey old bob downey for some reason he's called that he's not an old guy at all rick morris is a seasoned veteran matt airy ditto skyler hamilton west logan chris aldain kyle muntz all showing up in our top ten right now and see uh you were talking about how they would be spread out this week what do you think uh that's as spread out as pretty much any st john's tournament that we have had so far taking a look right there at lake george going to the north end so much history with the bassmaster elite series as we kind of start to get a look at how many guys made that decision to go to rodman and it looks like there are there's going to be plenty of company in there throughout the day and like i said i know uh davey height that's where he's going to kind of trench in the rest of the day tommy so happy to get it going here we were wondering for a while whether we'd get our full day in but here we are in the bassmaster studio sponsored by marathon tommy sanders mark zona with you here in the whole cruise such and ronnie of course and we've got dave mercer davy height on the water as well he'll be in rodman did you say that was where he was headed z you know i i really think so and and one of the one of the anglers obviously that you know we have our eye on uh came you know back to the bassmaster elite series greg hackney and we touched on it a little bit earlier he said you know with the lack of vegetation here i had to relearn the st john's river basically in about two and a half days and his game plan i don't really want to dive into it he he's one of the anglers that that's going to be in lake george today but he is doing something totally different than anything that we have seen there in years past and that's the one common theme and if you looked at that that map right there that aerial and a lot of the the the anglers that we've been on so far hardcover is just look it's where they have to go now with the lack of vegetation whether it's a hard bottom whether it's cypress trees canals hardcover will be a way bigger player just because that is what is offered for these fish to relate to so you got to do a total reset if you haven't fished here since 2016 full reset full reset but i think one of the things that we're going to see in rodman and if you're just joining us here on bassmaster live it's finding that stable water that pretty florida colored water where it's it's not clean but it's not dirty it's got that fine line that those fish want to spawn in and that is what really has made rodman at least a bigger player throughout practice than it has in years past sunny conditions seem like it's definitely moved these fish cause i should have already got a few bites by now and i don't know if that's just because we got a late start or what the cause of that is but it's definitely a change from what practice was which is kind of what i was a little bit nervous about with the the warm weather we've had the last couple days but there should be fish pulling up to spawn around this stuff it's really some of the only hard hard bottom that we've got around here he's got to be able to make a decent cast perfect well the former destination champion from 2011 made his debut out here in 2012. bull shoals lake was the first of five wins for brandon pollonick found something that no one else really was on to oh and that's pretty much been brandon pollanick's entire career and you can tell that from the way he's fishing today brandon pollinick does not like to fish around other competitors he likes to get off the beaten path and find something different that's exactly what he did on both shoals from there making the longest run one of the longest runs we have ever seen in the bassmaster elite series on the st lawrence river getting out to henderson bay all four days take my word that is a beat down but that's the main thing looking at his victories finding something out of the way and finding something that where he is left alone his victory coming on the heels of the previous tournament on the mississippi river having an individual rules violation said i got to come back and win and so he did and then he won his aoi in 2017. this is a big part of it you know if you look at the history of the bassmasters those phenomenal closers guys like rick clun denny brower kevin van damme larry nixon if brandon pollinick makes it to a championship sunday pretty good chance no matter where he's at in the top ten he's gonna lake champlain last season 2020. the first of two victories two victories in a single season for brandon colony got a guy that can roll with the momentum and then we go to a different completely different environment at santi cooper oh my god and really one of those deals where it was a santee cooper was more of a hodgepodge win so many different techniques from a jerkbait to a swim bait punching mats to a giant drop shot fish on the last day and that was one of those tournaments i really don't think look whenever there's a tournament where you're using guys are using their electronics brandon pollanix is at the top of that list santee cooper was not one of those events 22 pounds plus that is a hard fought 22 pounds the way santee cooper was fishing when we came there late much later than the originally scheduled week to fish santee cooper it was a very very tough proposition but uh brandon got it done two in one season we saw it done twice the year before and still a rarity i mean it's just you never lay odds that's going to happen during the course of an elite series season gosh and you think about some of the anglers that we've covered that have never won oh a bassmaster elite series tournament and the guy comes back to the elite series and wins to his first year back unbelievable brandon pollick out there as we start to see a little bit of a breeze kick up his little corner of the st johns river fishing the main river right there check in with our rodman anglers and more when we come back on bassmaster live the afco bassmaster elite at saint john's river is sponsored by ranger boats [Music] yamaha toyota and by [Music] berkeley master live we're just getting started here st john's room the mystique of the st johns river part of it is one if you think you've got it figured out you just you just go away for a year and come back because it changes on you it absolutely changes on you we are lucky now we had a fog delay us an extensive one early this morning now we're out there fishing last year this tournament started in the wake of a terrible weather cold blowing wind this year we're in the wake of the first warm spell of the year a world of difference mark zona you know and really if this makes any sense one of the things to me that's really dangerous about this day being shortened having that fog delay is you have a tendency as a human being and a lot of our viewers you can relate to this is you you speed yourself up in a shortened tournament you're just your your physical manner is sped up and when you're in the state of florida the last thing you want to do is fish fast i mean every i think every event in the history of the state of florida generally it's get in an area and pick it to pieces and that's the one thing where i think guys are going to have to control themselves with all the nerves being day one of the season is just don't get in a hurry we were talking about at z during one of the commercial or during the fog delay was talking about if these guys have three to four hours to fish this in this case is about four and a half hours of the day if you're making a 45 minute to an hour run that's half your fishing day just getting there and back and it takes roughly probably five minutes to set the hook land the fish put them in the live well especially when you start culling that's 30 more minutes i mean you're only dealing with just an hour of just not catching them time so that that really does put the pressure on you buddy i think go ahead what buddy is the only one with the limit he filled his limit a little bit ago he's got uh almost 11 pounds krieger's the only one other one with more than one fish about a dozen guys have caught fish like i said it's going to be the biggest weight saint john's event in the history 12 12 z oh well what we're getting ready to do here in a few minutes as we give you some more views incredible old florida at its best st john's river just a beautiful place we have an afternoon session going to take our customary midday break we're sort of obliged to do that and at noon eastern time we will come back and begin the afternoon session before three hours of fishing for you to follow we'll probably have some good fish to show you we'll keep the cameras rolling while we are away and we will come back with the goods i can guarantee it thank you for being with us so far on bassmaster live thank you for your patience this morning and we will be back in one hour's time [Music] live coverage of the avco bassmaster elite at st john's river is sponsored by yamaha bassmaster live oh we got it for you right now from that place right there the st johns river here to start the season 2021 season for the bassmaster elite series here at the apco bassmaster elite we've had a fog delay this morning it was lengthy it was three hours plus but we are going right now take our first look at the leaderboard in our afternoon session and buddy gross winner from last year in his first season with the bassmaster elite series on top mark menendez coming off a medical hardship season after putting on a show here the year before in 2019 making a big fish big time run at the at the title here didn't fell just a little bit short but was amazing a thing to watch kobe krieger the veteran from indiana clark wendlandt our angler of the year bassmaster angler of the year for 2020. we are ready to go as we say there's no more delaying right now and we can't wait to get it started tommy sanders here coming to you from the bassmaster studio sponsored by marathon mark zona here with us as well and z it's taking us a while to get going but we're starting to see things maybe loosening up a little bit here maybe maybe we're going to get some fish to open their mouths for us i think so i think everybody was a little a little tense this morning tommy sanders with that fog delay and look we said it right before we went to our break that fog delay very dangerous for guys that are making long runs the other side is very dangerous for guys that are sight fishing that have to spend a lot of time on individual fish but look for this in in our afternoon sesh the more that water warms up just one degree to two degrees these fish will set up they'll get a lot tighter to the beds um and things are definitely starting to happen really in the last 45 minutes all right well let's take you out on the water right now take a live look in it patrick walters he's certainly got a great record here on the saint johns river had an overwhelming victory the biggest victory margin ever in the bassmaster elite series to wrap up his season in 2020 at lake fork show you something that happened while we were away with young patrick walters south carolina and we look we knew with the the tournament that we had you know last time we were here a jerkbait was going to be a player but here again patrick walters catching him off of his front facing train 2-0 the same way he caught him at lake fork he's definitely 12 inches small keeper there for patrick put him on the leaderboard now back to patrick walters live now patrick walters one of the anglers that really bunkering into rodman so many anglers in there and you can almost tell over his left hand shoulder just more stable looking water good good water clarity and we're gonna see a little bit more of that here in the next few minutes how about some big fish zee carl josh watson he's leading our phoenix boats big bass with a five pound two ouncer matt heron caught a five pounder clifford perch and kobe krieger and drew cook all got four pounders wow we'll see bigger we hope oh i think the afternoon's gonna you know look that's just florida 101. it uh it should really fire here the last few hours of fishing that's action with patrick walters from rodman reservoir here it is open for business this time around and getting some business to be sure another angler one of the anglers we're following today also locked into rodman and that is our aoy defending champion clark wendlandt again this right here is earlier about the last hour solid fish for clark one right there starting right where he left off in 2020 and here's the other thing if you're a young angler and you don't know clark wendlandt that is one of the best sight fishermen in the world period that's the one you said something about patience being a virtue that's that's that costs you in terms of time here's a guy who has no trouble with patience here's a guy who can stick to the game plan no solid one right here for clark and his his biggest concern was he said look i know other anglers are gonna find these fish but they are they're as dumb as a box when they do get tight to the beds he said they're they're a one to two pitch fish all right that's two and a half boys from the side there looks like darker water but that's not is it no that's actually as clean of water as we've seen so far today such and that's the one thing that we've said he was right around the corner from pat young patrick walters uh just a lot more stable cleaner water in rodman this time around that's four that's a pound oh that's fantastic right there good camera work the bed stands out that bed stands out but it doesn't oh yeah yeah yeah it's a different kind of clear it's it's a different kind of clear in florida for people who've never fished there it looks black and it's very dark looking because it's tannic water and because of the bottom but when you get fish that make a bed like that and push away with their tail some of that darker silt and whatnot it lights up like that it's so bright and so clear yes and and and ron if you really if you got to see that right there you got to see the male and the female the female was kind of on the perimeter we got that was the first fish that we saw that male looked like it was only probably 12 or 13 inches but that was a big female hopefully we get to see some of them locking