ERIE, Pa. – Arkansas pro Stephen Browning hailed his team’s chances during pregame interviews the night before he and teammate Anthony Gagliardi took to the water for the second day of Elimination Round competition at the General Tire Team Series Presented by Bass Pro Shops.
“Anthony is a great finesse fisherman, I’m a power fisherman, I think we’re going to be a pretty good team,” Browning said.
Yes, pretty good – to the tune of 110 pounds, 11 ounces on 76 scorable bass, which easily topped the other three teams fishing Monday in the second day of Elimination competition in the B&W Trailer Hitches Challenge Cup Presented by Toyota. Representing Team U.S. Air Force, the Browning/Gagliardi tandem easily earned a spot in the Knockout Round, where they’ll be joined by Matt Becker and Spencer Shuffield of Team B&W Trailer Hitches who advanced with 88-0 on 50 bass.
Team Builders FirstSource (Michael Neal and Dean Rojas) and Team 7 Brew Coffee (Adrian Avena and Mark Daniels Jr.) were eliminated.
Fishing primarily a 1-2 punch of a vibrating jig and drop-shot or shaky head, Browning and Gagliardi stacked 40-6 on SCORETRACKER® in a cloudy, rainy first period. They followed it up with 38-2 in the second period and 32-3 in the final period to stay comfortably ahead of Becker and Shuffield for the majority of the day.
Although each caught more than 20 pounds in the first 90 minutes, it took a little time for them to zero in on the Presque Isle Bay bite.
“We got to an area and caught two back-to-back, so we settled in there,” Browning said. “We started off throwing the little Z-Man ChatterBait MiniMax. We had some clouds, some rain and a little bit of wind this morning, and that bait really showed out in those conditions. We pretty much just let the ChatterBait and the weather conditions dictate the first period.
“I think with the clouds and everything this morning, the fish were probably a little bit more active on moving baits, We were able to catch quite a few during the rain, and that got us clued in on an area, which was really key for us.”
When the Air Force duo caught its third fish in the same spot, Gagliardi knew they were onto something that would translate into a drop-shot bite to supplement the ChatterBait.
“I knew if they were biting that ChatterBait, they’d bite a worm, so I picked up a worm and started throwing it, hoping I could get bites on it while Browning was throwing the ChatterBait, and we’d have two different things going on,” he said.
As the day went on, the ChatterBait bite died out, so Browning ditched the moving bait and picked up a worm as well.
“We threw that worm every which way – wacky worm, put it on a jighead, shaky style – it really didn’t matter how we rigged it, it was just a matter of getting it around them today,” Browning said. “There are a couple thousand acres out there to try to cover, and thankfully we guessed right in the beginning and got in an area that we felt like might have some water moving through it.”
Team Air Force primarily fished a large grass mat in 8 to 12 foot of water, right in the middle of Presque Isle Bay.
“What we found was a giant grass clump, but the water’s deep on either side of it,” Browning said. “It’s got some cover and a little bit of current – evidently it has a ton of bait – and if you can get all three of those in one area, that’s a good indicator that there’s going to be some good fish there.”
And there were – around 60 scorable largemouth, to be exact.
“We were really just fishing slow around the edges of a big grass mat, not really covering much water,” Gagliardi said. “But it seemed like every 50 to 100 yards, we’d run into another fresh group of fish and get some bites. Those fresh fish helped us maintain the lead that we had over second all day long.”
It’s no secret there’s a lot of grass in Presque Isle Bay, and although there have been fish caught in other cover around the bay, Browning and Gagliardi believe they’ve found the winning pattern if the Challenge Cup returns to Presque Isle Bay for the Knockout Round.
“There’s a lot of milfoil and eelgrass in here, so whatever we could throw in this dense grass, and keep it clean, seemed to be the deal,” Browning said.” The grass is really the ticket out there right now. The rock walls with grass lines are definitely holding some bass, but they must have been hit hard yesterday. Out on these big, expansive areas of grass, there’s a lot of real estate – not only for the bass, but for the bluegill and gobies and other baitfish that these bass are feeding on.”
The U.S. Air force team said they spent the day fishing along those grass lines until they caught one, then hunkered down in that area and waited for more.
