Ten Checks and One Sunday Appearance

 Story by Pete Robbins - Photos by Mark Jeffreys  

Auburn, CA. – This is the first piece of a two-part series about 2007 Elite Series Angler of the Year Skeet Reese. Today we’ll examine his thoughts on his 4th place overall in the final standings for the 2008 season. On Wednesday, we’ll get his opinions on the state of his career and what he still wants to accomplish.

Over a hundred Elite Series pros, not to mention a thousand Monday morning quarterbacks sitting in their recliners at home, would have given their favorite flipping stick to earn a 4th place finish in the 2008 BASS Elite Series Angler of the Year race.

But Skeet Reese was not one of them. He went home to California at the conclusion of the regular season disappointed that he’d fallen out of the AOY race after the next to last tournament of the season. 

It’s hard to feel sorry for him, since he’s one of the most well-respected and well-compensated anglers on tour. He’s headed to his tenth Bassmaster Classic, and his seventh in a row, but if 2007 could be considered a breakthrough year, he considers 2008 to be a year of “what ifs.” 

Just a Bit Off
A quick look at two years of results tells the tale of his past two seasons. In 2007, he earned nine checks in eleven events. This year he increased that number to ten checks. But he only had one top twelve finish, a 9th at Clarks Hill, whereas in 2007 he made the cut to the final day seven times. Additionally, last year he also had two near misses, a 13th at Erie and a 14th at Toho, each of which was better than all but his Clarks Hill result this year. 

So what was the difference?

“I just had poor execution this year,” he said. “I had every opportunity to finish in the top twelve a number of times and have a shot at AOY, but it just didn’t happen. Sometimes you jack ‘em and they come into the boat and other times they get off. I can’t really explain it.”

He doesn’t feel that he got overconfident or sloppy, but something about his performance was just a slight bit off, enough to turn those top twelves into twenties and thirties. 

“I can’t say that I wasn’t paying attention,” he explained. “But sometimes you make one cast ten feet too far and with the equipment you have, the laws of physics of the stretch of the line, in that one split second the fish has the opportunity, he gets off. He wins, I lose.”

He cited a lost opportunity at Amistad, where he had “three or four pretty key bites and didn’t execute.” He characterized Wheeler as “frustrating” and reported losing five or six fish in the four to five pound class there. Then at Murray, he again lost two fish that meant the difference between his respectable 22nd place finish and a memorable opportunity to fish on Sunday. At Erie, he said he “just made a bad decision.”

“There were five or six tournaments where I had the opportunity to make the top twelve and I didn’t,” he lamented.

Maximizing Mediocre Areas
But while Reese rarely had the opportunity to contend for the win, he was never far outside the cut. Even his one missed cut to day three, at Erie, wasn’t far off the mark – he finished 59th. In every other event, he finished somewhere between 9th and 32nd, with six of those finishes in the twenties. Just as he wants to return to the days of single-digit finishes, there are legions of anglers, many of whom earned a bunch of checks in 2008, who would like to leave their forty-something place finishes behind and enter Reese’s rarified realm.

Again, he said that it “boils down to one or two fish per event” to make that leap. “One bite and you can go from 40th to 20th. I don’t know how to explain it. I wish I knew the answer. I just try to make the most of what I have, maximizing my fish to the best of my ability. If that means taking a mediocre area and catching every fish there, then that’s what I’ll do.”

That strategy paid off in spades last year and it continued to be his guiding mantra in 2008. Several times he had little going on but managed to turn lemons into lemonade.

“In the tournament at Amistad I had a pretty bad practice,” he said. “Then the first day of the tournament, late in the day, I stumbled onto an area. I had fished it in practice and caught one or two fish there but didn’t realize its potential. Then I went back there on the second day and capitalized on it some more.”

A similar scenario unfolded at Clarks Hill and led to that one top twelve finish: “I wound up just stumbling across my best spot during the tournament. It looked right but it looked so obvious that I figured everyone fished it. But I stopped there and fished it and it was loaded. I caught my limit and a few good ones, too.”

He continued to fish in that instinctual style through the end of the year. At Oneida, he caught the majority of his weight on one smallmouth spot. But once he had a decent limit, he decided to go shallow to hunt for a big largemouth. “I went in flipping deep grass and I told my partner that you’re supposed to catch a big one on a black and blue jig. So I rigged up a ¾-ounce black and blue jig and on the first clump I flipped it in I jacked one around four pounds. That made a big difference in my weight. With that fish you go from like a 12 pound limit to a 14 pound limit.”

But while that last Oneida fish salvaged a check, at that point he knew his AOY chances were gone. 

“I knew that I was in contention all the way up through Old Hickory,” he said. “The one that I remember hurting, I really remember being upset after Kentucky Lake. One day I only had four fish. I jumped off a five, a four, another four and a couple of threes. I gave up quite a few spots (in the AOY race).”

He felt that he still had an opportunity to make a charge at the title with a top twelve finish at Erie, but his 59th place effort left him an also-ran, albeit a profitable and much-decorated also ran. Did it hurt that in addition to missing out on a second consecutive title he also failed to match Mike McClelland’s eleven check season?

“Every $10,000 adds up at the end of the year,” he said. “It’s something to be able to cash eleven checks in eleven events. That’s showing good consistency. But if you don’t win Angler of the Year and you don’t win a tournament, it’s not a great year. I had a good year, but not a great year. If you don’t have a title it’s not a great year.”

He’s fished the Red River several times in the past, including an Anglers Choice Tournament of Champions and a BASS Tour event in 2001 (he finished 28th). But even though he said it has been “a number of years” since he visited the river, he hasn’t planned a scouting trip before the cut-off date.

“I’ll just wait until I get there,” he said. “Either it’s high and muddy or it’s not. I understand why a lot of guys try to figure out how to get around, but the only concern in my head is how far the run is from one place to the other. I fished an Anglers Choice TOC out of Shreveport but I don’t remember the distance to the locks.

“I’ve never been one to pre-practice. I don’t get local help, either. But my strength is shallow water power fishing, so the Red River fits my style. That doesn’t mean I’ll catch them there, of course.”

But if history is any indication, Skeet will catch them in the Classic. He’s been in the top twelve in four of the last five Classics, including an 8th place finish in Pittsburgh in 2005 and a runner-up finish at Lay Lake in 2007. As he said previously, the Classic win may never come, but for an angler who is consistently at the top of the heap, you get the feeling that even if he hasn’t already cleared a space for it on the mantle, he’ll be more than a little disappointed if he retires without the title to his name.