2027 Bassmaster Elite Schedule. Pass or Fail?

All right guys, 2027 is coming up soon. We still got a handful of months before 2027, but we're already changing our gears to 2027 Bassmaster Elite Series season, and we're gonna go through the Bassmaster Elite Series schedule, and I'm actually going to give them all like a zero through 10 rating of the fishery, how good of a tournament fishery it is, and I'm gonna give y'all kind of my insights of what I like and don't like about certain places. So I feel like every single year, whether it's NPFL, BPT, Pro Circuit, Bassmaster Elites, the anglers either complain about the schedule, which is by far the most common thing that I hear, is people complaining about schedules, or they really like some of the lakes that are unique. So we're gonna get into that, and we're gonna give them a zero through 10 rating. What do you think about that, Hunter? I think people just complain all the time. 100% they do, but I'm gonna tell you my opinion of what kind of starts the complaining, and why people do complain. I just wanna tell you this. The year's not over yet. We got some big stuff coming. We got some big tournaments left to fish. We still got a lot of months left also. Do you feel, let me ask you this, do you feel like the last couple days, I have felt like lazy kinda, even though we haven't been lazy, but I feel like we're not doing anything productive because we don't have tournaments. Well, when I got home, I definitely was lazy for a few days. Not really, though, we were going. Yeah, didn't do anything productive. We have regrouped now, season's over. Accomplished, not the main goal. Main goal's always AOI, and I was in the running for it until we had one of those pesky, pesky no-scope tournaments, and I came in 98th in a no-scope tournament. If y'all are familiar with my channel, y'all know that I am predominantly a non-scoper, but this year on the Elites, my two worst finishes were without scope, and my two best finishes were without scope, so I had a two top 10s, and then a 98, which is my worst finish ever, first time I've ever finished in the 90s, had a 98 at Tom Bigby, and then at Champlain, I came in 60-something without scope, just a completely different deal. Tom Bigby should've been 100% of my wheelhouse, had the bikes, didn't land on whatever, I got plenty of excuses, but I had a bad result, 98, no-scope. What? I haven't even looked at the schedule. What do you think about that? What do you think about me getting a 98 with no-scope? I think that AOI is about all the stuff coming together correctly, and you weren't in the running if you had a mishap. No, I was not in the running after Tom Bigby, but I was in the running before Tom Bigby. Had some good, good events, I was up there, but. You were in ninth at some point, weren't you? I was in ninth when in Champlain, I'm talking about before Tom Bigby, I think I was a lot better than that, but it doesn't matter, completely irrelevant now. I haven't looked at this yet. So we got Okeechobee. Okeechobee, what's the dates on it? 11th through the 14th. So Okeechobee's one of those things where people do complain about Okeechobee nowadays, and I'm gonna tell you why. The last, I have fished three major tournaments on Okeechobee. I've never been there when most of the lake was clear. Every time I've ever been there, it's a complete mud hole. There's a couple little places that have clear water, they get a ton of pressure, they're very small places. Typically, it tapers from, the outside edge of the grass will be like, I don't know, four or five foots. In some places, three foot, and it's always dirty, always. Every time I've ever been there, it's just completely dirty. When you get past a layer of grass, it gets a little bit clearer and it gets shallower. Then you get to another layer of grass and start getting up in there close to the actual inside where there's not really a bank, but up there shallow, there'll be some clean water in patches. And every time I've been there, I mean, we're trolling around in two, two and a half, three foot of water. Two and a half mostly is about the deepest you can fish where it's clear. Tons of boats trolling around through the grass, across the grass, just makes for a really tough area to fish. Okeechobee's so famous, we all get excited to go there, but it's just been dominated by canals. The last, every time I've been there, every time I've ever been there, I don't remember who won that one year, but this past year, Brandon won. The Toyota series I fished, I got one in a canal. I don't remember where it was won the other time. But either way, it's typically dominated in canals and that is terrible for Okeechobee because it's such a big, vast fishery with so much cover and nobody can just make it happen. The lake has been so muddy. So optimistically, the lake has been clear from what I know this fall and the lake has been very, very low. Makes it dangerous to run around