on and really sticking to these beds and clark will tell you man you know sometimes you do want to you know you want to catch that male to where maybe that female will pin on that bed after you pull that male off but mostly a lot of the really good sight fishermen they do not like to hook the males you see palatka our hq right there where the weigh-in is coming up at 4 eastern time i tell you what how about a bmw trailer hitch is on the line with a winner from last season one of the big rookie stars from last season of course buddy gross and buddy give us uh give us a rundown on what's going on today on the water with you well i just come over here to the little shell bed and started fishing this morning and they actually showed up i fished this thing two days of practice didn't have a bite but it was really good to me last year so i figure if it's fun enough that they might be sitting here staging waiting to pull in so i came and tried it and we got us a little limit which i'm proud of you know been a late start so it's uh it's pretty good right now buddy if you can can you walk us through what makes a good shell bed here these shell beds are a lot different than the shell beds that you've grown up fishing throughout tennessee and alabama what makes a good one here on st john's you know i'm still learning st john's it's on my second trip but what i've been trying to do all week is i've been trying to find a shell bed or a shell cracker bed something out in front of a good spawning area what i feel like is a good spawning area and that way they got somewhere to pull up to before they go in and they got somewhere to pull out when they're done that gives me a better chance of intercepting you know post spawn and pre-spawn and it just gives me better odds in my opinion buddy did things start to look good to you from the moment you started practice the final practice uh moving into this week here no sir uh i had caught 19 inch fish the first two days of practice and i put in on the third day and i had some mechanical failure and it put me out of the game i didn't get to practice the third day the service trailers worked all week trainer all day that on tuesday trying to get me back on the water and it just didn't happen so i had to actually go get another boat and uh so i was really nervous about today and you know lord's blessing us today so far buddy what's been the key so far to catching them off of these offshore shell beds i'm moving a liftless bait but i'm having to move it really slow i'm actually feeling all the shell i'm coming through some really rough stuff and periodically i can actually feel it hit a fish and it might be you know not fast but some kind of fish i'm hitting them from time to time i'm just taking bringing it through there you know this morning when i first got started it was pretty pretty fast-paced it slowed down a little bit now but i i think they're starting to pull up because that sunshine's so bright now are there any other places that you had scoped out last year buddy that you intend to visit during the course maybe not maybe not on a short day like today but if it allows on on a full day oh absolutely i got one more place i'm dying to go now i'm gonna make that hey i'm gonna wait and save it for tomorrow hopefully and uh try to make it to the third day i'm thinking it's that place we saw you catch a couple of good ones last year on day number four i think that was yeah yeah this uh this place right here actually produced a couple of big ones i lost a big one here last year so i didn't mean it i you know i could catch a good fish but i've been beating on it for about the last 30 minutes for this one little small keepers all i've caught since then will you go up shallow and snoop around later today the higher the skies get yes sir i'm fixing to actually go ahead and probably start on my next stop i'm going to get shallower and do some flipping and try to do some looking because i missed like i said the last day of practice i missed it so i didn't get to see a whole lot so i don't think i'm laden by no means but i think i got a good start but it's a short day and then i'm just gonna try to improve on it i got two little 13 inch fish in there right now well buddy we know time is precious especially today we do appreciate you being generous with us and kind of filling us in on what's going on that is buddy gross our winner at lake eufaula last year and buddy's going to be the man who qualifies for the mercury move of the day very first of the year martial exactly right tommy sanders and this is such a treat looking at it this morning it was early and often we basically look we had to get the wheels tightened on in studio out at the tournament the [ __ ] really just kind of spun everybody out buddy gross is the mercury move of the day not a big surprise seeing buddy grows fishing offshore like we got to see him so many times last year tommy sanders buddy gross you are the mercury move of the day now let's take you back to this tournament in june on lake eufaula and this was our this is our return to sports really for america at that time it's one of the few sports going a live event from lake eufaula man oh man we certainly had a great time watching buddy gross and especially that final day you talk about a move now that was a move yeah that was the mercury move of the year of the century tommy sanders catching over 27 pounds the biggest bag of the tournament and really we tried to manufacture some drama and say oh he's going to chase our leader scott canterbury well he chased him and passed them much to all of ours it was it was an absolutely great show cliff prince we've already visited followed cliff around some earlier today in our morning session cliff always a chalk favorite here we talk about fantasy fishing and real true polacka native in this field and there he is [Applause] well that is a pre-spawner right there number two i need a little buzzer or a horn over here yeah catch them on our fantasy team i feel like we gonna make bigger ones but we'll take those right now what yep that's another two and a quarter two and a half pounder clip print said he was not going to spend any time on anything spawning said he was not going to get caught up in that game really playing hopscotch and bouncing around with other anglers felt like this was going to be a relatively tough tournament compared to a lot of the pre-term reports we got that it could be a heavyweight event it just almost feels like as as short as this day is going to be that today is going to be a day of survival for the majority of this field just catch a solid limit and uh live to play another day what's incredible z is cliff prince is the by far the closest angler here even even in past elite series events he's been in pilate he lives here five minutes from the ramp and every year we see him he's throwing something that you would never expect people in florida to lean on under spins uh lipless on different areas when people are sight fishing there's a lot of different baits he's utilizing that it's really teaching a lot of people how they can fish in florida if they don't like 65 pound braid let's get back over to patrick walters who's uh believe he's gotten hooked up i think he's just now getting one into the boat it's a live drone shot right there with patrick walters looks to be a not a bad one it's hard to tell from this this angle but that's a good thing about that kind of shot you can change your angle real quick and that's one of the challenges in rodman right now davey heights been all over in rodman and one of the biggest problems in the good fish right there for young patrick walters is one of the problems in there is very very little sell is what davey high told us again also in rodman reservoirs clark wendlandt much closer to an area area steve bowman would call a arkansas hidey hole z i interviewed rick klein before this and he told me rodman is not the easiest fishery or lake to fish why is that i don't know is it he said it was difficult fishing usually you mentioned it earlier you know one of the also one of the the problems with rodman it is not easy to get around in there i mean it is a minefield very hard to get around time-consuming if you don't know how to work that's the limit that's good now everything's a bonus because the st john's is a natural river with tides and whatnot it normally stays at the similar level it's never like during droughts that it suffers but rodman is the one that suffers when florida has droughts and different high water it's much more affected and stumpy vegetation it differs it's a reservoir i mean it's right i mean that's basically a man-made deal right there but it's gonna be fun to watch clark if we can really watch what he's doing that is one of the best that there is at sight fishing he will land on a big one and it's it's pretty awesome to watch him work yeah he showed us some impressive stuff so far we look forward to much more of that four fish in the boat four keepers for clark wentworth seven pounds and 15 ounces buddy gross who we just checked in with the man on top the only man in double digits at this point carl jacobson winner from 2019 coming in third so far we'll be right back the afco bassmaster elite at st john's river is sponsored by hummingbird mercury and by nitro boats [Music] well just to add to your opening day jenners how about four and a half hours to get all your running and your fishing done on the very first day of the year for the bassmaster elite series not ideal but that's what it is and that's what these guys are dealing with out there buddy gross dealing with it better than anyone else he's added one since last we visited but in fact his biggest fish of the day is three pound six ounce largemouth bass to extend his lead over second place carl jacobson at this point right now we're gonna take you all the way up to four eastern way in time take a look at an angler we've seen do big things here including an 11 plus pounder on camera for us john cruz always seems to sort of prosper here more often than not in an environment which we saw in there a good bit last year in a canal environment very very popular area tommy sanders down in astor on the south end of lake george not a very big one right there for cruz heck of a fish that was a heck of a look baby a lot of people thought that that canal system would play in this tournament one on the board finally it's a counting three quarters oh john cruz live right now looks like he's set up on one finished second here last year wow you can even see where he's at less sun harder to see he's using a white bait and it hooked it outside the mouth still fast rules when sight fishing all fish have to be hooked inside the mouth or they have to go back and that's a tough one that's a solid fish right there on a shortened day especially when you spend a lot of time on those [Music] it's more bonus coverage i believe lined up for us right now uw trailer hitch is on the line with the alabama pro the veteran man here there's matt i know it's a short day you got you got a short time to get it all done but can you take a moment and tell us kind of size it up what's going on today well you know tommy i'm just fishing the back of a couple little canals and stuff that i located some free spawners and really uh the last day of practice seems like there's some bigger females that moved in i've gobbed up two pretty good one six or seven pound fisher i would be doing something but i've got a got a pretty little good little deal going on here i think he'll good hold are you able to see these fish or are you just blind blind fishing i'm blind fishing i can see shiny spots here and there and uh they'll kind of show themselves you'll see some movement but but really the water where i'm fishing is really black it uh it's hard to see and you know i'm kind of just doing a one-two approach on you know i got a little top water deal going and then uh just pitching a six inch plastic bait around them old florida fishing is effective it's all you know down here it seems like it's not vapor technique as much as it is zip code you get it around and they'll bite it's just a matter of finding you know an area that you can get a few bites in are these areas that have played for you in the in past elite series events here or all new stuff you know it's kind of funny several years ago back six or seven years ago we fished in elite series tournaments out here one of the first times i ever came here and i found this area never played very practical reason kind of tough crime and i decided to go check this place and see what was going on and lo and behold there's just so much change here on this thing with a vegetable this area loaded up again i haven't seen them here in several years matt we understand you had to put one of your shoulders in the shop for a little while in the off season we'll have some repair work going on give us to give us a progress report on that yeah you know let's do it better it still hurts like jesus and all my all my doctor can tell me is uh i'm gonna wake up one morning and it's not gonna hurt no more so that's kind of where we're at oh yeah i hope that day is soon matt we do appreciate your time uh uh good luck for the rest of the short day and and make the most of it uh that seems like he's found himself in a good place he says zip code's very very important and you think this is the first way of coming in you want to be at a place where you can just kind of set up shop and have them coming to you for four days solid that's the exactly as we get back to john cruz saw had to put pitch one back hooked outside the mouth looks like he's on the exact same bed too john did say least it wasn't an eight-pounder hooked outside the mouth so i don't know if he saw one much bigger and that was the buck or just a phrase oh boy stud that's why you can't get too upset you hook and lose one you have to put them back shamu in there elite series baby love it new phoenix boats big bass leader that's phenomenal yeah so he caught he look he caught that mail that he had hooked outside of the mouth and we made that comment when we were with clark a lot of times those females will lock on when you pull that that male off of the bed huge shot right there for john cruz that's what