Balog: It Ain't Over ...

In the case of high-stakes bass tournaments, does the best fisherman always win? Probably not. 

Maybe the best “performance” wins. They guy who unlocks the secrets to the lake for any given week. Sometimes, I guess. 

But what about the rare case when a dialed-in angler, after delivering a super-human creel of bass, still falls short of victory? Is the outcome fair?

How about when the tournament format is responsible? And, for that matter, which professional bass tournament format best determines a winner?

I ask these questions following a performance for the ages, when the angler – or in this case anglers – that handily secured the most weight did not win. 

I direct your attention to the final MLF Team Series event of the year, in which Brent Ehrler joined fellow West Coast native Justin Lucas to secure the title in Shreveport/Bossier City. The guys used a one-two punch of cranking and pitching to get the job done. Weights were low in the finals and clutch, late-day fish delivered the win.

The biggest headline from the week, however, went to the record-book performance during the initial Knockout Round. That was when Louisiana native Nick Lebrun and Texan Todd Faircloth surpassed 90 pounds (90!) in the first period, eventually catching 77 scorable bass and amassing 139 pounds, 15 ounces, nearly 95 pounds better than the second-place team.

That doesn’t seem possible or plausible. Remember, these guys weren’t fishing against the Bossier Bass Busters. Their competitors included Drew Gill and Marshall Robinson, who wound up second that day, and the team of Bobby Lane and Jacob Wall. 

Talk about a romp.

Getting back to the question at hand: How then did LeBrun and Faircloth miss the winner’s circle?

The Team Series brings a unique format to fishing, where anglers advance and change fisheries throughout the week, a model MLF used in its Cup events years ago. Weights are zeroed each day. The winners must consistently perform near the top and save the best for last. Ehrler and Lucas did just that.

What made this event so polarizing was the number of fish caught. Ehrler and Lucas caught 67 bass for 119 pounds across three rounds, while LeBrun and Faircloth caught 98 weighing over 183 – a 64-pound swing!

Remember, in many events, the winners don’t weigh 64 pounds over four days.  

I ponder the week’s top showing. Was it Lebrun and Faircloth’s “best day ever” or Lucas and Ehrler’s technical mastery? It’s hard to say.

The paramount subject here, really, revolves around tournament format. Traditional events with cumulative weights and single locations do a good job of determining the week’s best angler on that particular body of water. The fisherman who unlocks the top bite, finds the biggest school of fish or keys on a subtle variable that the others all miss. You have to love it when an out-of towner comes in and beats a field stacked with locals, using some off-the-wall lure or fishing a place everyone else gave up on long ago.

The format featured in the Team Series, though, is the best test. Multiple bodies of water over the course of a week, weights zeroed each morning. Anglers do not know what body of water they'll be on until that morning. 

This is true competition. Factor in little-to-no information or practice and we’re left watching the pros dissect a foreign body of water just like we do each time we trailer away from home.

But what about LeBrun’s local advantage, you ask? While I don’t know LeBrun’s history fishing Cypress Bayou – the site where the beatdown occurred – I’m sure he has some knowledge about what to look for. MLF coined him a “hometown favorite” going in. 

The event’s final outcome, however, proves my point. Despite prospecting a mega-school, despite lapping the field by nearly 100 pounds and despite catching enough bass to sink their boat, Faircloth and LeBrun didn’t win the tournament.

The anglers that best matched the format did. They were the best competitors in Shreveport/Bossier City that week. 

And that’s what we tuned in to find out. 

Joe Balog is the Executive Director of Mighty River Recovery, a nonprofit organization working to restore Florida’s St. Johns River. A former national tournament angler, product designer, seminar speaker and guide, Balog has worn just about every hat available to a professional angler. Today, he enjoys rehashing his experiences and adding veteran insight through his weekly Bass Wars column.

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