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“This tournament means more to me than anything in my career,” said Wolak, a Bassmaster Elite Series pro. “More than the Rookie of the Year or the Bassmaster Major that I won. This lake has a sense of purity about it, and when you come up here you really have to find the fish first. You have to make changes navigationally and strategically.

“I came up here planning to fish for largemouth thinking that’s what was going to win it, but I started fishing for smallies early on. I made a critical move on Friday because the north wind made me fish shallow. I found a grass mat and whacked ‘em. That wind tucked the fish up under there.”

Wolak flipped a Fin-Tech Title Shot jig tipped with a YUM Craw Papi into grass to land most of his fish. He took home the top prize of more than $51,000 as well as the lead in the Northern Opens points race. After the three-tournament Northern Opens season, the top two anglers will receive a berth in the 2011 Bassmaster Classic in New Orleans.

Wolak already punched his ticket to the 2011 Classic via the Elite Series so the first angler out of the Classic cutline — Jared Lintner — would benefit if Wolak were to hold.

Said of Wixom, Mich., took runner-up with his 19-1 limit Saturday. That brought his three-day total to 53-0 but the late charge ended up falling just short. Every one of Said’s fish fell for a Poor Boy’s Bait Co. football jig in water up to 16 feet deep. He concentrated on rock piles.

“I’m thrilled to have gotten second in a field that had so many pros in it,” he said. “I lost a good fish — about 4 pounds or so — on the first day, and I’m not saying that was the difference, but I guess I’ll never know.”

In third place was Tracy Adams of Wilkesboro, N.C. He added 17-15 Saturday for a three-day total of 52-4. Behind him was Elite Series pro Ish Monroe of Hughson, Calif., who fell two spots after only bringing 14-4 to the scales the final day. His total was 52-0. Rounding out the top five was Mike Haggerty of Hendersonville, Tenn., whose three-day total is 51-15.

On the co-angler side, Thomas Rizzo of Rochester, Pa., took top honors. With the victory, he earned a brand new Triton/Mercury rig valued at $44,000 with a three-day total of 30-12. He credits knowledge of the lake, good pros, and preparedness for his success.

In second place was Phillip Jarabeck of Virginia, whose total weight is 30-6. In third was James Schneider of Menands, N.Y., who built 30-2 over three days.

The next stop of the 2010 Bassmaster Northern Opens presented by Bass Pro Shops is at the Detroit River, Aug. 19-21, out of Detroit, Mich., and the final event will be at Chesapeake Bay out of Cecil County, Md., for the Sept. 16-18.

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Wolak fished the Ticonderoga largemouths on day one, switched his focus to north end green fish on day two and returned to the upper end on day three. He fished a variety of reaction baits, but ended up doing best with jigs. Wolak had the big fish of day one and that 6-pound, 1-ounce largemouth confirmed his decision to go all green.

“A big part of your plan when you come to Champlain is determining which species you’re going to target,” he said. “The other thing is learning how to navigate in the wind.”

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I made the Classic but had a little slip at the end of the year where I missed a couple of fish in tournaments, and that really came back to haunt me. It all started at Kentucky Lake, where the area that I fished last year and did real well around didn’t have any grass in it this year. And no grass means no fish, so I had to find offshore fish elsewhere.

There’s something that grinds at me when looking for offshore fish when there is no grass or other visible strucutre. I just don’t have the confidence to fish for fish that are just holding in current. Everything I’ve been taught about the habits of bass insists I find a factor like structure or food—something tangible and visible that the fish gravitate to. I just find it difficult to stick it out when fishing deep moving water with nothing tangible to attract the fish, so I usually give up after a while and move elsewhere to find fish.

At Kentucky Lake I missed a couple of key fish, and the same thing happened to me at Clarks Hill. I wasn’t on a ton of fish in the first place, but at each tournament I missed key bites. At Clarks Hill, I had a five pounder on a swimbait and he jumped twice and came off. That fish would have put me well into the cut, because a five pounder there is just gold, and a high scoring fish.

At Kentucky Lake, I had two big fish on the second day of fishing that would have put me into the cut, and they just came unglued. I really don’t know what happened, but it cost me. That’s just a part of bass fishing that you can’t control. You just have to accept it and move on, knowing that that fish just hurt your chances of making the finals. You can’t let it get into your head, or you’re done for the event. You just have to remember that the next cast can put you right back in the running to win the event.

Going into the last event on the Arkansas River I felt pretty confident because I’d made a special trip out earlier in the year to learn the water, and during prefishing for the tournament I found some great fish. But because of high water levels BASS decided to change the venue from the Arkansas River to Fort Gibson Lake, a decision I’m still not happy with. I’d put in a ton of time, money and effort learning the venue, and then they changed it at the last minute, and gave us just six hours of practice time to learn it.

I’m just really disappointed in the folks at BASS that made the decision to move the event and not give us adequate time to practice and learn the lake. I felt it provided a huge advantage to the people who fish that lake regularly, and that it showed in the outcome when a local won the event wire-to-wire. Everyone is supposed to be on an even playing field, so they should have either provided the normal practice period for everyone, or cancelled the event altogether. There’s just too much investment and too much riding on the line to just arbitrarily move the event to another location and expect people who haven’t fished those waters to be competitive. It’s just unfair to the majority of anglers in the field.