we came to see and because because bedfish are so unreliable sometimes on what their mood is when he had to toss that one back what's going through his mind is hopefully the one locks on her hopefully that that uh the male doesn't go back and then and then lock back on and the female stays away gosh that's a big fish that's just a perfectly built bass you want to guess the weight of that one z he entered that six and a half seven it's been 507. okay it's been entered as a five pound five ounce fish i was going to ask you it was a little bigger i would say it's all of that yeah that fish built out wow i i'd say minimum six and a half i mean look at the size of its head but it's i mean look how that thing is built well what's interesting is how big that female is and how big the buck was how big the male was that he caught in through back that's a solid keeper whereas with the shot we saw with clark it was more like a 12-incher and then maybe a four pounder so the bigger the buck sometimes the giant female that can come with it speaking of clark there's another little uh magic spot he's looking at right here on time this doc just feels like things are starting to heat up a little bit tommy boy see what we can do it's gotten worse and worse the less grass that this place has gotten that was a great fish catch with crews right there giving us some good ones from this place maybe time mark minetta's just got his limit he's jumped to second place and jamie hart and four fish including a five pounder and a three and a quarter third place well the usual suspects are showing up here aren't they now ron was it you or such and usually we have a little fun with bass track and say it's you know officially unofficial our anglers actually do they get to the closest to their weight or something that they get to win something so definitely last year we got to see a lot of improvements on their guesses because they had to enter it on their own and so this year there definitely is an incentive if they are close and accurate that helps the game it helps us tell the story and so yeah i don't know like they can actually win something yeah i mean you're going to try to make me say it but i mean that's not my information to divulge but i mean i'm gonna i will say yes there is an incentive okay frighteningly vague i was told not to so holding it close to the vest on us there ron moore that's cause it's coming out of my bank account tommy okay what i'm trying not to tell the sound of that yeah as opposed to mine no they already got that from you in another meeting they said that you you know we got to take it out of your pack you weren't there though so that's how they how we do things okay we're gonna take and get back up with hank cherry bassmaster hank's slowing it down a little bit we saw him working some dogs over earlier and that is about all you have as far as vegetation anymore on the saint john's lily pads you know you if you rewind back to oh [Music] that is a bad deal on a short day that would stretch his line pretty good might have been a dandy i don't think that's a happy laugh there either from hank jerry yeah look at his rod and he did the right thing with fluorocarbon i believe that's what it sounded like he didn't do anything but just keep a lot of pressure on the fish until it came out and then it just jumped and came off [Music] jerry our 2020 bassmaster classic world champion the sport of bass fishing still rods it's gonna have one of the longest seconds by the day lost the first one but we're not sure it was a bass i found a couple pairs over there that i couldn't get to bite but i think i was just too close to them that one i just lost i'm not sure you got wrapped up in the pads and i hate the patio but we got one right now we got a grown one well if you're gonna catch one that's the one to catch thank you jesus that weighs the limit unbelievable i was i saw like a 12-incher goodness gracious wow what a day big girl what was i talking about oh i found those two over there ones like that the other ones are probably three pounders i don't care if i am sucking that's awesome i don't know where anything is i got to get my mind straight i cannot believe that i'm not sure if it's the world i was hung up so anyhow uh i found those i got really nobody around the chatter bait fish aren't biting so i just started kinda pecking around and i picked that one in the right place if i could do that five more times maybe some kind of day i don't i don't and that was not what i threw at but i'll take it i'm not complaining [Laughter] i mean it was just like kick i was like oh yeah i know what that is and when my rod bent it went sideways i was like oh my god i don't know eight pounds i don't know we don't have them that big in north carolina i got scales we'll look at them in a minute [Laughter] that was awesome i think he got more excited there than he did when he caught his classic winning bass ninth year on the elite series for hank cherry owns a rookie of the year trophy he owns a classic trophy he's trying to do what he can to get a leg up on this first trophy of 20-21 jerry with that dandy right there great one here from john cruz man it's all starting to look like 2019 all over again just a little bit just a little bit we don't want to get ahead we'll be right back live coverage of the avco bassmaster elite at st john's river is sponsored by yamaha dealing with a short day this first day the season 2021 for the bassmaster elite series long fog delay early this morning three hours plus and look at that mark menendez it was just a joy to watch him do his thing here two years ago on the st johns river and look at him on top now with a healthy lead over buddy gross who's been the first man into double digits and a limit so far today so things are changing and changing fast especially for this man and the other angler we most recently saw mark menendez of course coming off a season which he had to take off due to uh do do back issues and uh and hardship season for him but boy he is coming back obviously with a vengeance today that's the problem you know when you start looking for the size who can forget him and rick klein no i thought i thought i was throwing it at a party number three and day number four mark mendez 2019. really both of those anglers fishing very close to each other on the north end of lake george that was just the region to be in back in 2019 it almost seemed like everything mark menendez set the hook on was that big or bigger tommy sanders yeah it was just one of those perfect days for execution as well didn't seem to lose a single one everything just going his way on this special day two years oh ago gosh that's a megalodon right there good gravy come come come come come you're mine yes yes mark menendez one of the pillars of the sport for sure for the low these many years and still still very active and very competitive and here to be competitive this week on the st john's let's get back down to hank cherry we just saw him land a giant just a few minutes ago he entered that fish as a seven and a half pounder on bass track wow our anglers estimate their weights and put it in a uh that's a that's a pretty good fish i'm sure you're good for now right off the street to put it in perspective too hank cherry's not a small dude when he hit that thing it was like he set the hook into a stump this is such a treat tommy sanders i know what that music means for the first time the 2021 bassmaster elite series season when you hit one on the saint john's and you're six foot four and it doesn't move you have done got you one kid perfect hank cherry you are the power pole replay of the day and tommy sanders i'm gonna go as far as to say we're gonna see something bigger than that today my friend man today is a powerful replay i think so i really do wow big one right there for hank cherry and you could kind of tell after our midday break st john's river's starting to heat up in a big way you're gonna catch boy that's the one to catch thank you jesus it's like john cruz had to let a smaller one go before him and he lost a smaller one right before he caught this one boy they wound up with the right ones gosh it's just like literally the last 45 minutes everything has turned on you said every degree it ticks up it's it's going to make a difference it seems to be playing out that way yeah right after a cruise big fish frank talley got a five and a half pounder menendez and scored a five and a half pounder to take the lead and then we saw cherry's fish that's the awesome thing of the of the tournaments that we've covered here and we've talked about this so so many times tommy it's like right around the corner you feel like there's going to be an explosion at any second you can really see i'm just looking for the slightest tails any of that stuff so you can see something that's clark's watch lingering on there and you really want to watch the process with clark after that i'm just going fishing that look great shot of clerk wendlandt's doing i asked him tommy i said you know for decades you you've won so many tournaments sight fishing especially you know living in texas i mean he's one of the best in the game at and i said what is your opinion the best bed fishing bait he said here's what it is whatever you have confidence in and i said no no no no no no because you know in any sight fishing tournament everybody's got 10 rods laying on the deck and he said you know if i only had one bait i could use it would be a texas rig tube throughout the years he said day in day out if i have a stubborn one a texas rig tube is the best bait throughout the decades that clark wendlandt's used look at the size of that bedrock that is an actual bed it's the size of an actual double bed i'll turn it on you mark zona what what is the best best lure for situations like this in your book uh you know what's weird every and all of our viewers know this man every every fish on a bed is different and you you know a lot of fish you have to spin them you know you cut you you you spin them you you pop them you make them aggressive and they'll make donuts and when those donuts start to tighten they'll actually start barking at your bait where you watch that fish's reaction a lot of times they'll completely ignore it but there's other times that they'll just make a different reaction and that's more than likely what you're going to catch that fish on that is interesting you know one of the biggest one of the biggest mistakes in in bed fishing not small mouth they're as dumb as they get but but a largemouth is there's a tendency to wanting to get too close to a large mouth there's a happy medium where between the distance of you and that fish and that bed um and when you find that distance more than likely you know or you'll find that distance that you're just too close and that fish will shy away and it just won't react great shot there of clark wendlandt in that situation he's in right now and we just think again about our leader now mark menendez again with about 16 did get a chance though to talk to mark menendez earlier about coming back from having to take a year off you know that hurt well i am excited to be back um coming back from an injury um i only got to participate in this tournament last year and the bassmaster classic i got hurt at you follow so it's been a while for me to sit behind the console of my skeeter boat in tournament mode so i'm ready for that lots of new faces lots of old faces coming back which i'm just glad to see them come back so we've got a unique tournament situation where we're pretty compacted as far as time we should be finished by july and uh so that means that this is going to be high impact um a lot of time away from home and a lot of fishing to be done in a short time period great venues great bodies of water and just looking so forward to getting to some of those bodies of water pickwick is one that i really have my eyes on mark menendez the eternal optimist always in a great mood been through a rough year but now he's back in his happy place and it's a happy place right now for him for sure 15 pounds 15 ounces he's on top we'll take a break be right back live coverage of the afco bassmaster elite at st john's river is sponsored by yamaha well mother nature made a game time decision this morning decided to take about 33 and a third percent of the fishing day away from our anglers but no matter these guys are game they came down here to florida to win a tournament to pick up some points to start their journey through this year 2021 we have seen some great results john cruz and hank cherry the two anglers in the bottom of your screen there both catching big ones in the last 30 minutes or so brandon panic still looking for his his first keeper of the day gosh how would you like to be one o'clock first day of the season whether you're a seasoned veteran like brandon pollinick or a rookie with zero right now and you know looking at hank jerry and john cruz they've not obviously not had the best of days so far but they they could catch one of those florida limits where they're you know four little keepers and and one giant and you are absolutely in the mix it's one swing of the bat in the state of florida uh can can change the whole course of your week well that's definitely a big part of the story that plays in your mind when you come to a place like this legendary we mentioned it before to the top 10 big bass ever caught biggest ever caught and bassmaster competition came from here it's funny to see i talked to jerry right yeah yeah in 1973. well i talked to cherry ahead of time for this tournament about the excitement of opening day and he kind of says you don't want to go three four hours on that first day because you're you know that's all this anticipation you're geared up usually you get to your spot and you settle in because once you catch that first fish you kind of settle in and get and he kind of said he he's kind of calm but then he really gets into that next gear once he gets a fish in the boat well it's like a it's like a boxer or an mma fighter somebody that they really want to beat and they've been leading up to this fight the whole time they step in the octagon so juiced up that they throw all their punches in the first two minutes and if they don't connect