on, but when that water doesn't get high and there's no storms, it can get clear, the vegetation can grow and hopefully it'll spread out a little more than it has the last few times I've been there and we can actually like catch them big in the lake, hopefully, because I want to fish Okeechobee the way I watched it when I was a kid. And every time I've been there, it's just not been the case. So people complain about Okeechobee, but not as bad. People really don't complain much about Okeechobee, but it is bad as a canal fish now. Is this, are these scopes or non-scopes? We don't know yet. It's going to factor in. All this is going to change everything. If there's a scope on Okeechobee, it will be one scope on Okeechobee. Are you doing half and half? We don't know yet. Didn't Steve Kennedy do good one time? That's the, I don't know who won that time. He did good. I remember he was, he wasn't in a canal. No. He was at that place, whatever it's called. He was in one of those little pockets of clear water. And then there was like 30, I fished in there. There's like 30 boats in there. I didn't start in there, but I went there later in the day. It was like 20, at least 20, 25 boats in there. And he did the best out of there. Cause he found them in a little bit unique place, but they just get so much pressure. I mean, and it's not a ton of fish there, but yeah. So what are you rating that? You kind of got off. Okeechobee, I would rate that a, nowadays, Okeechobee is like a 6.5 out of 10. For what? What's the scale? For a tournament lake. Because it just, it just doesn't spread out. I wish it spread out and it's never really spread out huge, but I wish there was at least five or six areas to catch them where now it seems like there's one, two, three. There's two or three areas on the lake to catch them. And then like the canals. So I'm gonna give it a 6.5 out of 10. Okay. Cause semi-chain of lakes. Okay. So me and you have fished there. We, we put in there and have fished there twice. Um, what time of year are we going? It's the next week. You don't have an off week. It's February 18th through the 20th. February 18th through 20th on Toho and Kissimmee chain. I think that's probably the best chain in Florida to fish right now. Like, like currently and today, cause Harris chain is just awful now. I mean, just terrible now. And uh, I've never actually fished tournament there, but I know it's got a lot of diversity, similar to Harris chain, tons of diversity. You got lots of lakes with lots of different types of vegetation. I would say for Toho, I'm going to say that's a pretty good one. I'm going to say that one's probably a 7.7 out of 10. We're going to see some fish caught spawning. We're going to see fish. If we got scope, it will be called scoping out of offshore grass, maybe scoping out of brush. I don't know if there's brush on that lake. There is on Harris chain. We're going to see people catch them off docks and cranking rocks and all kinds of stuff there. Lots of different lakes play, Kissimmee grass, pads, reeds, just lots of diversity. And I think it is going to spread out pretty good with the exception of the grass in Toho. I think that'll fish small, but when you get outside of there, it may, you know, there's some grasses, moat lakes that may fish small, but if you get away from the offshore grass, I think it's going to spread out pretty good. So I like that one. I've never been there. I'm excited about that one. So what do you rate it? I gave it a 7.7, didn't I? 7.7. Yeah. For a tournament lake. Then you have an entire month off and then you have Hartwell. Hartwell for the classic. Okay. It just depends on scope, no scope. For the classic, Hartwell and the classic are kind of synonymous. Obviously, you know, I fished a classic there before. It is just kind of one of those things where going into it, you know what's going to win. You know, we're going a little bit later this year, but you just, when you go to Hartwell, you just know what's going to win. There's going to be guys get out, catch some big largemouth doing certain things. And there's going to be guys just consistently catch 16, 17 pounds of spots doing certain things. And then guys are going to consistently catch 15, 16 pounds of spots, then go catch big largemouth. So what are you pointing at? Don't hit the table. Don't shake it. So I just feel like Hartwell had so many tournaments on it. It's a great lake full of fish. It's a phenomenal lake. It spreads out really, really well. I'm going to give it a 7.25. 