Prior to this month, Alec Morrison had never been to Table Rock Lake. And yet, if anyone in the field for the Toyota Series Championship Presented by Simms is entering the event with a more confident, clear-cut game plan, the list can’t be long.
Come Nov. 2-4, Morrison will look to put an exclamation point on a 2023 season that has launched his star into the national tournament orbit. The 24-year-old has not only dominated up north, where he grew up, but proved that his fishing style can travel with a historic victory at Sam Rayburn Reservoir. In all, he’s won twice and placed among the Top 10 six times in seven events, plus taken home Angler of the Year honors in the Toyota Series Northern Division Presented by Rabid Baits.
In the process, Morrison has proven that he has what it takes to go toe-to-toe with some of the top anglers in the country and positioned himself to realize the dream that he’s been chasing since he was 11 — to become a touring pro.
Taking his talents on the road
Morrison established himself as a force to be reckoned with on the waters of his home state of New York well before this year. He finished among the Top 20 in all three Phoenix Bass Fishing League Presented by T-H Marine events he entered in 2022, including a fourth-place finish on the St. Lawrence River and fifth at Cayuga Lake. He’d previously finished fourth in a 2021 BFL at Cayuga and second on his home pond, Lake Champlain, in 2018.
But Morrison knew that if he wanted to take his tournament game to the next level, he needed to expand outside his Northeast bubble. So he spent several months during the winter living and guiding in Florida. He also hatched a plan. While he didn’t have the time or resources to fish an entire division of the Toyota Series outside the Northeast, he wanted to pick an event where he thought he could parachute in and contend for the win. He went with Sam Rayburn in May.
“I didn’t just go there because I wanted to fish the place and try my luck at it,” Morrison said. “It was definitely calculated. I did a lot of research, I knew that it would kind of be fishing the style that I like to fish. And I figured I would have a pretty decent shot just based on the research I had done.”
Morrison didn’t just contend; he blew the rest of the field out of the water. He sacked up 73 pounds, 5 ounces to win the three-day event by 24-0 — the largest margin of victory in Toyota Series history.
The result turned heads around the fishing world. How could a New York native, in his first trip to Sam Rayburn, lap a field full of local hammers? It turns out, Morrison has a simple explanation. He put in his time finding key offshore brush piles, spending about 10 days prior to the tournament idling and graphing. Then, he attacked his spots the same way he chases offshore smallmouth in Lake Champlain.
“They had wrapped up the spawn, they were predominately postspawn, and they were starting to move out to their offshore areas, and something I like to do is just kind of look at where they had been and where they may have been going,” Morrison said. “That first day really clued me in on what I was doing was the right thing. You think of up north, fishing Champlain versus Rayburn, as kind of polar opposites, but essentially the way I went about it was the same that I would approach things up north.”
Commitment to the offshore game
Morrison had traveled to Texas expecting to do well. But he didn’t expect that. No surprise, the victory took his confidence to a new level. The strategies and instincts he’d spent years honing not only put bass in the boat in New York, but across the country.
Morrison’s fishing style centers around his mastery of electronics. He’s willing to put in hours, even days staring at his console in order to break down a large body of water. Once he finds key spots, he’s “prolific” at using forward-facing sonar to spot fish and figure out how to make them bite.
It’s a strategy that takes time and commitment, which his win at Sam Rayburn validated. While most of the pre-tournament chatter centered around flipping grass or bushes, Morrison stuck to his plan.
“I’m kind of like, well, you know, I’m probably not going to beat a Texas guy, a Texas local, flipping bushes,” he said. “Those guys have a lot of knowledge on which stretches are good, which ones are better than others, and all of that. So I really just wanted to stick to my guns and fish the way I like to fish. And that definitely propelled me into the rest of the year. It built my confidence and showed me that I was doing the right thing and I was going about things correctly, and I needed to just move forward with that.”
Over the next few months, Morrison would continue to prove the effectiveness of his approach. He finished sixth in the Toyota Series event on Champlain, then took second in one BFL on the fishery and first in another. August saw him finish seventh in a loaded field at the Toyota Series event on the St. Lawrence River and sixth at a Cayuga BFL.
His lone slip-up of the year came in his most recent event, when he finished 63rd on the Potomac River to close the Northern Division of the Toyota Series. Sitting third after the first day, Morrison called an audible in hopes of winning the weather-shortened event. His plan backfired, and he caught just two keepers for 3-11 on Day 2. As he arrived at weigh-in, Morrison kicked himself for the decision. While it’s never been in his nature to “play it safe” or “fish for a check,” he realized he should have made an exception for the AOY race. Ultimately, though, the learning experience didn’t come at the expense of a trophy; Morrison finished tied with Ben McCann in points and won the title thanks to the total weight tiebreaker.
“The AOY title means a lot to me, and it showed that what I’m doing — not only Rayburn, but that title — showed me that what I’m doing is correct, that I’m going about things the right way, and I just need to push forward,” he said.
Setting his sights on another win
Morrison’s performance in the Northern Division qualified him for the Tackle Warehouse Invitationals in 2024. He’s eager to launch his career on a national tour and even more excited about the schedule, which he believes sets up perfectly for his offshore-oriented approach.
But first, he has one more trophy, and a $235,000 first-place payday, in his sights.
With no points to worry about at the Toyota Series Championship, Morrison can commit to fishing for first place. He plans to follow the same playbook that led him to victory at Sam Rayburn. He arrived at Table Rock nearly two weeks prior to the venue going off-limits in order to start graphing and learning the lake.
While he might not possess intimate knowledge of Table Rock or have years’ worth of waypoints stored up, he believes evaluating the fishery through fresh eyes could work to his advantage, as it did at Sam Rayburn.
“I really feel like it helped me out at Rayburn, not having that history,” Morrison said. “At Champlain in years past, it’s kind of burned me; I’m like not paying attention to what was going on and I tried to force other things to happen. … I was fishing strictly what I thought were the most high-percentage spots.”
Even if he’s not in New York, Morrison should feel at home in a derby that could be dominated by forward-facing sonar away from the bank. Throw in the fact that few, if any, of his competitors will be riding as much positive momentum, and he should have a legitimate chance to add his biggest win yet to his already blistering season.
That’s where he’s setting the bar for himself.
“I’m coming out here not to have a decent finish,” Morrison said. “I’m here this early, and that’s all based on my drive to win. … I know what got me here, and I’m just going to stick to my guns and really practice hard, and I’m going to try to do whatever I can do in this event to win.”
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