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.”