7.40. It's going to be our home lake once we get to the classic. Yeah. So the plan is Kyle's going to win the million dollar tournament and then we're going to buy a lake house on Hartwell. There we go. Got to win the million dollar tournament first. Okay, Neil Paul, we're coming. Yeah, we're on the way, Neil Paul. The Hartwell for the classic is, we've just, there's been too many tournaments there. It makes it kind of stale to me. You already know what's probably going to win. You know, all the factors that could make you win. It's been done before. There's nothing unique. There's nothing new. It's just who gets the right bites and lands them, doing those things. There's two main strategies. There's a large mouth versus the spots, but you just know what's going to happen there. Phenomenal lake. Spreads out really good, but I just can't rate it any high. I think I'm probably rating it too high, but it's a good lake. Where would you like to see the classic? I would like to see the classic somewhere brand new. This was, this for me, I'm kind of old school. Hunter, do you know that they put them on an airplane and flew them to Lake Mead, right? Did they tell anybody where they was going? Had boats there. They got to take a tackle box and some rocks. That's awesome. Yeah. I want the classic to go somewhere nobody's ever been, which is impossible. That would be like the coolest thing ever. This is completely hypothetical. Nobody's ever been there. No. But we go there, we get four hours of ride around time, no bass fishing, no cast. You get maybe two hours of ride around time. You can go ride around the lake, get a vibe, and then go see who can do it real time. No pre-practice, none of that crap. Why couldn't you do that? Because everybody's been there. Why did they stop doing that? Think about how many lakes I've fished. I get that, but you could go somewhere, like. You could. You could just go somewhere. It'd be possible. But that's what I would like to see for a classic, just straight up, just in the street. That's what they call it. We could fly y'all overseas somewhere. Yeah. That's just a lot more frustrating to get over there. But. Putting the boats. I would just like to see a lot more variables and just kind of go crazy. Something needs to be shaken up and like just more fun back into it. 100%. Like just like something unique and fun. 100%. Not the same old, same old. What's next? You got two in Texas, but the thing is you have a week in between. Yeah, we got a week off in between. So that's kind of a. So I'm just gonna get to hang out in Texas. So that's basically us putting a, it's gonna be roughly a month for two tournaments. For that, so. So we'll have to take two days to get out there. Where are we going? We're going to Sabine and then. Sabine first. What time of year? April 8th through the 11th. Okay, Sabine. I used to love Sabine. I used to love watching Sabine. It's not gonna be as hard as it usually is. No, it won't be that hard. I used to love watching Sabine tournaments on TV. They were some of my most favorite tournaments to watch when I was younger. And it was because of the diversity. You had people running all the way to Houston. You had people staying right by the ramp, running up that river. I mean, there's like four or five different places you can run to there. And they'd be spread out really, really well. I would say for fish catches and fish quality size, obviously it's not good. But I'm not going off that. I'm going basically off the interesting part of the tournament. It used to be really, really good. Probably close to a nine, just based on diversity. Now, the last few times we've been there, it's been just heavily, heavily dominated in one place. And when you have 50 or 60 boats all run into one little ditch, it just doesn't make for a very interesting tournament in my opinion. You're rotating with everybody. So I would say the current condition of the Sabine, how it was last time we were there is what I'm going off of. I'm going to rate it a, man, I got to rate it a 5.5. It's not good because it just doesn't spread out anymore. And hopefully we go back this year, there's lots of clean water in places. The bass have grown in a lot of places. And hopefully it does spread out and it makes it a very interesting tournament. But I just like the interesting tournaments and the decision-making. I don't like just having to go fish right across a canal from a guy. And if I catch a four-pounder, I beat him. If he catch a four-pounder, he beats me. That's just not that interesting to me. But when you see somebody do something really strange and make a long run and go catch them somewhere completely different, that's what elevates it up a little bit. So I've been to Sabine now three times. Going to be the fourth next year. But the first time I went there, I would say it was extremely interesting. The last time I went there, wasn't very interesting at all, to be honest with you. But lakes go through cycles like that. It'll come back around. Where's next? Fork. Fork, what time of the year? My favorite lake's up next, April 22nd through the 25th. I have to rate Fork the absolute lowest. Fork. That's everybody's dream lake. Their bucket list lake. And I agree. If I could go to Fork, and there's not a hundred competitors that are the best in the world, running around. In their own bed, and y'all are catching