Lessons from local legends

Five of MLF's best offer tips to help you become the king of your home pond

Roger Fitzpatrick didn’t need to remind Dennis Berhorst of the score. They both know that, as Berhorst said, “he’s one up on me.” 

Entering the 2024 season, Berhorst and Fitzpatrick had both had racked up 10 wins, 61 Top 10s and eight trips to the Phoenix Bass Fishing League All-American during their illustrious careers. The two Missouri hammers are brothers-in-law, team tournament partners and close friends – but that doesn’t mean they aren’t competitors, too, especially on their home waters of Lake of the Ozarks. 

So, when Fitzpatrick won the lake’s first BFL event of the year on March 30, Berhorst knew right away that he’d need to catch up. 

“We travel together, we stay together, we share our information, and he’s helped me through some tournaments, and I’ve helped him through some tournaments,” Berhorst said of Fitzpatrick. “But (when) we’ve got a BFL here at home, he won’t tell me anything then, and I won’t tell him anything, because we’re on our home lake.” 

Fitzpatrick further padded his win total with a victory at the BFL Ozark Division Super Tournament on Table Rock Lake in early September, while Berhorst netted $15,873 for finishing second at the Toyota Series Presented by Phoenix Boats event on Lake of the Ozarks a few weeks later. Regardless of who winds up ahead in their amicable battle for Ozark supremacy, both Berhorst and Fitzpatrick clearly rank among the most accomplished anglers in the country at any level. They’re part of a small group of MLF pros who have amassed at least five wins and 50 Top 10s at the BFL and Toyota Series levels. 

Other such local legends include Mike Brueggen, who has racked up 11 wins and six Angler of the Year titles in the BFL Great Lakes Division (which primarily competes on the Upper Mississippi River) and who recently earned his 10th All-American berth; Kip Carter, who’s also amassed six BFL AOYs in the waters around his central Georgia home; and Scott Dobson, who has proven himself as one of the best smallmouth anglers on the Great Lakes and connected fisheries. He’s compiled eight wins and 68 Top 10s with success at every level, from AOYs in the BFL Michigan Division and the Toyota Series Northern Division to a third-place finish on Lake Saint Clair in his lone Bass Pro Tour event. 

While competing on the national stage represents the dream for just about every angler (including most of these five), the harsh truth is that not many will reach those heights, and even fewer will be able to sustain a touring career. But these five anglers, each of whom has cleared $300,000 in winnings from MLF competition alone, prove that there’s plenty of money and hardware to be won at local levels, especially if you follow their advice for how to become the king of your home pond. 

Lesson No. 1: Time on the water trumps all

Berhorst grew up fishing, but primarily for food. That changed during his teenage years, when a friend asked him to hop in the boat for a tournament on the Osage River below Lake of the Ozarks. He caught the biggest bass of the event, earning a cash prize that, while modest, piqued his interest. 

“I got paid for catching a fish,” Berhorst said. “I thought, well, hell, I can do this. So, I did.” 

Each of the other four anglers told similar stories about their introduction to the tournament game. None grew up fishing competitively, learning secret spots or strategies from family members. 

So, how did they separate themselves from the competition in their respective bass-crazed regions? There’s no mistaking the common denominator to their success: time on the water. 

“Yeah, you want to read your magazines, watch YouTube, whatever, gather as much information as you can,” Carter said. “But nothing beats time on the water. Nothing beats being in it.” 

Carter estimated that he averages a day or two per week on the water outside of tournament competition. Brueggen and Dobson have shorter fishing seasons, but they take full advantage. Brueggen said he spends about 30 hours per week fishing, while Dobson launched a guide business on Lake St. Clair and nearby waterways that has him on the water virtually every day the weather allows. 

Spending time on the water allows the anglers to find productive spots and keep up with bass movements. That’s particularly key for Dobson as he chases nomadic smallmouth across vast expanses of water and for Brueggen on the constantly changing Mississippi River. 

But it’s about more than just marking waypoints. Amass enough experience during different weather patterns, water levels and times of year, and knowing how the bass will respond to the conditions becomes second nature — regardless of the fishery. Fitzpatrick and Berhorst both said their experience on Lake of the Ozarks has translated to success on new water. In fact, Berhorst won BFL Regionals on both Beaver Lake and Toledo Bend during his first visit to each. 