or they don't knock them out they're gas the rest of the day if all these guys running their best stuff day one so jacked up and don't have fish at noon ah they're like it's worse than you know on a tough fishing or a tough practice where you don't expect much well and if you know for viewers that are just joining in everybody's you're all jacked up and tweaked out of your gourd being the first day of the season then you get the fog delay piled on and you're going 100 miles an hour this is the last state you want to be going 100 miles an hour on the water because notoriously especially here you need to bunker into an area and just pick it to pieces john cruz for the second year in a row has chosen this sort of area to bunker into it's a close quarters you can certainly see a lot of you can see a see a lot in a short period of time you can traverse the whole place before a couple of hours have passed up it's just exciting to be on any anybody of water where the fish the the first wave is starting to move in you know it's places are changing absolutely getting better all the time it's you know with the knights on our th marine weather report the the really looking at the long range forecast is the the nights are going to be great nice and warm hopefully the fog decides to leave us tomorrow not a guarantee but yeah who knows supposed to be late storms overnight i saw like until 2 3 4 a.m storm so that may help knock that out and pretty bad ones such from what i mean there's there's there's definitely some rain coming oh every day storms are predicted so i took the last segment off so if you guys said this please forgive me but we're looking at the map the bass track map looking at crescent we don't have any of these guys on camera but we've mentioned them or they've done well in here in the past at crescent there are roughly five or six boats in the lake pinging we've got rick klun two-time champion here we've got jay ellis who has made top tens here before from crescent we have mark menendez who's obviously done very well here old school all three old school anglers that are great we've got a caleb sumrall who's a louisiana fisherman loves this style of fishing and jake whitaker fifth place last year here are the only ones in crescent and like zona said sometimes that's a bad thing to be by yourself and not see anybody but that's some good company that's a pretty good idea way to catch especially when mark menendez doing well today well and i i i'm going to throw terry scroggins under the bus giving me some intel i asked him about chris and he goes hey don't catch me in there hammer van what you just said right there though ronnie is a spot on where you know a lot of times in these florida tournaments and pollinic was the one that really brought this up he said man i'm going to get away from the pack i want to fish alone i want to fish for pre-spawn fish and he goes it is probably the biggest mistake uh he goes it could pay off big if i'm to get on him but he said i want to fish alone i want to fish for for total pre-spawners and he said that is a dangerous proposition though in this state well into our afternoon session here st john we'll be going all the way to four o'clock eastern time that is way in time so that should follow close by and see who uh shakes out on top welcome to the bassmaster studios again sponsored by marathon uh something new that we're very proud of here and of course something else that we're very new and that is new to us and very proud of that is the new bass track the new bass track gives us much much more and ronnie the screen of knowledge i think and you are going to team up to show us just exactly how cool it is well i tried to tommy earlier but we hadn't caught any fish yet because we were just getting our day underway at 10 15 uh central time or around that 11 o'clock or 10 o'clock portion eastern time but when we're looking at bash trade now we obviously see you can see right there there's an update uh kyle monty just caught one and so it pops up with different logos and whatnot but when you expand it like mark menendez right now we're gonna click him because he's the leader you obviously see his head shot it breaks down his five fish he's got a five and a half uh three fish in that two and a half to two and a quarter range and then a three and change gives them about 16 pounds you break you see that same breakdown that was new to bash track last year you got to see the individual fish but this year you can go down and see an interview that we did with mark menendez uh during the covid quarantine last year when he was dealing with his back injury then we also can see when martin in his last caught him at the st johns river he's even got a tip video here selecting the correct the correct bait with you tommy now let's just say we're going to scroll down and pick out another angler let's just pick out a kyle welcher we're gonna click kyle welcher he's down in tenth place tied with gerald swindle it shows his five fish just under that ten pound he's in the eight or nine pound range we just did a tackle tip tuesday with him about selecting crankbaits in the pre-spawn flat side versus square bill things like that even a boat tour of him and then a live skype interview with them so there's a lot of different ways to learn about our anglers click on them and uh get some tips from them get some past experience once we get photo galleries from this year of these anglers specifically like the final day when we have the leader on the water gallery those will pop up and you'll be able to see those guys and really learn more about our anglers learn more about our venue if you've never been to st john's and really learn more about how these guys fish which kind of can match up with their bass track mark menendez shallow spinner bait angler probably great for crescent lake for the saint john's it's not uh no surprise if he's doing well right now you could say if you're like someone who's new to the elite series uh trying to learn more maybe you just joined up to play the fantasy man your learning curve gets a lot steeper a lot faster with all these tools that you got in one feature exactly now while i'm on the decline with my fantasy skill a lot of english can be on there are there a lot of fans can be on their uh the incline that's because everybody else is getting better ronnie yeah it's not that you're getting worse everyone else is getting better running i did make a bold prediction with such saying i would beat i would beat 99.1 percent of anglers this year our fans nothing's foolish about that so i gotta be in the top one percent so uh cliff prince i need you to catch a couple fish dogs okay gerald swindle's got a limit i believe now ronnie and our key was one of your picks yeah i said that gerald would get off the schneider this year when his first elite i think at the same time well we take a look at john cruz right there a little panther i'd like to see like jacob peraznick stand on his trolling but tommy you know i i'm very resistant to change and i was vocal about it you know when we were changing fast track i don't know how many emails over the holidays i put out you know let's not fix what's what's not broke yeah all the way up i was i was that way all the way up till this morning but i'm okay with that okay even the most high bound stayed traditional guy can be uh can be won over by this this new technology yeah that bass track is going to be great for new viewers maybe watching fox sports one on the weekends sure being able to learn more about these anglers especially it takes just one fish catch for an angler to jump into the right direction for super stardom kyle welch's 10-pounder last year probably the most searched angler on the elite series trying to figure out who he was because he was so brand new so john cruz is normally one that starts off with a statement as well so i know people will be learning more about him this weekend lee livesey's trick catch exactly like that ronnie sure good stuff to be found there john cruz you are right tommy getting it done and mark menendez better than anyone else the veteran from kentucky is on top 16 pounds on this date he's got a lot of time a lot of fish and time left to go carl jacobson who won back in 2019 buddy gross one in 20 20. we got a bunch of winners up there on top jamie hartman kyle monte clark winlet will be taking another look at clark he's showing us some great beds too live coverage of the afco bassmaster elite at st john's river is sponsored by yamaha less than two hours fishing time for these anglers on this fog shortened day first day of the season for the bassmaster elite series 2020 at the apco bassmaster elite on st john's river mark menendez who has done big things here before the veteran coming off a year a hardship year where he had had to take off from the from the tour but he is back now in a big way 16 pounds for the man on top mark menendez and mark zone i know you're probably aware of this we have a brand new accolade for excellence on the water it's the marathon peak performance who would you think that'd be right now actually no i had no idea that that element was going to take place but why don't we jump right in with both feet tommy the marathon peak performance day one leader thus far my friend we're gonna give that to mark menendez doing what he does almost every time we come to the saint john's river sealing it with a five and a half pounder at 12 38 unofficial weight of 15 pounds 15 ounces hey mark mendes for the first time ever on bassmaster live you are the marathon peak performance daily leader oh yes nice well done taking a look at mark menendez all of his fish catches so far and i'll be it'll be very curious to see if he's kind of spicing it up a little bit in the same areas that he caught him the last time i'm sorry second to last time we were here the basque's master elite series when rick clone won not gonna say he's in the exact same area no not not at all not at all is that increscent yes it is it's all the way down at the bottom not not at all well as we say a lot of the usual suspects cruz menendez rising to the top here there are horses for courses as they say obviously mark menendez loves this spot right here and crescent lake playing for the first time in in a good while and that's that's a pretty good run from palatka isn't it z isn't that going to be about a 45-minute uh proposition there wouldn't you say a little bit of a run and and really like we said coming into this tournament we didn't feel talking to locals that know so much about the st john's river that said crescent shouldn't be that big of a player uh terry scroggins said the water's a lot darker there dingier very unsettled but so far today at least uh things happening there and and here's the great thing about this tournament so far is we knew when that what we all we always use the word the fish are starting to set up the warmer the water gets the higher the skies get in florida the fish just get tighter they get tighter the beds which i'm going to say you know probably 70 percent of the bass that are being caught today are spawning or very close too and that's exactly what we've seen as the day has wore on the bigger the fish have got well all right we are progressing with this day we've expanded our field also this year by about 15 but it's good to get the original band back together and that means dave mercer got to check in with dave and dave what have you been thinking about what sort of uh anticipatory feelings have you had toward this season and what are you seeing today well guys i'm i'll be honest the vibe takeoff was was a little strange you know obviously a very much a hurry up and wait but but one of the most peculiar things at takeoff was probably john cox i mean i'm sure that the photos have floated around and if not you need to tune into this weigh-in to see because he turned showed up basically like a a raggedy ann doll gone wrong i mean it is the worst die job knowing the man he he literally looks i don't know whether it's funny or scary honestly it's like a scary scary clown when you see him it is really spectacular but it's one of the sweetest stories ever i mean the reason he did it was because his daughter i think his daughter's 12 years old that she wanted to dye her hair right and like a lot of tweeners you know they get in arguments with dad and they want to dye their hair well john said hey i want to show you how bad this is going to look our hair is remarkably similar and he dyed his hair and when you see what he looks like it goes without saying that his daughter did not dye her hair and then and nobody should dye their hair if they're going to end up looking like this mess but uh a fun vibe the other crazy thing about [ __ ] it is crazy cock's a takeoff guys for the first time there was a little part of me that was kind of like i hope we cancel the whole day because as we know john cox is fishing every tournament on earth including tuesday night night jack potts he's fishing all the circuits out there well there is you know an flw event which is you know three four hours from here in okeechobee if we have canceled today his plan he's missing some of those events you know to fish the elites but his plan was to go down there catch one fish and turn around and come back here but the day went on they're catching fish he still looks like a [ __ ] and no dave i got to talk with john yesterday and i made the comment i said listen your hair is so wrong it's right and he said that's exactly what he's going for but but i'm going to switch gears with you real quick we always talk about this coming in this season no there's a good group of rookies good group of rookies blah blah blah blah blah hey this year is an unbelievably stacked field of rookies how were they with that fog delay that we had today when we opened up the show i said could you imagine being a rookie on the bassmaster elites who's more or less a veteran what was the vibe with the rookies i'm anxious anxious a lot a lot of anxious anxiousness a lot of families here you know supporting them you know this is a big move for them like scott martin doesn't move down the dock without a freaking armada i'll let you know guys i mean he is one step short of people going like this while he