them one after another. Yep. Putting them back. If it wasn't for that, I would say Fork is a phenomenal place to fish. But for a tournament lake, Fork is small. Fork is way, way, way smaller than West Point. And it fishes, it don't even, I mean, I bet it's got a quarter of the shoreline miles of West Point. It's just way smaller. I need to look that up. It's not gonna be as hot though. It's not gonna be that hot, but it fishes so, so small. It's got giants in it. I've caught 30 pound bags there. I caught 33 there one time. I mean, I tried to catch them off the bed. What's that last time? It's April. Yeah. So I tried to catch them off the bed. That might be a myth. There will be some. Last time I went there, I tried to catch them off the bed. The first day, I only caught 21 pounds, and like 25 pounds was the cut. So on day two, I caught 33. And on day three, I caught 30. Scoping them. And that's what's gonna factor in that one. Can we scope? If we scope, it will be just everybody running around each other, fishing the exact same places. That's how it was this past time. I got in a bad rotation. I tried to do something off the wall on day one. On day two, I caught a giant one early. And then I tried to go, and I was just fishing behind so many people in certain little areas. And just fish is so, so, so small. And to me, I just don't, I don't like that. Like that's exactly what I don't like. It's not as hard to navigate as people think, but for a tournament fishery, it's kind of soft. I'm gonna give that a solid 4.3. Fork is my least favorite place that we go. And I've had good finishes there. I've had bad finishes there. But for a tournament lake, if I could go by myself, Bucket List Lake, it's a great one. 100% a great one. But to compete on it, I'm not giving it a very high rating. It's a long way out there. It's in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, 4.3, that's probably the best I can do on that one. Where we going next? I think you're gonna win this one. What is it? May 6th or the 8th, Seminole. So I have fished an Elite on Seminole and a BFL Regional on Seminole. Seminole, I'm gonna tell you what's to complain about Seminole. Two major rivers, what? I know something to complain about Seminole. It's dangerous to blast off, in my opinion. 100%. The place we blast off from is absurd. It's insanity. We're blasting off from a tiny little river way, way, way, way up the Flint. All the fishing goes down. There's a river over here. There's a river over here that comes together. There's a big creek right here. And within some miles of the mouth of that, just basically right there, everybody runs there. But we blast off 30 miles up a little bitty river. Incredible boat ramp. Super, super nice boat ramp. The boat ramp is awesome. But it is just in the wrong spot on the lake. Like, that's the complaint about Seminole. You have to take off and run all the way down the sucker and then run all the way back up the sucker. If there was just a boat ramp right in the middle of it, which there used to be, where everybody went out right there in the middle of it, it would just be so much better. But because we go out of Bainbridge, it's just, that's the complaint about Seminole. Now, beyond that, the fishing, super diverse. You can catch them up the rivers. You can catch them out of the grass, which is obviously the dominant thing is the offshore grass, lots of hydrilla. And then we got standard timber. Scope, if we can scope there, it will be one scoping 100%. If we cannot scope there, I'd imagine it'd be one fishing in hydrilla, shad spawn and stuff like that. That's gonna be what goes down. And this is not given to you by the info. All the elites know all this stuff. That's how it will go down. But the complaint about Seminole is the boat ramp. The fishing there is phenomenal. Tons of big ones. Mostly revolves around the grass, but there is some diversity there. You can do a lot of different things, lots of different areas. It does spread out pretty good with the exception of one creek. And everybody here knows the creek. If you've never even seen the lake, you know which creek. That's where a lot of the boats go. And outside of that, it spreads out pretty good. Even though last time we all found one reef clump and I tried to start there, the boat that beat me to it, beat everybody to it because whenever I pulled off and went somewhere else, I saw like five more boats trying to get on the exact reef patch. And it was the size of this table and had so many bass in it, but if I could go back in time, I would've took a shortcut and probably would've got to that reef patch first, but that's how it goes. We're not boat number one, so we wouldn't get in there first. And he topped end off of it. Everybody else tried to get there. Everybody found that same place, but the exception of that one little reef clump spreads out pretty good. Then you have like two weeks off, May 20th through the 23rd, Santee. 