Today is day two of the Bassmasters Elite tournament on Cayuga Lake in the Finger Lakes. The event is part of the top professional series for sport bass fishing.

Despite the caliber of bass fishing in the area, many people don't know anything about the sport.

David Sommerstein rode along while the anglers were practicing last year for the tournament on the St. Lawrence River. He gathered these tips from the country's best bass fishermen.

***

Doug Kirkbride from Beaver Falls just competed last weekend in the Northern New York Bassmasters tournament here on the St. Lawrence. It's like the minor leagues so Doug knows his spots.

But Rule #1: the anglers in the Bassmaster Elite are prohibited from talking to locals like Doug for 30 days prior to the tournament.

We settle into Doug's 225 horsepower bass boat at the Whittaker Park launch in Waddington. Searching for some of the 99 professional Bassmasters practicing along the river today is a thrill for Doug. It's like me, a baseball fan, watching Derek Jeter take batting practice. Doug follows these guys' careers on TV. "They can find fish faster than most people. I mean, that's why they're on the Elites. They can pick a pattern out, and they're going to do good with it."

Before I can ask what a pattern is, we're headed upriver at 68 miles per hour. I can't see because the wind's pressing my eyelashes against my eyes. My mouth's dry in a second. "At 70-miles an hour, your face feels like it's stretched wicked bad. It tingles. It'll take 15 minutes to get feeling back."

We stop when we see Elite Series Fisherman Pete Ponds of Mississippi. Ponds has been fishing professionally since 1996. The Elite Series is nine tournaments a year, from February to August. Ponds says sure, fishing for a living sounds fun, but seven months a year on the road is a grind. And not every day is sunny and gorgeous like today. "You have to think about all the conditions, you have cold weather, you have rain, you have high winds and rough water. You've got to go fishing whether you want to or not."

Related stories: An Audio Postcard Atlas of the North Country As we're talking, Ponds is catching a fish. It's a two, two-and-a-half-pound smallmouth bass. Ponds says it will probably take fish twice that size to win. You weigh your five biggest fish at the daily weigh-in, 3:15 in the afternoon. The top 50 anglers after Thursday and Friday's competitions move on to Saturday. Then Sunday it's down to a dozen anglers competing for the grand prize of $100,000 and a trip to the Bassmaster Classic, the Super Bowl of bass fishing.

Tip #1: Ponds is working 20-30 feet deep with a bait called a drop shot. "Drop shot is a bait where you put the heavier part on the bottom, then you move up just a little bit, and then you put the small hook, and then the plastic, and you're bouncing it along the bottom, and if you get close to a fish you hope you fool him."

As we cruise the river it looks like these guys are just fishing solo on fancy, powerful boats. But they're intensely focused, trying to find answers in the mighty St. Lawrence, its shifting currents, shoals, and bays. We motor up to Mike Iaconelli, Mike Ike, known as the bad boy, crazy guy of the tour. He's got rods and mounds of lures everywhere. He flicks his line in and out of the water constantly as he talks to me.

Tip #2: According to Mike Ike, "In practice you try to cover a lot of water. You try to eliminate stuff. Elimination is sometimes more important than finding stuff in practice, so I've got 20 rods on the deck. I'm covering a lot of water. I'm fishing fast, using my outboard, trying to fish this entire pool, and that's how you find the winning fish."

One thing the anglers agree on – this first Elite Series event on the St. Lawrence is a hit. "I mean, this river's just slam loaded full of small mouth bass."

Randy Howell of Alabama is working the bottom off Leishman Point. He says one thing about this tournament is you can go anywhere down to the dam in Massena, so long as you make it back by weigh-in.

Tip #3: Howell says, "I hear some guys may run way 50 or 60 miles down to lake Ontario. If they do that the fishing will be real good for them, but the boat ride won't be real good, so I hope, I'm definitely not doing that. I'll find what I need right here in the river and I won't run too far." Some anglers "run and gun" – work one spot hard, then zoom to the next. Others work one good spot.

Our last stop is Dave Smith of Oklahoma City, the senior member of the Elite Series field. He's tucked in by the Iroquois Lock. Remember when my guide, Doug, mentioned patterns? Well that's Smith's tip – trends.

Tip #4: Smith says, "Well, normally what we do is find something that works, and then we try to duplicate it, and then you can get you a trend. And then you can follow that trend all the way up and down the lake. Usually here, this time of year, it's around current. Of course, you know there's a lot of current that goes down the St. Lawrence. But you've got to find the right current breaks and the ones that have got the big fish in them."

As Doug and I whiz back to Waddington he points out one spot where he caught a lot of big fish last weekend. But that's a secret to the Elite anglers.

Doug says one thing's sure after this weekend's tournament. The secret's going to be out that the St. Lawrence is a great place to fish. "Maybe it's a good thing, maybe it's bad. We'll find out. I'm sure it'll bring more people to the area." But, he says, "they'll be taking my spots, yeah. There'll be a lot more company out there after this, I'm sure."

And that's the great hope for local leaders and businesses. They hope after the cheers from Sunday's weigh-in fade away, the fishing continues and the St. Lawrence becomes a destination for America's anglers.