James Elam wrestled hard with the idea of running to the Cooper River on day 1 of the Winyah Bay Elite Series. He hadn’t made the trip on the water during practice so he wasn’t sure what he was signing up for. After an hour-long weather delay to start the tournament, he was doubly conflicted.
He’d spent a day in the Cooper during practice and had more than a dozen bites. He got a good vibe, but it was still nearly two hours away by water.
“I knew there were a lot of fish over there, more than the other places I’d practiced,” he said. “It was good, but it’s got to be stinking good to run 130 miles one way. I’d never run it in practice. I knew I’d be running it blind on day 1. I had a negative attitude about it and I knew the wind would blow that first day.”
He decided to give it a shot. He lost some key fish on day 1 and ended up with two fish for 2-09, which put him in 95th place. He bounced back with 16-02 on day 2 and 15-11 on day 3 to rally back for a 13th-place finish with 34-06. He missed the making the final day by 7 ounces.
“It feels really good,” he said of his comeback. “I was really worried about the first two tournaments and I’m so thankful to have made one top-15. If you’d have told me before that’s what would happen, I would’ve taken it.”
Despite his day-1 struggles, he felt like he was around a productive area and he felt the two fish he weighed in were part of a salvage mission.
“After that I was like, ‘I don’t care,’” he said. “I thought I could go back and hammer them. If I could go catch 15, that’d give me 9 a day so I was still pretty confident for day 2.”
He had a longer day on Friday and with no pressure, he continued to pick apart ditches and current breaks.
“Like all tidal fisheries, it was all about timing,” he said. “I had to hit certain places at certain times. The fish moved in and out. When the water was rising, they’d scatter out.”
The difference-maker for him was a 7-08 he caught on Saturday that moved him up the leaderboard.
“There was one ditch I’d found in practice and it was the whole reason I ran over there,” he said. “I felt like I could make a tournament off of it. It was one of those deals that kinds of scares you because it had a lot of fish in it. That was on outgoing tide and they were stacked in it. I knew we’d have high tide during the tournament and I went back later in the day during incoming and they were still there.
“On days 1 and 2, I didn’t catch them there, but I lost big ones both days. On low tide Saturday morning, I started there, but I had to fish in the wrong direction for 100 yards so I could back around in the right direction. It took me 20 minutes to get where I’d been getting bites. I knew it was a big one when it bit. It was in the same area I’d lost other fish so I want to think it was the same one I’d been losing.”
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