Home lake advantage

PERU | There are many advantages to growing up in the North Country. Fresh air, outdoor recreation, and access to beautiful Lake Champlain. With almost 600 miles of shoreline Lake Champlain provides an invaluable asset to local communities and serves as a tourist attraction to visitors from outside the area. "Lake Champlain's 490 square miles of diverse habitat offers nearly 100 different fish species, including (as you've probably heard) some monstrous large and smallmouth bass. Widely regarded as one of the northeast's best bass fisheries, hundreds of fishermen (and women) from around the world hit up the Adirondack Coast's shores for action-packed pro tournaments on Lake Champlain each summer," said Alyssa Senecal, assistant director of tourism and marketing Adirondack Coast Visitors Bureau. While Lake Champlain does an excellent job at attracting major fishing tournaments and pro anglers, it also inadvertently inspires locals to pursue their fishing dreams as well. Alec Morrison, a Peru native who grew up fishing on Lake Champlain, made the transition to pro angler about two years ago. "And what kind of got me started was and it must have been like around 2010/2011. There was a Bassmaster Elite Series event going on out of Plattsburgh, but as I was fishing from the shore, on Point Au Roche, I was watching these anglers, you know, come and go throughout the day and I was able to talk to some of 'em and you know, I just really thought it was something cool and basically from there on out, I started just fishing as much as I could," Morrison said on how he got started fishing. Morrison credits his Dad and Grandfather for getting him started in fishing and by the time Morrison was in high school he was fully committed to fishing. He even went as far as trying to get a high school fishing team started at Peru High School, which unfortunately didn't pan out. "...but that didn't really turn out to be anything that but by that time, I was already like fully committed, you know, like I was gonna fish whether there was a high school team or not basically so a lot of it was just kind of doing things on my own and once I was able to fish you know, some higher level events when I reached the age then I started fishing those events as a co-angler, whether it was like smaller local TBF tournaments or BFLs, ABAs when I turned 16 and was old enough to fish those," recalled Morrison. Morrison didn't make the leap to Pro Angler right out of high school instead, he would fish a couple of tournaments here and there that he felt comfortable in as a Pro Angler for a couple of years. For some of the larger tournaments, he would fish as a co-angler and for some of the smaller tournaments, he would fish as a boater if he thought he could do well. At that time, Morrison wasn't outfitted with all the equipment necessary for fishing on big lakes. So he spent a lot of time fishing and learning as a co-angler before making the full-time switch to fishing off the front of the boat two years ago. "I'm definitely feeling, still feel better about it than I ever have and it's a lot of work and traveling and all that but I mean it's hard not to love it," stated Morrison. Now Morrison is getting ready to participate in the Major League Fishing, MLF, Toyota Series, which he first participated in at the age of 16, and again last year as a boater where he came in 20th out of about 220 boaters. This year Morrison is feeling good about the upcoming Toyota Series tournament he said, "So I think me being a local angler and having a lot of time out there, it's gonna help a guy like me definitely in that in that circumstance. So there's definitely very steep competition but I'm definitely looking forward to getting out there and hopefully making a good showing of my home lake." Morrison plans to use his local knowledge of the lake to his advantage during the tournament he said, "I'm pulling out all the tricks. I'm burning all the gas running wherever I need to be whatever I need to do to sit inside that top 25 cut-off after the first two days in order to make day three. Whatever I have to do to get there that's what I'm going to do." The MLF Toyota Series starts Tuesday, Aug. 9, and ends Thursday, Aug. 11. To anyone looking to get into fishing Morrison offered some advice he said, "I spent a lot of time definitely a lot of time learning my craft and learning these fish and these fisheries. And that's been the biggest proponent to me being able to have some success."

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