“(My son) jokes around and says, you and Dennis, you get to a strange lake, put a finger up in the air and say, ‘Okay, this is where they ought to be,’” Fitzpatrick said. “That’s just the experience that we’ve had through the years and the amount of time on the water that we’ve had, and kind of knowing what the fish do in the spring or the fall. Time on the water, you can’t put a dollar amount on that. It’s one of the most important things.” 

Lesson No. 2: Take preparation seriously

Fitzpatrick recently retired from his full-time job, so finding time to spend on the water isn’t an issue anymore. While the Mercury pro spends some of that time fun fishing, particularly when the crappie are biting, most is devoted to practicing for upcoming tournaments. If an event isn’t on one of the fisheries near his home — like the 2024 BFL All-American on Tennessee’s Cherokee Lake, where he placed 14th — Fitzpatrick spends hours scouring maps, YouTube videos and any other resource he can find to get a feel for what to expect. 

In short, he prepares for tournaments like his livelihood depends on it, even though it doesn’t. For multi-day derbies like BFL Regionals and Toyota Series events, he likes to spend at least five days practicing on the tournament venue. 

“We’ll leave a week before the tournament and get there and practice Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,” Fitzpatrick said. “I’ve always done that. I do it for the Toyota Series and all the Regionals. If it’s just a qualifying tournament, say, in the Ozark BFL, if I’m going to Truman (Lake), I’ll take a day or two.” 

Serious dedication to practice represented another common refrain among the local stars. Brueggen said he’s “always fishing where the next tournament is.” If Berhorst isn’t familiar with a fishery where he knows he’ll be competing, he tries to take a few days to visit the lake before it goes off limits so that he can develop a sound strategy for official practice. 

“I always like to make a trip or two, depending on how far it is, to kind of break down the lake a little early, just to see what area is working for what I’m doing,” the fellow Mercury pro said. “If I’m traveling from out of state, going to a lake I’ve not been to but maybe two or three times, I’ll spend a week of practice there — pre-practice, before I go back for the tournament.” 

Taking tournament preparation seriously extends beyond on-the-water practice, too. Dobson is maniacal about making sure all his reels are freshly spooled, his leaders newly tied and his hooks sharpened prior to any event, be it one of the national tournaments he’s fished or a Michigan Division BFL. 

“I’m kind of Bryan Thrift-ish in a way,” he said. 

Dobson is also intentional about making sure his body can perform at its peak for multiple long days on the water in a row amid the often-rough conditions on the Great Lakes. That’s something the 51-year-old believes a lot of anglers who don’t compete for a living overlook – until it’s too late. 

“I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been,” Dobson said. “I’m going on 51 next week, and I still exercise. I eat healthy. You can’t be out there overweight, unhealthy, no stamina, because these younger kids will eat you up.” 

Lesson No. 3: Embrace your strengths…

Before a competition day begins, Dobson issues his co-angler a warning: Don’t get too comfortable. 

Dobson has cultivated a unique fishing style based on speed. Not only does he spend “90% of his time” fishing water 12 feet deep and shallower, once he drops the trolling motor on a spot, he uses a combination of forward-facing sonar and a few casts to judge whether or not “the mother lode” might be there. If not, it’s time to fire up the Mercury and run to the next area, often within minutes. 

“My co-anglers, they almost go insane, because I might make 50 stops in an 8-hour tournament,” Dobson said. “Up-down, up-down; run, run, run; boom, boom, boom. My theory is the more area you cover, the more places you go, the better chance you have of running into a population of fish that are a) big, and b) biting.” 

The theory makes sense, and the results speak for themselves. While his might be the most pronounced, other local stars have also developed distinct styles and strengths. In regions where tournament fishing is popular, where plenty of other anglers know the fisheries, doing something different or better than everyone else has given them an edge. 

For Brueggen, it’s fishing super shallow, “even compared to river people.” Carter is at his best when he can cover water with a moving bait. Fitzpatrick is a master at dissecting boat docks – no surprise for someone who lives on Lake of the Ozarks with its roughly 70,000 docks. 

“No matter where we go, it’s always my crutch,” Fitzpatrick said. “People will say, on a lake I’ve never been to, ‘you’ve got to do this, you’ve got to do this.’ Well, if I try all those things and they’re just very average or don’t seem to be doing it, pull up on a boat dock, I’ll get a bite.” 

