ON TOUR
COSTA FLW SERIES
detaIls
LAKE CHAMPLAIN
June 22-24, 2017
presented by power-pole
hosted by city of plattsburgh and the adirondack
coast Visitors bureau
costa flw series division: Northern
PLATTSBURGH, N.Y.
By Jody White
photos by charles waldorf
CONDITIONS
A little luck and a lot of skill fishing for both largemouths and smallmouths paid off for Nelson.
Winning Angler
Weather | mostly sunny on day
one; cloudy with some rain on day
two; cloudy with some rain and
fog, later clearing to sunny on
day three
Air Temperature | low 60s to
low 70s throughout the entire
tournament
Water Temperature | 60 to 74
degrees
Water Clarity | 1 to 12 feet of
visibility
Wind | south or west winds
throughout the event; windy on
days one and two; calm conditions
on day three
Moon Phase | new
Predominant Lake Features |
shallow grass, docks, wood, rocky
shorelines and offshore rock piles
Fishery Type | glacial Northern
lake
Ron Nelson, Berrien Springs, Mich.
Winning Weight: 54-09 (15 fish)
Stat Line: this was Nelson’s second top-10 finish in costa flw series competition this year and his second career win.
the first came in 2013 at smith Mountain lake.
Winning Baits
88
Nelson kept it simple on the bait
front. He platooned a Poor Boys Baits
Erie Darter and a Reaction Innovations
Sweet Beaver on a small stand-up jig-
head when targeting largemouths and
smallmouths on beds.
To pick off some bedding bass and
postspawn cruisers, Nelson turned to
an old standby: a Yamamoto Senko. He
used the 4-inch size and wacky-rigged
it weightless.
Target Areas
Mixing largemouths and small-
mouths from the north end of
Champlain is a common route to victo-
ry on the big lake, and Nelson played it
to a T for the win. Depending on the
wind, he bounced between main-lake
shorelines with spawning smallmouths
and sheltered bays with spawning and
cruising largemouths.
“I’m usually pretty good about mak-
ing decisions on when to stay and
when to go,” says Nelson. “When you’re
sight-fishing you have to keep running
new water. I just ran the lake looking
for opportunities.”
On day one, Nelson started with
smallmouths and fished for large-
mouths in the afternoon. With a differ-
ent wind direction on day two, he start-
ed with largemouths and culled two of
them out with bedding smallmouths
late in the day. On the final day, when
Nelson planned to go for broke and
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