Second-year Major League Fishing Select angler Casey Ashley approaches Elimination Round competitions with the attitude that it’s a game of numbers, not size. Sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn’t.

“I went into Elimination day at Lake Ouachita thinking it would be a numbers game,” Ashley admits. “Right off the get-go, I had a fish come up and miss a walking bait. I put the topwater down, picked up a fluke and caught a 1-pound, 3-ouncer. My next five casts, I had fish come up and swat at my topwater, and saw maybe eight or 10 fish schooling. I thought that might be the deal for the rest of the day.”

It was, but with small fish that failed to push Ashley into a Top 4 spot (his 11 scorable fish averaged only 1-4).

“Man, I caught a blue million 14-ouncers that day,” Ashley jokes. “I found one spot with a school as big as a swimming pool, kicked my trolling motor on high and caught a fish every cast … except they were white bass, stripers and 14-ounce largemouth. I finally had to bail off that. I kept getting Scoretracker updates that guys were catching 3- and 4-pounders, and I knew that those jokers were not doing what I was doing. They were up flipping bushes for quality fish while I was trying to catch numbers. I went to flipping bushes in the second period, but those bigger fish were all caught early. I chose wrong.”