The Key Ingredients
IT’S NOT THAT anyone was necessarily surprised at Caleb Kuphall’s Elite Series victory, but doing so on Lake Guntersville — a fishery that pundits thought would surely fall to a seasoned Alabama grass surgeon like Matt Herren or Gerald Swindle — actually did surprise some folks. During his post-event interview, Kuphall counted himself among the amazed. The same could be said for Brandon Palaniuk’s win on Santee Cooper or Cory Johnston’s crazy find on a shallow flat at the 2020 Elite on St. Clair. These pros, as well as others highlighted here, found what every Elite angler diligently seeks: that something different, the je ne sais quoi. The key ingredient.
CORY JOHNSTON
Event: 2020 YETI Bassmaster Elite at Lake St. Clair (second place)
Key Ingredient: Getting our cliché fix, the Canadian pro proved that one man’s trash is truly another man’s treasure as he capitalized on a rare piece of structure on St. Clair’s feature-deficient bottom. After a so-so practice, he started on a sand flat near the mouth of the St. Clair River and located a sunken 50-gallon drum.
“There was nothing really special about that area,” Johnston said. “That’s just a notoriously good area