“That was the key,” Browning said. “They really came in flurries throughout the day, so once you caught one, you could almost count on catching at least three or four more with it. Sometimes we’d catch seven or eight with it. I found a few with the [Lowrance] Active Target, but the majority of the ones we caught were pretty much just from casting blind.
“The fish seemed like they were high in the water column and aggressive in the morning, but once the sun poked out later on in the day, the brighter conditions moved them down to the bottom and that’s where the worm really shone. It was just kind of a one-two punch and it worked out for us.”
The 2024 Santee Cooper Open Team Tournament (SCOTT) was held last Saturday at the John C. Land, III Sports Fishing Facility. Food trucks and a Striped Bass Festival t- shirt table kept spectators busy until the 3 p.m. weigh-in.
The local - pro duo of Wayne Frierson and Anthony Gagliardi combined for 28.03 lbs of bass and a first place prize of $5,000. Their limit included a 7.58 lb kicker that just missed Big Fish for the event. Second place went to Craig McFadden and Mike Watson, who combined for 25.48 lbs. Mark and Michael Hutson came in third with 25.2 lbs. combined. The Big Fish for this year’s SCOTT was reeled in by William Holmes and Michael Craven and weighed 8.07 lbs.
Photo bt P Moore
LONGVIEW, Texas – Team Star brite won Elimination Match 1 of the Builders FirstSource Qualifier Presented by Berkley by a margin of 6 pounds, 14 ounces over Team Ferguson.
Alton Jones, Dave Lefebre and Brent Chapman of Team Star brite combined to catch 51 bass for a total weight of 77 pounds, 4 ounces. Hot on their heels was Stephen Browning, Anthony Gagliardi and Keith Poche of Team Ferguson, who posted 43 bass for a combined weight of 70-7. Meanwhile, Alton Jones Jr., Britt Myers, and Nick LeBrun of Team Kubota missed the elimination line with 34 bass weighing 55-14.
Check out some of the day’s highlights in this video, and watch the General Tire Team Series Builders FirstSource Qualifier Presented by Berkley action unfold on Outdoor Channel as six two-hour original episodes each Saturday from 2-4 p.m. EDT. The full television schedule can be found at MajorLeagueFishing.com/tv-schedule.
Anthony Gagliardi started Level Rods a few years ago and it was a labor of love. Being an angler first, he found that his time was limited on the rod building portion of his portfolio but didn’t want to see it go away or minimized so he worked with Matthew Lewis at Monster Fish Outdoors to purchase it. They revitalized the brand and today Level is part of the Monster Fish Outdoors arsenal.
To showcase these rods further we worked with Matthew and Monster Fish Outdoors to give you a chance to win a Level OGX 7′ Casting rod in this giveaway.
The Level 7′ OGX medium casting rod offers a range of flexibility and handles lighter baits with precision, yet is powerful enough for great hooksets. These rods are very lightweight and perform well with spinnerbaits, lipless crankbaits, and smaller squarebills or diving crankbaits, They also fish soft plastics well when paired with lighter weights and lines. They are handcrafted in the USA and anyone would be proud to own one.
Features include:
Power – Medium
Action – Fast
Lure Rating – 3/16 – 1/2 oz.
Line Rating – 8 – 14 lb.
Custom-shaped high-density EVA grips
You had better sign up for this one.
This giveaway ends January 16, 2024. Seven winners. Good luck.
If you are having trouble entering through the form below, click here to enter: Monster Fish Outdoors Level OGX Rod Giveaway
Gagliardi’s 8-pounder on the final day proved to be the difference-maker. Photo by Garrick Dixon.APRIL 13, 2023 • DAVE LANDAHL • BASS PRO TOUR Lake Murray didn’t disappoint when the Bass Pro Tour visited South Carolina for Fox Rent A Car Stage Three Presented by Mercury, with plenty of big bass to go around. And though it wasn’t the biggest bass of the event – second to Andy Montgomery’s 8-pound, 8-ounce beast – local pro Anthony Gagliardi’s 8-pound catch during the Championship Round helped seal the deal and bring home his first Bass Pro Tour victory.
It’s well known that Gagliardi is a wizard on Lake Murray; he had claimed Forrest Wood Cup and FLW Tour wins (and racked up more than $700,000 in winnings) on his home lake prior to Stage Three. Gagliardi fished similar areas as the rest of the field, but had a little variation to his approach to supplement his decades of knowledge on his home waters.