Berhorst has honed a similar skillset and applied it beyond flipping docks. Growing up fishing alongside Ozark legends Guido and Dion Hibdon, he noticed their ability to place presentations in the furthest reaches of shallow cover. He’s worked to make that part of his own arsenal, and it’s won him a lot of money through the years. 

“Dion told me one time, ‘The reason dad was so good is because he puts the bait in places nobody else throws it,’” Berhorst said. “A lot of people think fishing a boat dock is throwing it down the sides of the boat docks and then go to the next one. I fish behind them, in them, under them, and just put the bait in places where a lot of people don’t put it. That’s a big key to fishing boat docks for me, and it’s basically the same fishing a laydown.” 

Lesson No. 4: … But be willing to adapt with the times

For the first few years he fished tournaments, competing alongside his cousin in team events, Brueggen admitted he didn’t fare well. 

“I loved it so much I didn’t care that I got my teeth kicked in for the first five years,” he said. 

In hindsight, he’s glad he experienced those early struggles. He’s adopted that hunger to prove he could hang with the best on the river into part of his identity, listing his refusal to get complacent as the key to his sustained dominance.

“It’s probably just not being complacent about what you’ve done and ways you’ve fished and areas you’ve fished,” Brueggen, another Mercury pro, said. “Pretend you don’t even belong there every time you go out.” 

Striking a balance between relying on the strategies and skillsets that produced their success in the first place and keeping up with the latest trends can be a challenge, especially as anglers get older. But Carter believes growth is imperative. 

“You’ve got to adjust and learn different things, or you get your head buried,” he said. “It forces you to (adapt). Whether you want to or not, if you (compete) enough, you’re going to be forced to. And it’s a good thing.” 

These days, as forward-facing sonar continues to dominate tournaments at every level and reveal new ways to catch bass (many of which fly in the face of conventional bass-fishing wisdom), adapting is more important, and more difficult, than ever. 

Brueggen admits he’s fortunate, calling the Upper Mississippi one of the last major tournament venues in the country where there’s a true local advantage to be had — anglers can’t just drop their trolling motors and learn the nuances of the fishery in a day or two. Still, he thinks many of those complaining about forward-facing sonar would sing the same tune about any form of change. In his mind, complaining instead of adjusting is a choice — and a death sentence. 

“When I was 22, I was beating all the 50-year-olds, too, and I didn’t have sonar,” Brueggen said. “And then when I was 30, there was some 20-year-olds — one named Cade Laufenberg, who is really, really a good fisherman — and he was kicking everybody’s ass. He didn’t have forward-facing sonar. So, to some degree it’s a young man’s game because they stay more positive, not because of the electronics.” 

Each of the other four anglers agreed, to an extent. They’ve all seen forward-facing sonar drastically change how tournaments are won on their home waterways and put it on their own boats in an effort to keep up. 

But Berhorst, Fitzpatrick and Carter all think the technology has diminished the importance of the years they’ve spent on the water, and that hasn’t been an easy pill to swallow. They’re still trying to resolve how much to lean on forward-facing sonar versus the techniques that got them this far. 

“It’s a great tool,” Fitzpatrick said. “I am not even close to as good as the young kids who are coming up and using it. It’s how they have grown up fishing, and a lot of the times I’m still using my instincts and stuff like that to try to fish. But what I’m learning a lot is I can use it the way that I like to fish — to power fish, even shallow. You can use that thing in really shallow water and still be effective. 

“But, do I wish it never would have been here? Absolutely.” 

Of the five, Dobson has embraced forward-facing sonar the most. He has two Lowrance ActiveTarget transducers on his boat and is toying with adding a third. It didn’t take him long to figure out that, contrary to what some believe, forward-facing mastery takes plenty of skill. 

“I went out, and I’m like, oh my gosh, I have to get better at casting to these fish,” he said. “You gotta hit 40 feet, 60 feet, 80 feet every single time. So, I spent a lot of time getting dialed into that. … You still have to have time on the water and know where the bigger population of fish are.” 

Ultimately, he believes a time is fast approaching where, even at the local level, every angler who wants forward-facing sonar will have access to it and understand how to use it. At that point, it will be back to those who put in the most time on the water, take their preparation seriously and find an edge over the competition that represents the next generation of local legends. 

“It’s just like any other sport,” Carter said. “The more you practice and the harder you work for it, the better you’re going to be.”