By John Johnson
BassFan Senior Editor
As with most things in life, 2 out of 3 ain't bad when it comes to winning high-level bass tournaments.
Jason Christie, winner of the Bassmaster Classic at South Carolina's Lake Hartwell in March, picked up his second victory of 2022 last week in the Elite Series event at Lake Chickamauga in Tennessee. Sandwiched between was a 93rd-place showing (second from last) at Santee Cooper Lakes.
"The way I look at it is at Santee I just kind of took the week off," he said. "When you look back over my career, I usually have one event like that every year.
"Having won three in the last year (he also triumphed at the Sabine River in April 2021), the only thing I can say is a lot of times a win comes when you least expect it. That's not to say that at the Sabine and the Classic I didn't feel like I was going to be competitive, but this one caught me by surprise. I didn't think 73 pounds (over four days) would make the Top 5, much less win. I only caught one fish the entire event that was over 5 pounds.
"I'm making good decisions and I'm not losing fish," he continued. "The ball's definitely rolling downhill right now."
Grinding is His Game
Springtime events at Chickamauga always have the potential to be big-weight affairs, which is the type of tournament that Christie normally doesn't excel in. He won by averaging a little more than 16 pounds per day – his 73-07 total eclipsed runner-up Brock Mosley by about 3 1/2 pounds.
His bags registered 16-00, 20-15, 20-12 and 15-12.
"I expected the weights to be higher," he said. "One thing I've never done is win a tournament where it took 85, 90 or 100 pounds. There's something about the slugfests ... I just tend to do better in the tougher events.
"My practice was solid – I got a lot of bites and I saw several 4- and 5-pounders – but I knew I wasn't going to catch 25 pounds every day. I didn't have a lot of high expectations."
He was one of perhaps a dozen competitors who spent the majority of his time in the Hiwassee River, which branches off the main Tennessee River channel in a southeasterly direction. He had seven or eight places that he rotated through spread across a stretch of approximately 8 miles.
"The thing is that the whole lake in general gets a lot of traffic, whether it's our guys or locals," he said. "With the lake being 3 to 4 feet low, it can fish pretty small, especially with the stage the fish were in (spawn/postspawn).
"The cover that I fished changed throughout the event – docks, wood, dark spots, rock. With the lake that low, anything that's in the water you're apt to catch a fish on."
Most of his fish on the first 3 days came from 2 feet of water or less. The 2- to 5-foot depth range was the most productive in the final round.
A spinnerbait and a bladed jig were his primary offerings and he employed a conventional jig as a follow-up bait.
"I caught a lot the first few days that I'm pretty sure were still spawning, but they were out just deep enough and the water was dirty and I couldn't see them. One thing that really helped was the lake was just steadily rising and it triggers fish to move up and spawn when it starts going from winter to summer pool. They've got their noses pointed in that direction and they're wanting to get up there no matter what the water temperature is."
Many of the fish he took to the scale were good-size males. He said his 20-12 stringer on day 3 was comprised strictly of females.
"I had one big one that day – a 5-pounder – that I felt like had spawned out.
"I just kept my head down the whole time and kept grinding. It seemed like I caught a lot of fish, but there weren't a lot of big ones coming in. I just stayed the course and kept doing what I like to do."
Gear Notes
> Spinnerbait gear: 6'10" medium-heavy Falcon Cara Head Turner rod, Lew's Hyper Mag casting reel, 20-pound Sunline Shooter fluorocarbon line, unnamed 1/2-ounce Booyah Covert spinnerbait (chartreuse/white/blue with single Colorado blade), YUM Swim'n Dinger trailer (white).
> Bladed jig gear: Same rod, reel and line, unnamed 1/2-ounce bladed jig, YUM Swim'n Dinger trailer (white).
> Jig gear: 7'4" heavy-action Falcon Cara flipping stick, Lew's Custom SP casting reel, 20-pound Sunline Shooter fluorocarbon, 5/8-ounce War Eagle Jiu Jitsu Jig (green pumpkin/orange), Yum Craw Chunk trailer (green pumpkin/purple flake).
> He said lots of products played key roles in the event – his Garmin LiveScope electronics for locating fish on stumps on Day 2, his Costa sunglasses for finding dark spots, his Xpress/Yamaha rig for its ability to get up on plane in a foot and a half of water, etc.