“I fished a way I’d never fished before, on this lake, at this time of the year,” Gagliardi said. “It made all the difference and allowed me to win the tournament. The way I was fishing on Murray was all new to me.”
Gagliardi’s new approach to familiar waters
Gagliardi’s discovery of a new way to fish for Lake Murray bass wasn’t a brand-new technique – he simply used a drop-shot rig with morning-dawn-colored worm to do the majority of his damage. But, the way he applied that technique was new to him.
“During practice, I went up shallow and fished a couple of the herring spawning area points I fished at a Pro Circuit event I finished second at (in 2021),” Gagliardi said. “I fished like everyone else was fishing for them – jerkbait, soft jerkbait, swimbait. I caught some at about six or eight of the points, but the quality wasn’t what I needed to win. It gave me some pause. I was concerned, but not overly concerned.”
Gagliardi’s initial exploration of herring points in practice didn’t impress him, so he also spent some time sight fishing – also with mediocre results, partly due to the amount of pressure being exerted on bedding fish by both recreational anglers and Bass Pro Tour competitors
“I knew I needed something else to give me an advantage,” Gagliardi said.
Out came a drop-shot and shaky head. Neither of those two techniques are new to Lake Murray, but the subtle change in where Gagliardi fished them is where he made his money.
“I decided to move out deeper,” Gagliardi said simply. “I caught some in the 6- to 12-foot range that were good quality. I’ve never done that before on this lake when fishing herring points. I didn’t realize making that change would be how I’d win the event.”
Developing as the week went on
As the event started, Gagliardi explored all three options; rotating between sight fishing, shallow herring points and fishing deeper off herring points. But, he gradually started to confirm that he was catching better-quality fish working slightly away from the bank.
“Typically, bigger bags of bass are caught shallow on Murray this time of the year,” Gagliardi pointed out. “I started shallow on the first day but then kept going to the deeper, more productive water. It’s not a technique I knew to use here at this time of the year, I kind of stumbled into it.”
Gagliardi would locate bass using his electronics and would scan the surface for fish busting on bait.
“I’d position myself slightly deeper off a point,” Gagliardi said. “If I saw a group of fish out deeper, I’d throw at them. The stripers were more scattered out, not on the obvious tips of the points. I believe the stripers would actually trigger some of the bass to feed. Instead of wasting time unhooking stripers using a jerkbait or swimbait, I went with the drop-shot. Stripers will follow it, but usually won’t hit it. I knew I’d just catch bass.”
Gagliardi commonly fishes drop-shots and shaky heads shallow as well, particularly when the herring bite slows down and he needs a bite or two. But he observed the stripers’ reaction to the finesse worms and figured it made sense to stick with that approach in the deeper water. Once he dialed in the deeper-water approach, he’d hold his boat in 8 to 10 feet of water and “point hop,” scanning a point and fishing if he spotted bass.
“Toward the end of the event, I just fished points,” Gagliardi said. “I’d fish riprap points, rocky points, I was even fishing points that had zero activity up shallow. I probably had 50 points, all within a couple of miles of each other in the mid-lake area. Nobody else was fishing them. Everyone else was fishing shallow.
“When you have 80 guys who all know the same things, and locals know the same shallow bite information, the lake gets pretty small. I wasn’t competing with anyone for water.”
Just like buying doughnuts, you want to be the first to get to the fresh stuff (with no pressure, if possible). By stumbling into a new pattern, Gagliardi afforded himself fresh fish daily.
“I could fish for at least a whole period each day in areas I hadn’t fished before,” he said. “You could tell the difference between fresh and already fished ones. If I returned for a second time, fishing was not nearly as good. In the last two-thirds of the Championship Round, I fished all new water. I really had fun fishing at this event.”
Photo by Dixon Major League FishingCOLUMBIA, S.C. – Anthony Gagliardi started the Championship Round of Fox Rent A Car Stage Three Presented by Mercury in fifth place, less than 3 pounds behind the leading pro. That morning, he was faced with a big decision – continue the pattern he used to earn a spot in the Championship Round or scrap it and fish the herring spawn on Lake Murray.
After looking at the weather, Gagliardi decided to continue fishing using his electronics and a drop-shot, targeting fish that other pros were overlooking. Listen to the South Carolina pro detail how he put together a limit of 26-13 on the final day of Stage Three for another big win on Lake Murray.