walks down the dock i mean he does not quite have security but it is freaking close uh there's a lot of family of people here uh cheering him on and all the rookies so it's it's nervousness no you know what i mean like just to get here and the funny thing was yesterday all anyone talked about is how little time they had in in the off season you know the abbreviated off season and all anybody talked about this morning is how much time they had left but it is a crazy rookie class you're going to see you know a lot of amazing things happen and uh you know it's the first day and also i mean i will let you in a little insider scoop obviously the first takeoff without uh tripp weldon trump is retired officially retired two mondays ago and uh so this is the first takeoff without trip so it is weird i mean trip not being there literally affects the entire staff every department just because he's that you know steady rock um but the funny thing was tripp texted me like two minutes before takeoff and he's like i hope everything's going well there and i told him we were in a fog delay and and and tripp let us know that he currently was in a fog delay sitting drinking coffee on lake jordan and and he's doing fine and says hello to everybody but he was socked in there as well so fog all over the country guys dave did this trip allow you to call him you said he called you or texted you does he allow you to call him or is he forbidden that i know i'm allowed to call he just he just doesn't answer it i mean it's it's just it goes right to i mean sometimes hey ma'am yep i mean it trips doing fine is what i said connie i mean that's right you just want a cool thing uh here's one cool thing we uh we had him on the critically acclaimed ld in the mc podcast i'm going to give myself a quick plug because it's the beginning of the season and i might as well get in trouble on the first day at the office but we had him on the podcast this week and one of the cool things is you look at his career guys when he started you know he grew up two blocks from the original bassmaster offices he originally started following these tournaments by calling the bassmaster hotline he could recite the numbers still off the top of his head what that number was he'd call and he said it would be busy and busy and busy and then finally you get through and you get a recorded message which would tell you what happened in the tournament that day he worked with bass from there all the way up to live television on fs1 this week i mean it's a really incredible if that doesn't show how incredible his career is and how incredible the ascension of this awesome sport has been nothing done dave real quick and i we are the kings of early prognostication i'm gonna i'm gonna this is way too early but i have to do this i want you to be mr tough pants right now okay and i want you to give me okay the bass master 2021 angler of the year way too early for it but give it to me mr tough pants oh oh man i have not even i'm going to do it i'm going to do it i mean i'm going to make i'm gonna i'm gonna no i'm not gonna do it i was gonna go canada but you know what i'm not in florida it's hot here it's freezing cold at home screw canada i love you i'll be home in a couple of days i am going kyle welcher i am going young rookie kyle welcher is going to go from his top 10 in angler the i mean it's boring if you pick you know one of the favorites but i'm going to go out in the limb i'm saying kyle welcher wins angler of the year and if he doesn't he contends for it i think he breaks jason christie's heart at the at the wire right there at the end sorry he went tough pants on you bold bold by dave mercer although i'm somewhat surprised that you didn't make a different pick can we bring up the picture please because we just talked about it why didn't you pick well i thought we had the picture coming up this guy right here now come on see that was the obvious one even better right oh my gosh it is a raggedy hand dog oh my work that is special to his head and honestly i could see that second pick like he's wearing like a kilt and like some boots that come way up his knee like i could totally see john cox sporting that man oh man thank you dave mercer good stuff from dave he'll be uh presiding over the weigh-in four o'clock eastern time you can follow that all right here i think it's going to be a little bit fancier the weigh-ins on tv this year that's the rumor we can all check it out later this afternoon and see you see what's what's embellished on our weigh-ins did you say the weigh-ins are on tv this year what no well on fast mountain oh yeah yeah so new features it's internet television gerald swindle caleb kuffal our rookie of the year austin felix he's up inside from top 10. all right so awkward moments ago with hank jerry that's our that's our job oh got the pictures off spot on on the oddities today hank cherry boy if he fills a limit out being anchored by a seven and a half pounder you can tell he's got one locked on a bed right here again this is moments ago and the mouth at this rate see he might not even need a limit if he could catch three or four with another three or four pounder in there mixed in with a seven and that one that's that's a limit or more for most guys you are absolutely right he definitely has the anchor done sweet aerial right there with your defending angler of the year champion clark yeah we can't wait to see a little bit more of that we got some time to do it plenty more fishing to come from day number one the 2021 season of the bass master elite series be right back live coverage of the afco bassmaster elite at st john's river is sponsored by yamaha little less than an hour and a half's fishing time for these 99 anglers the full field out there today and tomorrow shooting for 50 spots on saturday mark menendez on top still 15 pounds and 15 ounces carl johnson has closed that gap just a little bit buddy gross we got to talk to him a little bonus coverage of buddy a little bit earlier two-time winner on the bassmaster elite series jamie hartman and fourth and gerald swindle moving steadily up that leaderboard so many stories obviously just a look at the leaderboard we'll tell you that we put a lot into what we've actually seen too we put a lot of stock in that and what's the best thing we've seen z well it's fair to say tommy sanders number one two words game changer right here my friend hank jerry just loosened one with three four and five lifts tighten up guys losing one between four and five pounds slow painful grind bassmaster classic champion hand cherry early to the day one swing of the bat though here on saint john's river hank cherry you are the powerful replay of the day two words gain changer love it thank you that's that made me feel good right there time that's what we're here to do here's your unofficial tommy yeah wrapping up this hank cherry catch name a time that he has gotten a top five an event with a flipping stick in his hand if he was to you know have a great event here what's the time that he's got a top five with a flipping stick in his hand oh my gosh toledo bad boom z all right yeah excellent excellent beautiful aerial shot right there i believe we're actually looking at i believe that's rodman right there lower end of rotman i think total guess but yeah that's clark wendlandt we saw cherish we did not see cliff prince prince catch a four and a half pounder jump up to 13th place he's got the same weight as jerry with only three fish of course cherry only has two i may have to get a little drop shot out to catch him one more time z how did you describe that catch game changer that's like one of our new fishermen here which if if you said his name where i'm from it would be thought another you know the fellow over here has got him a chevrolet that's brian new yeah hi you see fun with dialects okay okay a little b w bonus coverage here this is this is a missed fish moments ago caleb kufal looked like a good one oh man hey caleb thanks for giving us just a minute of your time but we just watched that missed fish there kind of tell us what how big did that one look and how did that happen yeah he's about two and a half pounds um it would have helped me i got one in there probably a pound and a half yet pound and a quarter so i was going too fast i was burning up the bank uh getting out of here i'd already fished down in this one channel and uh just don't have the blue fish and i just didn't get a good hook in them so well caleb how did you formulate the game plan did you did that mostly happen after you arrived on the scene here or are you doing pretty much what you'd been planning to do for a month or so no i mean i hadn't planned on doing much sight fishing but that's kind of what i've been doing this morning um the last couple days have been really warm and they're moving up fast and there's a ton more fish uh right now in these areas than what was here in practice so um honestly it's pretty easy there's there's tons of beds just lying in the banks so caleb are they hard to catch and and the other side is are you seeing are you seeing a lot of females or no no i've caught a few but most are just uh just bucks right now biggest one i've seen is probably probably three three and a quarter i haven't seen any giants caleb are you someone who's kind of comfortable fishing around a whole bunch of other people or do you much prefer it to be sort of left alone to do your thing i hate it i came down here this is a little area that i thought wouldn't be as pressured as a lot of the other places and uh i saw two other boats in here so um you know it's not getting a ton of pressure but definitely enough for this little area yeah you're getting all you want there is is this the kind of place you think since they're coming in there and then they're just getting started can you just bunker in there for the rest of the whole tournament if need be no i doubt it this is just a place that i you know i got a short day today uh plus with the fog delay i only had a couple hours to fish so um just some place that i thought i could get five bites pretty quick and that was kind of the game plan this morning just get five quick and then just kind of work from there so caleb every time that we've covered you you've had a baitcast rod in your hand dabbing around real shallow i'm talking about like a possum are you using a spinning rod yep it's not often but i do i do have to get it out once in a while why don't you contrast this i'm that give us the contrast between this year and last year in the same place the st johns river uh well i mean it's all weather you know last year we had we had some really really cold weather you know we had those two cancellations and um it's just everything i mean i hear they had some cold weather down here a couple a couple weeks ago but since that big warming trend you know throughout practice and you know now during the tournament i mean it's been 70 to 80 degrees so these fish are going nuts right now so they're moving up all right well good luck good job so far today on a short day caleb kuffal doing very well today here's a look at our host city palatka florida hey you know what before we take a break here taking a look at polaka a beautiful place basically where our weigh-in is going to be set up how about some striker daily trivia some more of that for you what's the record weight for the biggest largemouth bass caught in florida 1727 1811 1878 or is it 19 pounds and 21 out of 19 pounds oh 21 of a pound okay it's that kind of it's that kind of deal right so love sounds like a history quiz we'll rub our chins and act real thoughtful while we're off on break and when we come back that's the first thing we'll hit right there your answer when we come back the afco bassmaster elite at st john's river is sponsored by minnekota [Music] power pole and by skeeter boats [Music] well to get the old engine to crank up this morning but boy we got it started after a fog delay first day of the aftco bassmaster elite on the st johns river we got all 99 anglers out there right now meantime we got striker daily trivia to resolve right here for you big question about the biggest largemouth bass ever caught in florida what's the record weight 1727 18.11 18.78 or 1921 z i put it to you tell me i'm gonna go see i see competing in this pick right here i was gonna go 19 pounds and 21 ounces but that don't make sense in my head i'm going 18.78 you have you have gone full in on this now i'll go b 1811. 