23rd, 23rd, Santee. That's about, that is close to when we were there this year, I don't know exactly when we were there this year, but it was close to that. I like Santee. I love Santee. Santee's a phenomenal fishery. It reminds me of Pasopotank. They fish kind of similar. Santee's just a little bit more soft than the Pasopotank. There's been a lot more tournaments there. They know the areas where it goes down. Seems to go down in the same two or three areas every single year, but where we launched from on Santee, pretty good. Great ramp, middle of nowhere. You can't call nobody. If your truck breaks down on the way to the ramp, you better hope somebody's driving by you because you're not making a phone call nowhere around there, but that's what makes it cool, man. You're out in the woods catching them. I love Santee. That's probably my favorite tournament lake. You never exactly know what's going to go down. It is a long run down to the lower lake from where we put in at, but not terrible. You can make it. It's not any worse than going out of Seminole and just wear it. The thing about Seminole is every single person makes the run. On there, we've got a tall call. You don't have to. Santee is- There's a little bit of wind. You're going to have a hard time getting back. 100%. The wind gets rough on Santee, so that will take it down. That's a good point. It'll take it down a little bit, but I'm going to give Santee for a tournament lake, I'm going to give it a smooth 8.1. For a tournament lake, I love Santee. I genuinely love Santee. I think that is the best lake we go to. Very diverse. I mean, diverse as far as where you can go. Few different things play there, but I like Santee a lot. I'm all good with Santee. All right. June 17th through the 20th, Tennessee, Tom Bigby Waterway. So- Is that where you went last time? This is the site of my- Is this on Columbus, Mississippi? Yeah. Oh, we didn't go there. Y'all came over there. Did we? Yeah. Nor did I make the cut that we drove home that night and I finished up open. Oh, on your fall? Yep. That's the site of my worst finish ever. Tennessee, Tom Bigby. Oh, I remember. I love that place though. Like that place set up so good. I didn't find them good in practice. I did not have a good practice. Made some mistakes in practice as far as trying to find them, but it sets up really good. The fishing is not great, but it's pretty good. They worked with us really nicely for the locks. Everybody got through the locks pretty good. There's not a lot to fish in the pool we take off from. It fished pretty small. It fished kind of small across the board, but I'm gonna give that a, I like rivers. I like that we're going there a different time of the year, like completely different time of the year. Went there this past year. I think it was April. We're going there this year in June. Different time of the year. I'm gonna give this a 7.7. Is this a one-off tournament? Mm-hmm. One-off. I'm gonna give it a 7.5. We have a month and a half off after that. Okay, so I'm gonna give that a 7.5. Pretty good, good tournament venue because you can lock, go a lot of different ways. People spread out. It's not really solved yet. Hasn't been a ton of tournaments there. It's been won now, I guess, both tournaments. Bayshore's been won in very similar regions of the lake, so it may be won there again, but there's a lot of other places to go and see if you can't unlock something magical, so I'm gonna give that a 7.5. I like rivers anyways. I think they're more interesting than lakes typically, so Tom Bebe, I need some redemption there. Where we going next? So you have like a month and something off. Yep. Then you have August 5th or the 8th at St. Clair. St. Clair. Of all the smallmouth places, this is by far my least favorite. It's kind of a mill around lake. You find a kind of a zone. It seems like those big smallmouth just kind of wolf pack around, and they'll just move all over the lake slowly, and you just kind of find a zone where there's big ones, and they do get on similar places historically, but you just kind of gotta find where there's big ones and kind of drop your trolling motor and just kind of pan around and troll around. Now, if we don't have scope in that one, it is gonna be way, way, way different, but everybody knows there's one little bay that it takes off of. I mean, it's not gonna be as low as Fork, but it should be close. It just gets so rough. It's so featureless. It's smallmouth. I don't like that anyways, but people like, the field likes going to St. Clair, I would say. I'm probably one of the few that doesn't like going to any smallmouth lakes, even though I've had good results and bad results, but the, man, I'm gonna give St. Clair a 4.8. Rough, rough one. I'm not a fan of it. Especially not now that we all stay in Anchor Bay. That just makes it, to me, a lot less interesting. It's literally just, you go put your troller down, you troll around in