In his long, successful angling career Gerald Swindle had won Angler of the Year and finished 2nd a number of times. He had never finished 1st in a Bassmaster sanctioned event. He changed that this week.

Swindle found fish offshore and dragged a Carolina rig – something he has often said he would never do – to pile-up 80 pounds, 13 ounces over 3 days. Swindle’s fish were staging in 5-foot depths. “Fourteen-pound fluorocarbon on top and bottom (of the C-rig) and a trick worm – redbug when the sun was out, junebug when it wasn’t,” said swindle of his tackle. Alternately he used a gold lipless crankbait throughout the week.

So strong was Swindle’s spot that his partner for the day, Marlon Crowder, won the co-angler division when he blew the rest of us away with a 21-pound, 3-fish limit. Hats off to Crowder who fished well, capitalized, and seized a wonderful opportunity.

As for yours truly – I jumped from 11th to 4th (on the co-angler side) on the strength of one fish. If you’re only going to catch one, it needs to be big. Mine was. She weighed 8 pounds, 3 ounces. I decided to swing big on the last day and make a charge at the lead so I threw a 6.5-inch Strike King Shadalicious Swimbait. The big girl swiped at it and missed but I threw right back into the vanishing swirl and she blasted it on top. Swimbaits work best with a light belly weight on the hook to keep them upright and swimming instead of spinning and twisting your line. I also used another trick to help ease the lure through grass and pads – a plastic nose cone with a screwlock attachment similar to a scewlock worm weight. This keeps the soft plastic lure from sliding down the hook and also helps it wedge through cover.

After seeing Crowder’s huge fish I don’t regret my decision to fish for big ones instead of trying to catch a smaller limit with a worm or something. It turns out that the only way I could have won was to connect with two more like the one I caught. So, I am satisfied with the decisions I made all week. Especially on the final day.

My insider’s perspective on this event helped me sharpen my thinking about multiple day tournaments in Florida.

Strategies for winter tournaments in Florida often come down to the question of whether the big females have moved up to spawn. If they are still staging a step deeper, then that’s where the winning stringer swims. If they scatter up onto the flats, then that’s where you need to look for them. Looking became difficult in the high winds of day 3. Down on Kissimmee the biggest bass moved up on day 2 and a handful of guys made huge leaps into the top 12 with those fish. But wind made it tough to control a boat, much less fish on the east side of the lake where many top finishers fished.

“I was catching them offshore,” said Chris Lane who fished Kissimmee. “The big ones moved up and my fish started running smaller.” So shallow fish were hard to target and most of the big ones went shallow.

Bobby Lane mixed sight-fishing with an offshore trap bite to put a ton of pressure on Swindle. Bobby caught at a 9-pounder each day plus a 10-11 and a 9 in the final round.

Toho fish were just a little behind their Kissimmee cousins in the spawning ritual. Offshore concentrations remained strong. Crowder had his 3 before 8a.m. And then Swindle followed suit.

The lesson I take away from this event is that with changeable weather and moving fish, multi-day tournaments in Florida are generally won with offshore fish, and furthermore, the best bet is to find fish that are still in a truly prespawn mode and, therefore, less likely to run up and bed during the event.