Great Lakes Bass Fishing Forum

I understood Anthony Gagliardi's strategy as I watched him on the final morning of the 2014 Forrest Wood Cup, but it still was odd to watch.

He wasn't casting at all. Just standing, watching and waiting. He was waiting to cast to largemouths when they busted blueback herring on the surface.

Fish feeding on herring during the summer only come up for an instant, and the only way to catch them is to cast immediately to the spot where they break. Gagliardi didn't want his bait a cast's distance away to the left when he really needed to make a cast to the right. And so he waited.

"That's the best way to do it when they're schooling," Gagliardi said during the press conference right after he won the championship. "When one breaks you have about three seconds to put the bait there."