a circle, you find a little zone where there's a little bit better quality, and if you catch five of them, you got 21 pounds. If you don't catch any good ones, you got 19 pounds, and you're way down. So I gotta give it a low rating just because it's not interesting at all, and the fishing is not specific. There's not a ton of thought process going on. The guys who really, really understand it know some different things to look for, but it's really just a pan around place and just go look and look and look until you find a group of them. So with the exception of, there's a couple areas of the lake that's got some features to it, but outside of that, I'm sticking by what I said. 4.8. What's next, Hunter? La Crosse. What time of the year? It's August 19th. Okay, La Crosse, Wisconsin. So you're not gonna be able to come home either. We're going straight from there to Dublin. Yeah, but you got a week in between. Yeah, it'd be the same as this past time. So this year, we're really not staying close at all. Like it's a lot of like- Traveling. Yeah. We did good this year though, we stayed close. La Crosse is a lot more interesting to me. They're small mouth and large mouth. You gotta fish for them completely differently. I've been to La Crosse now two times, I wanna say twice, and predominantly it's been one and two completely different places. So two completely different pools, actually. So La Crosse is pretty diverse as far as two different species. For a tournament fishery, I probably get, man, it's close to Santee for me. I get really, really excited to go there. I'm gonna give La Crosse a 7.9. It's really, really good. I think Santee might should have been higher and La Crosse should probably be higher, but I can't think of anywhere better than Santee and La Crosse across the board for diversity of fisheries. Or, I mean, we just haven't been there yet, but people lock, make long runs and lock down on La Crosse. They lock up on La Crosse. They stay in the pool we're on. The people who run the locks try their best to lock us out. That makes it a little cat and mouse game, pretty fun. So we're playing a cat and mouse game with the fish and the lock master treating us like the fish and cat and mousing us, and hopefully they lock us out. Maybe they don't, who knows? What's that lock up? They try to, that's what everybody says. I've actually had really good experience with the lock masters there, but I've heard from a lot of people that they try to get you. So hopefully they don't this time and hopefully they don't even watch this and don't get a vengeance against me. But I gotta give La Crosse a high rating, 7.9. It's really, really good, pretty diverse, two different species, lots of different places to go, a lot of different watercolors, lots of different types of vegetation. I'm gonna say this schedule right here is probably my favorite schedule we've had since I've been on the elites. And I know I rated some of them low. Sabine is just kind of down right now from what it could be, and hopefully we go back, it's good. St. Clair, Lake Fork, two of my least favorite tournament lakes we ever go to, no matter what. Don't like those at all. But overall, I think the schedule is really good. We got Okeechobee, I'm pretty excited to go there. Seminole, only fish there twice, excited to go there. I think it can be a really good schedule this year, but all of this will flip on its head depending on which ones are scoped and which ones are no scoped. So any other fun facts about the tournament, Hunter? Yeah, I'm fishing tournaments next year. Hunter, you ain't fished no tournaments. Yes, I am. Hunter's actually fished some of the Tuesday nighters around the house, so. By myself. Hunter's getting geared up. Hunter's gonna be on Bass Master Herd this year. Yeah. Or next year. Yeah. Or in two years, at some point. Yeah. All right, guys, end of the video. That's the Elite Series schedule. I think it's a good schedule. Okay, leave me some comments, let me know. Link fished his first tournament last night. Link did fish his first tournament last night, 100%. He hooked a big one, lost it. I'm gonna do a whole story. I just did a whole story on that, actually. I hooked a big one and lost it, too. Hunter lost a big one. Tell him about that. I hooked a real, real, real big one. Yes, I did, too. Mm-mm. And I caught a catfish. Hunter caught a big flathead. It was fun, fun derby for Link's first derby, but leave me a comment. Which tournament are you the most excited about? And which ones are the best for scope? Let me know. Which ones is scope going to ruin? Which ones will scope make better? And, uh. And if you could pick anywhere where the classic would be, where would you want it to go? Which classic lake? And what would be the number one best tournament lake in the world to go to? That'd be a good question. Even if it's your little local home lake. Whatever it is. Let us know. All right, appreciate it, guys. See y'all.