Poor Boy's Erie Darter aides Nate Wellman Win at the BASS Northern Open on Erie
Nate Wellman was about speechless last year when he won the Chesapeake Bassmaster Northern Open and secured a rookie berth in the Elite Series. That marked the fulfillment of his lifelong dream to fish at the tour level, but Saturday marked the fulfillment yet another lifelong dream. That was the day Wellman won the Erie Northern Open out of Sandusky, Ohio and secured his first Bassmaster Classic berth.
"I didn't think anything could have felt better than last year's victory, but I don't know – this feels pretty good," Wellman said. "I don't know which one's sweeter – both are sweet in their own right. It's all still sinking in."
Here's a look at how he won Erie.
Practice
Although Wellman hails from Newaygo, Mich., which is closer to Lake Michigan than Erie, he still calls Erie his home tournament water.
He arrived at Sandusky for practice more than a week prior to competition. It was late summer, Sandusky's a wildly popular tourist destination, the walleye and bass bite's off the hook and it's just a great place to be in late August. So his whole family came with him, including his father.
The very first day he and his father practiced, the bite across the international line around Pelee Island was epic. He had a mid-20s bag and his father roped a 28-pound limit.
"I knew then I'd found winning-style fish, so I started looking for more within a 5-mile radius," Wellman noted. "Finding that hotspot took the pressure off and I spent all week trying to find better fish in other places. I was getting good, consistent bites, but just found a lot of places that I thought had 17- to 19-pound potential."
One of those backup spots – a ridge – he called "the walleye spot" because he could catch a limit of walleyes each night there around dusk. In all, he marked about 12 such backup spots in depths from 9 to 12 feet of water – all in and around Pelee Island – but his plan was to start on the hotspot he and his father found the first day of practice.
Day 1 delivered wind and it took Wellman 75 minutes to make his 32-mile run to Pelee. He fished there until 10:30 and struck out. He was shocked that his "A" spot fizzled as he bailed and went to plan B.
"I went to the walleye spot and it was like, 'Oh my God!'" he said. "I was catching a fish almost every cast. I was throwing 3-pounders back before I had a limit, just because I know you can't win if you weigh a 3-pound fish."
He moved to another spot and caught a few, then moved to a third spot, which he called his "16-foot hole," and that was on fire. He was culling within a half hour and as it turned out, he'd go on to essentially win the event on that walleye spot and 16-foot hole.
Both were rockpiles, he noted, and he'd set down upwind of the rocks, slow his drift with the trolling motor and driftsock, then crank as he drifted toward the rocks. Once on top, he'd switch to a dropshot. Some of the better-average fish came on the crank that first day.
On day 2, he decided to start on the 16-foot hole, because he'd left them biting.
"When I got there they were still biting," he said. "I caught two on my first three casts with the dropshot. The school was fired up and so I picked up the crank to catch them a little faster and caught a bunch doing that. Then it slowed down at about 9:30 in the morning."
That's when he moved to the walleye spot, which he described as a rocky ridge that was 11 or 12 feet on top with two 9-foot-high spots. It was game-on there and he caught fish after fish for 4 hours en route to a 23-pound bag.
The wind laid down on day 3 – he made his run across the lake at a steady 65 mph – and he started on his walleye spot.
"There was a major algae bloom – so much it was almost gross," he noted. "I fished an hour and a half and probably threw back seven or eight fish and had nothing in the box. I left there and went to my 16-foot spot and they were real finicky. I was catching 80% to 90% of the fish I graphed, but that day I could only catch 10% of what I graphed. They were real skittish and I had to get the dropshot out away from the boat.
"It was a funky day and they weren't positioned on those high spots – they were scattered and roaming around."
He fished about five different spots over the day, was able to cobble together a little better than 18 pounds and won by a little less than 2 pounds.
Winning Gear
> Crankbait gear: 7'11" medium-heavy unnamed composite cranking rod, Shimano Curado casting reel (6.5:1), 15-pound McCoy Fluoro100, prototype ABT Lures deep-diving crank (purple hue with some chartreuse and black).
> Dropshot gear: 7'1" medium-action iRod Fred's Finesse Rod, Shimano Stradic 2500 spinning reel, 6-pound McCoy Fluoro100, No. 2 and 1/0 Owner Mosquito hooks, 3/8- and 1/2-ounce Bass Pro Shops tungsten dropshot weights, 3" Gulp! Alive! minnow (black shad) and Poor Boys Erie Darter (out-of-production color, described as green-pumpkin with purple/blue and gold flake).
> He used the 1/0 hook, which is larger, with the Darter.
Poor Boy\'s Erie Darter 4\" - Mango Magic