1811. i'm with ronnie i'm going with ronnie on this one right here this is the weight that's recognized by the florida wildlife commission for the state record fish i bet some people would argue with a trick question yeah yeah if you had to say that such that means it's a trick question no it doesn't know it does got something called menco to unlock the lake coming your way right now what we do doing in the minn kota unlock the lake as we show you some catches and we got something to show you absolutely yeah we do my friend taking a look at our minn kota unlock the lake and you could definitely tell boy it has been a lot more spread out so far at least here on day one than in years past years past you would see well pretty much one of those every one of those icons would be in that lake that we're headed to in lake george probably the least amount of catches we have ever seen in lake george in the history of the bassmaster elite series a lot of fish catches as you get north of lake george taking a look at rodman we thought it would be has been a major major player so far here on day one but really the great thing about this is fish catches throughout the entire st jobs that's your minn no no no please yeah finish it up for us here i forgot what they made it's the minn kota unlock the lake of course you're just kidding about forgetting that you never forget that you never forget anything cliff prince fishing a little farther north downstream there boy you're starting to see brandon paula nick is he said he was going to focus on pre-spawners and he he stuck to it for a long time this morning brandon politic needs to uh get the game started well speaking of getting the game started see we got several guys you would never expect not to have any fish at this point in the day talking like uh new guy justin atkins and stetson blaylock and jason christie and that's not confirmed though correctly no no no yeah we have uh some bass tracks out and not functioning okay okay so good news is we're going to have a way in and get it all squared away here the water on this side is so dark about four o'clock eastern time it's really really hard to see anything so john cruz here catch a big one earlier really nice pass what happened while we were away just moments ago destroyer got that sucker right there got that destroyer that'll work there's three two and a half two and a half that was moments ago john cruz catches two more just solid two and a half pound keepers like that right there he will be in great shape for day two catch one of those it goes a long ways all the greenery all the palm trees and people wearing shorts it's it's a little escapism for everyone who's uh yes well down here in the middle southern middle part of the country the ice storms and terrible pot terrible pileups and up in your country z where as you said you you dig out all day and then you get up the next morning and start digging out again and we had 11 days in the row of that we have not seen above freezing now for like 20 something days good grief well i think we finally we've located our mandate height we get such great stuff on the water from davey and i know davey's in a place where it's hard to get signal too which is part of the equation that we have to figure out and everything like that but david good to see you and tell us kind of generally where you are and what you're observing so far on this day number one well currently i'm not very far from from takeoff because i had to to come back here to to be able to get service you guys but i've spent uh most of the day down in rodman reservoir and a number of fishermen came in there we heard some some good things from some fishermen that were there especially the last day of practice they saw some good fish moving up the problem with if if you ever lock through you you sacrifice part of your day and in this situation they only had certain lock times it was this morning at 8 am and then also at 11 a.m and then this afternoon i'm pretty sure it's 1 45. the photo they certainly changed things for a lot of people but the ones that grew so um look at that what's some concern robin uh four days on maddie's tournament better for those guys to one another well davey what was always your philosophy about a shortened day do you do is that does that mean an instant switch in the game plan or you are you just you try to be always ready for something like that well you almost have to have a plan uh wednesday we had a lot of fog here so i'm sure a lot of these guys knew there would be a chance of that the the problem with that is you always want going into a tournament you want a plan a a plan b a plan c there were a lot of guys this morning that went to rodman and even a few other places and they said hey i've only got one plan because i talked to a lot of those guys there there were a lot of guys that like i've only got one plan and i've got to do it davey real quick you you've had some great great finishes here on the st john's giant bass we've used the term how these fish set up as the day wears on for somebody at home that doesn't understand what that means describe what happens with these bass this time of year when that water temp just spikes one degree i think we have a little bit of connection problem with uh davey right now and okay david can hear now z you might want to repeat your question now oh we can't hear zina okay okay davey the essence of the question was what happens when this water i mean what happens moment to moment when that when that temperature is ticking up each and every degree all right we're gonna we're gonna check back with davey obviously we're having some signal issues right there very very uh very difficult we definitely want to hear what davey's been been seeing out there and sort of fill in the rest of how we started this morning tommy it comes to tightening up and we're going to get there i know it just takes a while you know the engine doesn't always start on the first pull you know yeah you don't get a's the first day of school or something we'll get there we'll get there i guess the surprise of the day so far is brandon pollinik still sitting on zero fish did not see that coming yep yet he has time to to right the ship that's certainly within his uh his powers we've seen him do incredible things in the space of like 20 minutes before on multiple occasions out here over the past 15 years john crews a bit of a tough season last year after he left st johnson great to see him doing well out here today as as you guys said ron and zeta he just needs a couple of midland keepers and he is looking great for tomorrow yes [Music] couple big bass right right after our midday break i'm talking like first 20 minutes we came back fish like john cruz this one from hank cherry well no doubt we will see some more there is plenty of fish and time left on the shortened day we'll be right back live coverage of the avco bassmaster elite at st john's river is sponsored by yamaha bassmaster live with uh about an hour's time for the guys who are close to palatka to fish maybe a little less time than that if they've got a long run some of them may have to start that run very very soon our live coverage on fs1 we have a brand new media partner terrific new media partner fox sports fs1 and that's going to premiere saturday 8 a.m eastern time also 8 a.m eastern time on sunday we're very much looking forward to that one of those weekend mornings and get to reach a larger audience and and bring more people into the sport is a fantastic opportunity what a great channel i mean these people are overachievers in the world of sports to be sure and we are very much uh looking forward to an association with fs1 getting back down to brandon because you said see the story of the day so far one of them absolutely slow painful day so far for brandon pollanick zero fish in his live well very surprised how about a new leader from australia jacobson just called up with a three and three quarters he's got a little over 17 pounds yeah and another big fish alert such brian schmidt who won last week all the way into the fifth place with only four bass nice average right move oh if you just hooked funny or what we got going on here i think he just hooks funny i don't think he's that big he's hooked right in the belly get in here and completely missed it got us one yeah it was so easy to catch those a couple days ago and today it has just been a grind trying to catch them good two and a quarter pounder should not be that hard must have switched it to time lapse oh come on random polling one of the early adopters of the uh recording all aspects from all angles of your day on the water and he's uh he still devotes plenty of his time to making sure all that's squared away but got to be a good feeling for him to get off a zero i would be okay with a limit of those right now kyle you guys can come like right there if you want just stay up against the padline it's good to see carl you know you really look at how he did last year at santee cooper obviously this is a shallow water fishery for for a really big amount of the time carl lived offshore i mean he would you know kind of hero or zero and and one of the things that you know carl has needed is is consistency and in fact correct me if i'm wrong at the end of this year i mean there's a lot of anglers that will start feeling it mid-season that there are going to be cuts at the you know the end of this 2021 season and seeing a guy like carl that boy if he can avoid some of those bombs some of those 75th to 100th place finishes you know he's going to be safe but there's come on [Applause] easy easy easy come on i can't even haven't got a look at it i can see what is that i don't even know if that's a bass oh what in the world it's one of those i don't know what those are some weird some weird spiny prehistoric creature i can't remember what they're called plecostomus gosh daley he bit it too dang it had me excited got me breathing that's a giant aquarium fish oh for sure it's gonna be a bass one twitch in it that's incredible eats it glucostamous they'll suspend up high in that shade line i've seen those but i've never caught one young ron while we have a little bit of uh you know i was talking to dave mercer about who he would pick for angler of the year and he went with kyle welcher you being the dean the superintendent of the bassmaster opens i throw it to you young ron for your rookie of the year pick and why josh streisner lock should be opening up soon because okay yeah from alabama so there's multiple alabama events neely gunnersville pickwick that's good for him but he is one of the best southeast regional anglers in our field and i think the only one you got to worry about is the st lawrence on on not his style i think josh streisner is going to make some waves this year pretty good start so what is his style place right now well for instance the week before we were at eufaula he won a semi-pro event there uh going away and he's won a lot on the coast he's very good he's not far from the west logans and the scott cantors of the world where they where they live where they fish and just from my experience covering anglers that fish heavily on the coosa river you got to be dang good in your neighborhood to just do well in those tournaments not only in the state not only regionally so for him to uh i think what's held him back what he told me from making the elites or pursuing this as a dream his finances and he's he's winning that event last year on another trail and then doing so well in the opens following that when we started back up really helped him make that jump and realize hey i've got enough starter money let me bet on myself and so i think josh strasner is going to be a heck of a pick to watch and that's why he's on my fantasy team this week another guy you picked ronnie little article we did on the uh leap predictions kj queen has just jumped into uh 14th place with another three pounder that was i did pick a bold prediction of saying that such asked me a bunch of bold predictions and i just some of them were really bold some of them were just not as bold but i said kj queen would get if being a rookie he would make a top 10 in his first event such asked me for some bold predictions as well one of those being what suits that international winner for the third year in a row an international winner i look at the top of the leaderboard and i uh i don't want to talk out of school i think it'll be really cool to see tomorrow seeing a lot of guys on the move right now in fact but i think tomorrow to be with our leaders is to see how many of um look a lot of people thought this was going to be a sight fishing beat down today which yeah we've seen a few you know john cruz with one really big one um i think it'll be really interesting to see how many of our leaders are doing that if any are doing that yeah i'm hoping we can get you know get over to crescent you know and see what the story is over there same thing we could see two guys in the river two guys in crescent two guys in in rodman it could it could really be across the map we could see all of the st john's right right interesting to check out the weigh-in today which is three eastern time i think i gave out the wrong number uh for the folks earlier so it's definitely three eastern times when that weigh-in is set to start t.h marine outlook for tomorrow high of 76 a little bit not quite as warm but plenty warm low warm night man oh man looking good i think you're going to hear guys on the stage with mercer today just talk about how that fog delay kind of spun them out it's been it's been an odd day uh so far all around tommy sanders i would say um but i i really think that that fog delay probably hurt a lot of guys just mentally and what what their game plan was when you got a full day of competition off the water to not know what the fish have done since you were last there tuesday you got half a day you've missed this morning it's the first day of the season you're trying to get your footing there a lot of guys are gonna be stressing and pressing and tomorrow they're gonna they're gonna have to swing for 25 to make up ground absolutely yeah it's going to be some some thai competition tomorrow there's going to be some hard-fought stuff going on carl jocenson still sits atop our leaderboard mark menendez who has a great record of performance here buddy gross a winner from last year matt herron brian schmidt mentioned by mark zona just moments ago mike huff one of our stars from last season on the bass master elite series and all the rest is gonna switch around it's gonna go up it's gonna go down we'll be back in just a moment live coverage of the avco bassmaster elite at st john's river is sponsored by yamaha for the bassmaster elite series 2021 one of the legendary places for fishing for bass fishing in the world of course the st johns river carl jocenson veteran from australia on top another veteran right behind him mark menendez buddy gross in his second year on the elite series and derrick hudnall jumping up there with a big one how big one nine pound two ounce time eight pounds and two ounces for dairy he's kind of getting a reputation as a big fish guy that is for sure 15th place now this is someone that that has been touted by a member of our staff here that would be ronnie moore josh streisner and uh we're gonna go a little b w trailer hitches a little bonus coverage here feeling good about it yeah set him up set him up hey josh ronnie in studio here uh they're putting pressure on me to set you up with some questions because i dubbed you as my rookie of the year pick you're having a good day one with a shortened day how's your elite series career starting off you know i've only had about three and a half hours of fish thunder four and uh it's just real slow i caught a couple a couple off the bed and a couple of just fishing and uh it's just slow just having to try to find i need i need a couple big ones i got about 12 pounds and i just need a one or two good one stuff josh did you see anything that inspired you during the during the