From the start I was uncomfortable at Fort Gibson Lake—the water was low and there were shoals all over the place. Going into the event I wasn’t even comfortable navigating around the lake, so I was really disappointed in the decision and I felt it favored some of the people who fish it regularly.

That all being said, I tried hard, and the most obvious thing I could see on the lake was docks, which I fished hard and caught a lot of fish on. Unfortunately, they weren’t the caliber of fish that were needed to be competitive in that event. I just didn’t have the time to find the fish that I would need to have a chance to do well in the event.

So with the season over, I’ve got a lot of stuff coming up this summer. I’m fishing the Northern Opens, and some of the PAA tournaments. I’m actually glad the Elite season is over. I’ve made the Classic, my motor ran hard without a glitch all season and is still looking strong, I’m looking forward to fishing Lake Champlaign and some of the other northern lakes I love to visit in the summertime. It’s been a good ride, and it should be a great summer on the water.

Full post:  http://blogs.discovervmaxsho.com/dave-wolak/one-fish-can-really-cost-you-in-a-tournament/

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Boy was it as busy week. Yamaha was offering demo rides on the lake at the Bassmaster Classic for those wanting to see the performance of the new Yamaha VMAX SHO four stroke engine firsthand. I’d talk to people who had a lot of questions about the engine in the Yamaha booth every day at the Expo, and then send them down to the lake to take a test ride, and everyone who came back was just smiling and amazed at how well that engine performs.

I’d see a lot of the guys who went on test rides later in the afternoon at the Yamaha socials they had at the restaurant, and just about everyone I talked to said it was just awesome. It’s interesting to see how the word about the VMAX SHO four stroke has spread through the consumer side of the industry. I guess it’s just the branching out of everybody spreading the word—friends tell their friends and they tell their buddies–and I can see the momentum building where every day more and more people are asking me about this engine. By the end of the year, just about everybody will know about this engine and will want to take a ride with it.

It’s a pretty exciting thing to see the expressions on the peoples faces and hear their descriptions of the engine, especially when they’re the same things I’ve been saying four a couple of months now. A lot of these guys are techies who really know boats, performance motors and bass boats and how motors perform, and the reactions are all the same—they’re just as excited about the engine as I was the first time I ran one.

The Bassmasters Classic was a reflection of the same kind of weather that’s been going on across the entire east coast of the country right now. It was cold for an extended period, although it did warm up a little bit during the last day or two. We had several Yamaha guys who were right there in the end.

It was tough not being able to fish it. This is the second Classic I didn’t make in six years of fishing as a professional. I missed it by very little, which any time you’re fishing the Elite Series, everyone is on par with their technical skills and it comes down to a circumstantial thing that happened at an event where I had a few fish die on me and wasn’t able to cull them. In this series, eight or ten ounces makes a big difference, and for me, it meant the difference between fishing the Classic and spending time helping Yamaha and my other sponsors by doing television and radio interviews and working their booths.

I’m used to being there, but it was also important to me that I was here for the introduction of this motor. It’s a critical time in the boating and fishing industry, and being a part of a “changing of the guard” with the old motors is a historic event I feel privileged to be involved with. Everyone from Yamaha worked their butts off here, and to see the results of their hard work has been overwhelming. Again, I’d rather be fishing the Classic, but if I had to be sitting on the side, I couldn’t think of a better place to be than in the Yamaha booth.

I’m on the road now, heading out to California for the first event of the season in the Bassmaster Elite series. I left this morning, but over the past weekend I’ve been at a bunch of Bass Pro Shops doing seminars and appearances during their annual spring sales event. I was at Charlotte on Friday, Sevierville, Tennessee on Saturday and Clarksville, Indiana on Sunday.

I had to fly back to Charlotte, drive home and do a couple of little things—like packing my truck and loading up all my tackle and gear and back-up stuff before I got on the road. All last night until about 2:30 this morning all I did was shuffle stuff around and then hopped in the truck this morning, and I’ve been on the road about five hours and it’s snowing. I’m currently driving through a winter wonderland. I’m just past Charlotte and there’s all kinds of snow coming down.

I thought a couple of years ago when I moved to North Carolina from Pennsylvania that I would be getting away from this kind of weather, especially going into March. In the past few years I’ve been in T-shirts and shorts a lot—really moderate weather during the winter, and there were days when it was 70 degrees, but this year we’ve had a hard winter with a lot of snow and a lot of cold weather and bitter temperatures. So what better weather to take off in for California, and then it starts to snow as I pull out of my driveway.

So I’m just driving kind of slow and taking my time to make sure I make it out west safely and with my boat and tow vehicle in good working condition. This is about a 44 hour trip, so there’s no reason to rush. I’ll get there when I get there, but I’ll get there safely. I don’t start practice for the tournament until Monday morning, so there’s still plenty of time. The boat and I are ready to fish.

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