Bernie Schultz's Oneida Redemption
October 11, 2008
Bernie Schultz has competed in seven Bassmaster Classics over the course of his career as a professional angler, but he has learned not to take the experience for granted. While other responsibilities and interests have taken away slightly from what was once an all-consuming passion, the competitive fire still burns deep inside him.
Fortunately, he retains the ability to transform that passion into fish in the livewells when the pressure is on. While the Elite Series season is an eleven tournament grind, this year he found himself on the outside of the Classic cut with only one tournament left to go. In effect, his season had been transformed from a marathon into a sprint.
It hadn’t always appeared that it would end up being such a close call. After six tournaments, Schultz sat in 22nd place in the overall standings. He had earned five consecutive checks, including a 15th place finish at the Falcon Lake slugfest, but then he had his two worst tournaments of the year, finishing 86th at Wheeler and 74th at Kentucky Lake. That dropped him to 39th in the Angler of the Year standings, just outside the Classic cut.
He tried to make up some ground at Old Hickory, but found that to be easier said than done: “I squeaked into the money at Old Hickory, but didn’t move one way or another in the standings,” he said. “That really surprised me – to do fairly well and not move up one bit. I could feel the Classic slipping away.”
At that point, there were two tournaments left to fish, the so-called “New York Swing” of the season.
“I’ve always done well in New York,” Schultz said. “In fact, the last major win of my career was in New York, on the Thousand Islands, back in 1995. Many northern lakes have a lot of grass and a large number of aggressive shallow fish. In many respects they’re like Florida lakes. The smallmouths on Oneida often act like largemouths – you can catch them in grass or around muddy bottoms in the backs of bays.”
But first he’d have to fish Erie, which doesn’t fit that shallow, grassy mold. While most of the competition went deep at Erie in 2007, Schultz had managed to scratch out a check fishing shallow. He thought he had enough shallow fish again this year to survive, but later characterized that perception as inaccurate.
“I tried to find fish offshore, but they weren’t any better quality than those I found shallow,” he said. “In most cases they were even smaller on average so I decided to spare my body and my equipment by staying close and making the best of the shallow fish near take-off.”
The resulting 67th place finish at Erie dropped him ten spots in the Angler of the Year standings, all the way down to 49th, with only one tournament remaining.
He hoped that the knowledge he’d gained two years ago at Oneida would pay off. He had found massive schools of smallmouths schooling on perch fry and ended up 8th overall. It was a tournament where the weights were very tight, with only ounces separating each angler in the top twelve, and he was wading through 30 to 50 fish each day.
Back then he caught fish on a wide variety of lures – topwater, crankbaits, jerkbaits, dropshot and a Yamamoto twin tail grub on a jighead -- but this year they weren’t schooling nearly as well.
Fans who saw the television show of the 2006 tournament may remember Ken Cook and Mike Iaconelli camping out on one spot. They didn’t move for four days and they both finished in the top six.
“I had the same situation,” Schultz remembered. “I never moved the boat for four days, all the time catching fish on every other cast. I spent more time culling than fishing. I won’t say that couldn’t have happened this year, but I never found the fish that bunched up. I had to move around more.”
“It was a tournament where you had to be willing to change up day-to-day, even hour-to-hour,” he added. “I caught fish from two feet deep all the way down to 17 feet deep, doing everything from dropshotting a Kut-Tail worm to fishing a Senko up in the shallows. But my best lure, by far, was a Rapala X-Rap Shad, a jerkbait that I used like a crankbait to catch most of my fish.
I really believe I did so well because of my Florida background – I’ve learned that you can’t always stick with one thing down there. Oftentimes you have to use a variety of techniques and be ready to change as the situations dictate.”
But the real key to his eventual 10th place finish this year was his dogged determination to out-practice his peers.
“I always try to follow a pretty strict regimen of ‘go early, stay late,’ but this time I pushed it a little,” he said. “Because of our off-limits period and the registration meeting, we really only have a little over 2½ days to practice. On several occasions I’ve cut it close to not making it to the meeting on time. This time, I cut it way close.”
“I should have been off the water, but in my last hour out there I decided to hit one more spot before I went in. That’s when I found a good group of fish that ultimately propelled me to the final cut. A lot of guys didn’t go out at all that last day, or maybe went out for a few hours because of the nasty weather, but I’m damn glad I did.”
Up until that last hour, he had spent most of practice cranking grasslines along flats and underwater humps. But the hot spot he found in the final hour of practice held both largemouths and smallmouths in ultra-thick grass. He caught some pitching a jig and a Texas-rigged Senko, and others dropshotting and cranking the outside edges.
Most importantly, he had most of the areas to himself. He did share one area with Terry Butcher, who also made the top twelve cut, and Schultz is convinced that if either of them had the spot to himself he might’ve given winner Dean Rojas a run for his money.
As it was, he was fairly consistent throughout the tournament. He had 15-03 on Day 1, which put him in a tie for 11th. Day 2 was his worst day, but even then he managed 12-07 and dropped to 16th. Day 3, when the leader board got shaken up, he weighed in 13-12 to make it to Sunday, once again tied for 11th. He added 13-09 the last day to move up a spot into 10th.
“The whole time, I kept asking the people from BASS where I stood in the Classic standings and no one would give me a concrete answer, they just told me that I was teetering on the edge,” he said. “I never felt secure until the end of the third day.”
But when the scales closed, Schultz ended up 34th overall in the AOY standings, not the last man in, but not quite the breathing room he would have liked. But except for the money, it doesn’t matter whether you’re 4th or 34th -- everyone starts over at zero on day one on the Red River. This will be his 8th Classic appearance and his first since 2004’s tournament at Lake Wylie.
He believes that the 2009 Classic venue will treat him well: “I’m excited to get to the Red River. I nearly won an FLW Championship there a few years ago. I led it for two days before Dion Hibdon pulled ahead.”
While he intends to follow his typical pattern of maximizing practice time, he doesn’t expect to be there every possible minute:
“I don’t plan to practice until the water recedes from the recent storms,” he said. “With the flood waters that are there now, it wouldn’t be much use.” But if there’s anything that was driven home to him at Oneida, it’s the importance of smart practice, so he intends to do everything he can to win this event.