days of your practice or are things just starting to starting to get a little bit a little a bit more interesting now yeah the first two days was real slow i didn't catch anything but uh the last day of practice i started seeing some on the bed and uh they're they're coming to the bank you can just get in front of the right one there's a lot of guys fishing these canals they're getting picked off pretty quick they're pretty easy to catch if you can just find one so trying to keep moving and uh trying to find one as i go maybe maybe somebody missed one josh doesn't matter what circuit you're in you start the year with some sort of a goal no matter what it it is coming into the elite series being a rookie what is your number one goal this year i i think just rookie of the year if i can uh just stay in the running for ricky the year to the last last tournament or two it uh it'll go a long way uh of course i like to win another year but i'll take uh i'll take what i get i just want mention this we got three events in your home state this year which one of those three are you looking to the looking forward to the most probably gunnersville uh i actually live closer to nidalee henry than any of them but i just don't have a whole lot of history i don't need henry and uh gunners oil a little bit and i've actually never been to pickwick so it's gonna be uh gonna be interesting hey josh a uh an ab is an angel baby but i'm gonna tell you something right now i'm gonna call you an ab and that's all business josh what do you think of that i'll take it he didn't he didn't flinch when i set that up with oh i dubbed you as my rookie the year pick he's like yeah cool like i got 11 pounds i need like i need like 14 to be in the running you know i'll probably let you down ron that's good so josh you obviously have fished a lot locally regionally in alabama and the southeast and went on done well but how did you really want to make this jump into the elites like what allowed you to do it this past season obviously qualifying did that but in your life like is it just set up perfect to make that jump now yeah you know the last couple of years i've had a i've been fortunate and i've won a couple of pretty good tournaments and uh you know made some money i felt like i could compete with these guys if i could fish them and not work not that's really it kind of got tired of working construction too well i know you got some hard work ahead of you here but i know it's going to be a labor of love uh josh thank you so much for letting us uh visit with you for a few minutes there good luck on the rest of the day and good job so far today josh streisner one of our newcomers for 2021 here in the bassmaster elite series let's take you back to a guy we've been spending some time with the last 45 minutes or so brandon paul and they can show you something from just moments ago he's not very big but it'll keep turn them on get out of here number three you're saying there's a chance well he didn't catch one till very late in the day today but he can get it done right you know and really if you look at it it's been a painful day with brandon pollinick doing something really totally different from a lot of the other anglers that at least we have cameras with here on day one but one of these bass tommy we talk about the importance jerry mcinnis used to say it every single tournament the importance of one fish and we learned last year with clark wendlandt and david mullins going into the last two tournaments just how important not even a limit but the importance of one bite you have no idea in the year-end standings what these smaller fish could do for brandon pollinik all right back to brandon live all of a sudden he's got three fish in the live well he stands 61st about a pound behind the top 50 cut seven pounds right now putting a bow on the josh strasner we saw him on the opens live almost win cherokee lake fishing for smallmouth exclusively so even though they're southern smallmouth he might he might feel comfortable fishing offshore you know and out in the middle of big water like we see up north boy while hud know was uh [Music] did you do that don't you do that just down there oh yeah another one we still need to get rid of that little tiny tiny one we first got but at least we got four we're in a lot better shape than we were like however long ago a lot better shape than we were 30 minutes ago i promise you that current slowed down a little bit so maybe they slid to that corner we we've watched him work quickly before a lot of different types of corners that we're seeing here whether it's the uh sea walls in the marina you know those docks or corners of the current a lot of corners oh anyway did greg caught a seven pounder and gary klaus is in our top ten with two five pounders only three she's gonna buy it and she don't even look at it she just kind of sits there see hank jerry set up on one right here every keeper right now critical for hank cherry has won giant in his live well that ain't hurt three as soon as he came in there she swam off and i filled yeah yeah florida limits normally a seven or eight pounder and four one pounders well if hank ends up with four two pounders he'll be well ahead of a florida limit you're looking darn good lock is open that's the last locking out opportunity for our anglers is we have uh a good bit less than an hour of time until weigh-in uh festivities get going here so it's an exodus from rodman brandon pollanick who 45 minutes ago was basically uh empty handed has now got four fish in the boat we just told that fella that we got a lot more to come see if brandon pollinik can get himself a limit see if hank cherry can catch the big one he's got the male in the boat let's see if he can go for the jump live coverage of the afco bassmaster elite at st john's river is sponsored by yamaha epco bassmaster elite on the saint johns river first day of the year for the bassmaster elite series a shortened day fog delay and we've been following a lot of stories for you out there today one of them that man right there brandon pollinick who had uh had nothing in the live well not too long ago has been able to put four keepers in there and see if he can complete that mission we just saw clark windland yep take off went past him right there right now we're gonna get into some bonus coverage right now bmw trailer hitch is with brian schmidt and brian uh i know you don't have much time left to fish here but uh clue us in on what's been going on with you today what's been what's been the high point of your day so far well you know the last afternoon of practice i had a couple other piece i was kind of excited you know in florida all of a sudden they pull up you know and um i think with me being really rushed today with the play i didn't fish it thorough as i would like and um i left there pretty quick with with nothing i had three bites and missed them both and i made a little move to a deal i had one bite in practice and i've gotten lucky gotten five in the boat around real quick that's that's what's going on hopefully we can get maybe one more and then we're gonna zip back away brian you've got an amazing history on the potomac river yet you also have really good history in the state of florida what is the what's the connection of why you've done so well in this state typically mark is because there's grass unfortunately you know there's none left here but being from the potomac you know i know what they do when the grass leaves a little bit this being tidal you know i'm a little you know i'm pretty comfortable but typical florida is just because there's grass you know i you know if there's grass i'm a happy man brian tell us about your game plan for the entire week i know you probably approach each tournament with a four-day plan tell us what's give us some hints as to what's going to go on with you tomorrow so i was really hoping to save where i'm at now but uh like i said i got another deal that i'm hoping tomorrow with if we don't have a fog delay we get a full day that i could calm down and really really fish it good like i said i had a a few nice bites in it you know the final afternoon usually that means they're coming and i don't know if i was just rushed or whatever so i'm gonna start on that and then um if need be i'm gonna fish a couple other places that i got they're all spawn relate everything i'm doing spawn related nothing offshore you know for me this week at all brian we've seen it on this body of water before do you feel like it's potential that this is one of those tournaments that there is more coming throughout this event 100 percent i i'm a little surprised in the day i thought it was going to be you know really really good i'm sure it was for some guys i definitely feel like if everybody gets to fish a full day and they get to really calm down there's going to be some really big weights to come and i definitely feel like there's more coming i mean i got 67 degree water you know a moon today there there definitely there's more coming up i'm pretty sure that they haven't really spawned good on this system yet anyway because like i was just down toho last week and they hadn't really done it there we're a little norfolk you know north of toho here so definitely for sure brian what you were talking about you mentioned it we've been talking about it all day long the fog delay and how it affects the guy what's what do you lose when you miss out on three the first three hours of fishing on any day and specifically on a day on the st john's river you you lose your peace of mind for sure you know like i i don't know about everybody but a lot of guys i'm sure are making a pretty good run and if it doesn't work quick you can you know you can get uncomfortable and start to spin out a little bit you know that eight-hour day it allows you to sample a couple things and you know you can calm down but it puts the pressure on you man like there's no way to describe it i i felt that today and i know i fished way too fast where i started but we'll find out tomorrow are you seeing these fish brian or are you just kind of blind sight fishing nowhere that i'm fishing am i looking at them i i'm not good at that i know i'm not good at that though i faced my practice on fishing for spawners i couldn't see you know the first day i tried to you know shell bit ordeal and then i saw the forecast i'm like i'm scared to go do that with the belief they would be leaving to go spawn brian you mentioned that you've got experience dealing with places where the grass is there one year not there the next year what are the places that you look for when you come back to a place and that that grass that you sort of leaned on is just not not available anymore you know i think sometimes it's as simple as knowing what it was you know knowing the habitat you know this where the most of it was and and then okay it left so where can they where can that population of fish go and it sometimes it's as simple as that like on the potomac in the fall the grass starts to die and they just go to the first available piece of structure you know so i don't know populations when the grass was here but luckily turn our day around a little bit here what would you like to find a little more of before before this tournament gets too too much farther i like to pull into my starting place tomorrow and they act like they did finally even in practice and i would be a happy man all right well good luck uh making that happen brian thank you so much on a short day for your precious time and uh good luck to see brian at the weigh-in coming up at three o'clock today here on bassmaster.com we're going to catch ourselves another break here what is that maybe we'll find out when we come back from the st johns river live coverage of the avco bassmaster elite at st john's river is sponsored by yamaha one more half hour of coverage here for bassmaster live on this first day of the season it's elite series event on the saint johns river we've got a brand new leader who didn't have a fish until afternoon today and only has four fish right now but three of those fish are five pounders plus that is the veteran gary klaus so gary doing a fantastic job out there in the afternoon after a fog delay in the morning and everything else man that's getting after it i mean i mean really getting after it considering it was noon before he caught his first keeper so taking that lead away from carl jocenson take a look right now at some of the fish catches that really caught our eye today we'll start with hank cherry man we got one right now exactly right this is hank cherry's first bite first keeper bite that he puts in the boat of the 2021 bassmaster elite series season tommy sanders not a bad one to put in the boat and i really think it's interesting looking at i mean hank jerry does not even have a limit any sitting unofficial he hit 12th place anchored by this one right here but listening to brian schmidt and we talked about it you know the monkey wrench in this day was that fog delay and brian schmidt made the comment man it just sped me up kind of spun me out a little bit unofficially in our top 12 schmidt but even if you watched the anglers that we had a camera on today you just felt like they were pressed they were pressed for time it wasn't a comfortable feeling at all and i i'm very curious you know we've talked about it since our midday break how the leaders got to where they were on this day one because i guarantee you half of this field is spun out right now all right also spent some time this morning especially this morning with clark wendlandt who provided his time waited to lock into rodman reservoir started looking for those spawners and he found him and you know really if you look at clark's day um just a nice little solid limit minus that big florida kicker and and we did we don't know really what was caught out of rodman today we know that guys like john cox that were on giants on tuesday uh it doesn't look like john cox you know relocated those big ones clark wendlandt another one of the anglers that said man i saw a lot of just real nice two to three pound males but i saw some really big ones and we did not see that so far at least so far today with clark we know so that he has locked out of rock absolutely be a good day