Courtesy of Vance McCullough

Just filled out my 5-man Fantasy Fishing roster at Bassmaster.com for the upcoming Elite Series season opener on Florida’s St Johns River. I picked Rick Clunn. Five times.

Not to jinx the man, but the weather forecast for the area during the competition dates of February 11^th through the 14^th calls for a steady breeze, overcast skies and a decent chance of rain every day. That should set up a strong ‘winding’ bite that will favor the types of lures Clunn used to become the oldest ever Elite Series champion with an impressive showing on the river in 2016 before breaking his own record on the same, but a very different St Johns River in 2019.

The river of lakes is now a different fishery than it was before Hurricane Irma scrubbed all the eel grass away in 2017. Eel grass has been the prime habitat for fish on the river since before William Bartram witnessed a Native American pull a bass from it on a “jig and a bob” – hook and line fishing – in the spring of 1774. Bartram estimated the bass would have weighed 30 pounds. A great explorer, Bartram likely would have made a terrible tourney director. But hey, maybe 30-pound bass were common on the river back then.

Thirty-pound limits hard to come by these days which makes Clunn’s 31-pound, 7-ounce sack on Day 3 of the 2016 tourney all the more impressive. To win that tournament on the ‘old’ St Johns he used a bladed jig/swimbait combo to pluck bass from eel grass along the east shore of Lake George for a 4-day total weight of 81-15. He then shifted techniques and location in 2019 to catch his fish on a Trickster spinnerbait and Gatortail worm around Drayton Island. His final round effort was worth 34-14. It pushed his 4-day total to 98-14. Clunn had figured out how to win on the ‘new’ St Johns River, proving his adaptability as well as his skill.

That new St Johns fishery revolves around thick stands of lily pads and scattered wood that litters its banks. The storms that striped the river of grass also pushed trees into the water. The resultant laydowns vie with old dock pilings, some still attached to platforms, for the attention of fish and fishermen.

Offshore bars can produce massive bags of bass but this time of year a single afternoon of warm weather can send them scurrying to the shallows in preparation for the spawn.

Sight fishing can be the ticket on this river in February but if clouds and rain materialize as expected during this derby that tactic will be difficult, at best, to execute. Even during the practice rounds considerable cloudiness and stormy skies will dominate. Bass are still spawning in protected canals as they tend to do in February, but anglers will have to pitch, sight unseen, to places where they imagine fish to be, an approach that’s less efficient but still effective.

Offbeat tactics could play well. Last year Paul Mueller ran north and flipped up the winning fish from beneath mats that clung to steep banks in deep creeks. In contrast to 2019 when Clunn scared the Century mark, Mueller’s win was very ‘2020’ in that it featured a canceled day, due to extreme weather. Mueller was the only angler to average more than 15 pounds per day.

Such is the fickle nature of the St Johns. Fishing fortunes rise and fall like the tide that feeds the slow, dark waterway.

Given the short supply of submerged grass, coupled with modern electronics and information available these days, if there is a clump of it somewhere, multiple anglers will find it, slicing the pie into ever