By John Johnson
BassFan Senior Editor
The 2023 Bass Pro Tour season was a rough one for Luke Clausen, and 2024 didn't start out too great, either. Since the opening event this year, however, the veteran from Washington, who was once one of the biggest stars in the game, has been rock-solid.
Clausen has compiled five straight Top-25 finishes to climb to 14th on the points list with one derby remaining. He's pretty much locked up a berth in the 2025 REDCREST Championship – an event he's sat out the last 2 years after finishing as the runner-up to Bobby Lane in 2022 – and just one slightly oversized smallmouth that makes its way into his boat at the St. Lawrence River should put him in next year's Heavy Hitters tournament, as well.
"I had a (crappy) couple years, no doubt about it," he said. "Most of it comes down to bad decisions and some of them you don't realize until after the fact."
In regard to his better decisions in 2025, he said most of them have occurred following his initial day of competition.
"This year in about half the events, I haven't had a great first day and then I do something different on the second day and I end up catching them really well," he said. "I've had trouble replicating the bites I got in practice – I haven't had a lot of great practices, but they've been a lot better than what my first-day results have shown.
"I've been close to making more Knockout Rounds; I've had two 12ths and two 13ths in my group (only the Top 10 advance this year). I've been plagued by some missed opportunities, I've lost fish on a lot of different baits and that gets amplified in the all-fish-count format. It could be better than it looks, but things are trending my way and I'm catching them better."
Considerably better than last year, when he didn't have a single placement inside the Top 40 in seven outings and ended up 65th out of 80 anglers on the final points list. His 55th at Toledo Bend Reservoir to open this campaign extended that steak, but then he posted back-to-back 25ths at Santee Cooper and Dale Hollow before an 8th at Lake Eufaula, which was his best showing in a regular-season event since 2021.
In June, he was 23rd at both the Chowan and James Rivers.
One of just a handful of anglers to win both the FLW Championship (sort of the precursor to REDCREST) and the Bassmaster Classic, he hasn't claimed a tour-level victory since winning the FLW stop at the Potomac River in 2011.
"I'd like to win one more than anything – it's been a damn long time," said Clausen, who'll celebrate his 46th birthday just prior to the start of the season finale. "It's not easy to do, and I understand that. What I need to do is start making it to some Championship Rounds because you don't have a chance if you're not there.
"I go into every event wanted to win, but sometimes you have to find a way to just get paid and suck up some points."
Forward-facing sonar will almost certainly be part of his approach at the St. Lawrence. He doesn't consider himself deficient in its use, but he said that a failure to fully commit to it for specific events accounted for some of his issues over the past couple years.
"It's been a big internal battle for me at some events, whether I was going to dedicate my whole practice to it or try to split it up (with conventional fishing)," he said. "I've come to the realization that I need to be either all in or all out, or else I waste a lot of time not doing either very well.
"I did utilize it solely at Dale Hollow and then at the James River I didn't use it at all. If I'm only halfway committed, I'm just gonna suck with it."