to watch the way to take it in uh today at 3 p.m eastern time of course our 2020 bassmaster angler of the year all the three years he's been back here with the bassmaster elite series he's he's gotten a good solid start down here on the st johns river looking to do the same thing boy as you say z if he could put a giant in that boat that would mean the world exactly right solid day so far for clark one john cruz earlier today i believe this was keeper number one [Music] and it was a really interesting situation after he caught that fish right there bassmaster elite series rules you have to catch your bass in the mouth if you visi visibly sight fishing after this fish right here john cruz catches uh about a two and a half to two and three quarter pound male outside of the mouth lets it go on the same bed this one showed up moments later i cannot believe he swung that fish this is twisting too holy cow gave us an 11 pound plus a couple years ago out here and look at that gosh that fish is built so perfect big one right there for john cruz really stayed south of lake george in the canal system in astor predominantly the entire day where a lot of people thought that there could be a giant stringer caught started the day with patrick walters as he waited patiently to lock into rodman and then once he got into rodman he was able to find a keeper you know looking at this keeper right here from patrick walters very solid limit how about you okay i throw it sometimes because a lot of people thought we would today but it's been a shortened day will we see a 30 pound stringer in this tournament 30 no 30. wow cliff prince definitely one of the favorites a perennial favorite here as he lives in palatka knows every inch of this vast fishery he's come mighty close plenty of times i mean see if somebody's going to catch 30 like i i vote for cliff prince but i mean i don't think that 30's we're going to have any 20-pound bags today on two yes we are gary klaus just got his hollandic we have a close watch on him because it was kind of puzzling to figure out how he was without fish with a couple hours to fish or an hour and 45 minutes to fish and then he got to work got to work really been kind of throwing a jerk bait almost all day today kept kept the shallow ones on us for about a half hour to 45 minutes really everything brandon pollanick has put in his live well it's been the last hour see him fishing below the lock here rodman reservoir not very many big ones but possibly salvaging his day late here on day number one number three can't win on the first day right now it's impossible actually making a giant uphill battle though simple arithmetic dave mercer says yeah the only event that's come close in the last year or two of being blown out in the first day was the classic with hank cherry last year having 29. well yeah but he would have lost if he only had 29. let's take it down to an angler we spent some good quality time with last year mike huff and mike uh tell us with a little bit of fishing how much fishing time left do you have as a matter of fact got about 50 minutes or so and then i've got to head back so i had a short day in rodman there and just fishing a stretch where i caught a few in 2019 why did you choose rodman and how did it go in rodman today i had a rough practice and i went in there and honestly got probably the most bites i had you know anywhere else and just figured i'd go there but i i got some lucky buys today tommy i've i've caught one you know right right before i came back through the lock that's my biggest one and then you know i got hung and i went up to get it and there was a four pounder on the bed so i've had really good luck today will you go back to rodman tomorrow mike yeah definitely i that short day in there i think guys will really rush in there i'm i'm definitely going back first thing in the morning so i feel like that's a place where you can catch you know a really big bag got any problem fishing around a bunch of people mike i haven't today no uh there was about 15 and i was kind of spread out so it was good well mike we appreciate it man catches one more before you head back there or maybe two or three more before you head back to the weigh-in and we look for some good things happening a little bit later on mike out there trying to maximize the time he has left after a day in rodman reservoir tommy i won't give you a bfa i'm going to steal it from such but josh strasner four pounder has 13 and a half pounds he's at his mark that he wanted and i'm just i'm just tickled with it he's in the top 10 now there you go fantastic good work good work josh gary klaus the man on top right now the man from nashville tennessee area let's see how that holds up the weigh-in coming up live coverage of the avco bassmaster elite at st john's river is sponsored by yamaha field which already consisted of a bunch of terrific anglers been certainly beefed up this year 15 more anglers now it's qualified to fish the bassmaster elite series let's take a look only 50 will make it to saturday's run let's take a look at the top 50 anglers as it stands right now unofficially according to bass track of course with gary klaus on top right there mike huffman we just talked to they're hanging just outside the top ten michael frazier hank cherry was spent a lot of time with today greg hackney back in the mix here aj queen one of ronnie's picks for i believe fantasy this week if i'm not mistaken chris johnson who has come near i think he's finished second place here at the st johnson river before brandon cobb kyle monty florida angler from down okeechobee area john cruz we saw john catch a giant but that's been kind of the that's pretty much all he's had in the way of poundage today so uh would behoove him to catch a one or two better ones before this day is done harry jay yellows we know put your number in crescent lake today heath combs downey brad watley 51 the first man out we're going to keep going we're going down that leaderboard past 50 here shane leinberg was the first guy on the board today early this morning john cox that is stunning to me i have never heard an angler so excited to start a day of competition as john cox so i i guarantee you he is blown away he was absolutely the overwhelming chalk favorite in that in that bucket a as well so yeah you're not the only one surprised a lot of bass fishing fans surprised by that outcome right there it's like a champlain a lot of fish yeah yeah you had a lot of fish caught right there on the south end near astor and the canal system canals definitely played a big factor looking at crescent right there has been some some solid stringers we heard ronnie moore you said it not that many anglers that were fishing in there but uh definitely some good fish were caught a lot of fish caught right around palatka but a major player as we go up the st johns river rodman definitely was a big players people said what's going to happen the water is very stable there very clean a lot clearer in rodman ton of fish catches um it will be very interesting to see how many of our leaders caught them in rodman today tommy i can't stress this enough big bass big stage big dreams and i'm going to tell you yeah i did not think 10 pounds would mean that much today and boy looking at those unofficial standings ten pounds is a solid day yeah that's that's a number we'll be definitely looking for as we anticipate the weigh-in coming up at 3pm eastern time stage in preparation there we'll have a crowd on hand here at palatka florida [Music] first day of the year you're only guaranteed 18 days guaranteed fishing during the entire year so you say one day is no big deal no every day is a big deal every fish is a big big deal we'll be back with the rest of our fishing when we come back the afco bassmaster elite at st john's river is sponsored by ranger boats [Music] yamaha toyota and by berkeley [Music] final few minutes of competition here on day number one the only anglers really fishing now the ones who have knocked out most of their return trip to palatka for the weigh-in which is imminent the veteran gary klaus having boy one of his best tournaments ever with the bassmaster elite series the only man currently unofficially over 20 20 pounds with a 22-1 i'd say i'd say he's over 20 officially or not derrick hudnall on the strength of what a nine two nine two sooch we're gonna have some surprises davey uh davey won't be here i'll pass that on to johnson has jumped up to third place as bass track came in he's got more than 17 pounds he's been way down in the 80s all day cory johnson all right we've seen him do big things out here on the st john's river big things we have seen today well i think you can fill us in on that you're exactly right davey i'll tell tommy about that you know what in all honesty i need to apologize to every one of our bassmaster live fans that have hung with us all day long i really thought hank cherry was gonna get beat for the power pole replay of the day that never happened hank cherry's first bass of the 2021 season in his live well was a dad gum saint john stud hank cherry you are the power pole replay of the day and i cannot stress this enough guys boy we have seen shifts in the leaderboard really the last 30 to 45 minutes we knew the warmer the water got the better this bite was gonna get tomorrow is gonna be a very interesting day especially you look at guys like gary klaus who we haven't had him in our top five in the last couple years for him to catch 22 pounds by the way hey cherry yes you are still the powerful replay of the day oh yeah i mean that is a good one for him to catch 22 pounds unofficially that's pretty impressive for about four hours of fishing yeah no doubt no doubt about it now what do you when you give these guys the chance to take their time to settle in to sort of really get the feel of a place that a full day affords what do you think is going to be different for these guys z well you know taking a look at this area of where a lot of our anglers are at a lot of them making their way back to our way in there in palatka right now you know generally look man this time of year we've covered so many tournaments and and followed early season there are windows and a lot of times there's an early window here on the saint john's and then a later one you always whenever you have that you know fish are just getting ready to lock on you have that midday lull and that's really when we started competition today was during that midday lull and right after our you know midday break it ignited i and i just i look for the same thing tomorrow i look for that early window and late um but i think the cool thing is to see how these leaders got it done on a pressure packed day one of this elite series season that will be interesting it will be something to take note of and learn from tomorrow when we bring you full coverage here full day of bassmaster live scheduled to start at eight a.m eastern time six hours of coverage on the boards for our friend corey johnston yeah corey johnston he was one of those anglers tommy i told you i got to talk to a lot of anglers about those big ones that pulled up on tuesday he was one of them that said they're coming and and they're good ones um i just think that hourglass really constricted uh the majority of our field today that was making long runs we haven't talked about the weather in a while of course a lot of people if you live in the middle part of the country think oh well this is all heading toward all this ice and snow and misery is headed down toward florida but the the the forecast really doesn't bear that out i mean it looks it looks strong it looks warm with warm nights all the way through the remainder of this tournament so uh like you said you see if they're coming they're coming right you know i do think looking at that forecast it's supposed to stay warm i think the the sight fishing bite is going to be really tough i think we're going to have a low ceiling you know storms are coming not quite as much sun but you know i think a lot of these guys are just in areas that they're they're around them yeah what's crazy tommy is last thursday one week before the start of the event i looked at the forecast the one week forecast leading up to it it said the lows in florida for the tournament the first three days of summer around 50 degrees the highs each day around 60 degrees even and uh rain obviously wind from the north was what it was projected 9 to 10 miles an hour from the north every single day just a few days later i looked wind coming out of the south exclusively warm wind warm wind and warm weather and now it's like 65 as the low and 70s is the is the high and so oh what a change it could be in florida in a heartbeat uh not only day to day but for sure a week in advance you know and i think ron you talking about that i think a lot of guys in this field were preparing for that i think a lot of guys really on days one and two of practice because that forecast really hadn't changed on day one of practice it still said heck tommy you and i were texting that we were gonna have some cold nights going into saturday and sunday and i think a lot of anglers you know they were preparing for that jerk bait that bladed jig bite with the storms that were coming and i think when it switched to exactly what you're saying warm night south wind man i think that threw a monkey wrench into the way a lot of guys practice for this uh on days one and two of practice with prince and all the rest and see what cliff comes in with at the end of the day today our true native sun here of palatka florida zero we'll be back with you tomorrow of course same time 8 to 11 and noon to 3. bassmaster live here on bassmaster.com boy for a shortened day tommy sanders there was a couple exceptional big fish catches today thank goodness for that my friend john cruz hank cherry hey hats off to those guys get ready for the weigh-in it is coming up next and we'll see you tomorrow right here for a full six hours of coverage you

Channel: Bassmaster

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Keywords: BASS, B.A.S.S., Fishing, bass fishing, Bassmaster

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Length: 204min 12sec (12252 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 15 2021