January 15 marked the beginning of my 2024 Bassmaster Elite Series campaign. That’s the day I headed south from my home in Bowmanville, Ontario, with my bass boat in tow. I’ll return to Canada in April after the Elite Series tournaments in Florida.
It took a lot of prep work to get ready for this four-month trek. Over the offseason, I spent much of my time finalizing relationships with sponsors and doing map research for the tournaments. I mainly study contour lines on Navionics and whatever I can see on Google Earth.
I also look at past tournament results, but mainly to get an idea of what it takes to do well at each event. I don’t get crazy watching videos of where tournaments were won in the past. The next big event on any body of water is won in a different area every time.
It took me about a week to organize and pack for the trip. I made sure I had all the Shimano reels and G. Loomis rods I’ll need to fish five events. My truck is stuffed with bins of baits to deal with the varying conditions I’ll face.
The last two days before leaving home, I put in 14-hour days with some buddies to finish rigging my Nitro. That included installing graphs, Power-Poles, a Minn Kota Ultrex Quest trolling motor, five Dakota Lithium batteries plus all the wiring. We rigged it just like we did with last year’s boat, and I never had any issues with that one.
Given the winter weather in Canada, I didn’t have an opportunity to launch the boat and give it a test run. I had no choice but to break the boat and motor in on stump-filled Toledo Bend, which was my first stop. The plan is to spend two or three days driving around and learning that lake before the cutoff.
After that I’ll do the same thing at Lake Fork. I’m thinking the bass will be prespawn in those first two events. I’ll look for likely locations, like shellbeds, hard spots, stumps and rockpiles.
From Lake Fork I’ll head down to the Harris Chain to pre-practice there prior to competing in the Bassmaster Classic at Lake O’ the Cherokees in Oklahoma.
I’ll leave my rods in the rod locker during my pre-cutoff practice outings. It will be hard not to fish for three weeks, but I’m better off just idling, looking and graphing.
When you find bass during pre-practice, it’s easy to get stuck on them. That can be a killer, because whatever you found a month earlier might be a done deal. It’s important to be open-minded on the official practice days. That helps you tune into what the bass are dong at that moment.
My dad, Carey, comes to every single Elite tournament and films me for my Cooper Gallant Fishing video series on YouTube. When I fished the Bassmaster Opens, the title of the series was The Elite Series Chase. Now that I’m an Elite angler, I shortened the title to The Chase. This time I’m chasing a blue trophy and a brown one.
My dad and I have a good time at the tournaments. He helps me out big time. Besides following me in a chase boat with a video camera, he launches me and pulls me out, prepares lunch and does other chores to make my life easier.
I’m very thankful to the sponsors that support me and to have friends and a family that believe in me. I can’t wait for the actual competition to begin.
Besides my YouTube videos, you can follow me on Instagram and Facebook. Just go to “Cooper Gallant Fishing.”
