How Kyle Cortiana Won Angler of the Year

Learn how an Oklahoma angler took down the Toyota Series Northern Division Angler of the Year title, with events held on the Potomac River, Lake Champlain and the St Lawrence River.

Kyle Cortiana loves chasing giant smallmouth bass in the Great Lakes region, and his longstanding appreciation for the region and its fisheries only grew with this year’s Toyota Series Northern Division swing. Cortiana earned the Angler of the Year title with a win, a second-place finish, and a 15th place finish. It was Cortiana’s second Toyota Series AOY, with the first having come in the Southwest Division in 2016

The 2024 Northern Division fields, which averaged 170 pros, included some of the best anglers in the region, many of whom have fished those waters all their lives. While Cortiana is from Oklahoma, he has invested a LOT of time on Champlain and other big waters in the North over several years. He and his wife spend much of their time on the road, creating content together as he fishes multiple tournament circuits, and they always wrap up the primary tournament season in the Northeast.

Multiple years of pre-fishing, competing and fishing after tournaments have allowed Cortina to learn the waters, how their fish behave in a broad range of conditions, and how that all translates to the way he likes to fish.

“You have to do your own thing,” Cortiana said. “I’ve put in a lot of time and am starting to learn what works for me on these bodies of water.”

That was apparent throughout the Toyota Series season.

Potomac River Success

A 15th Place finish on the Potomac River was special for Cortiana because it’s a place where he has traditionally struggled. He has fished several tournaments at various levels on the Potomac, and things have never quite clicked.

“I usually have one really good day and one horrible day,” he said. This year was different. The first two days were both good – enough so that he got to fish Championship Sunday, which meant a guaranteed check and good points to start the Northern Division series.

Cortiana had even considered skipping the first event and going straight to the waters he like best, but he resolved that he wanted to fish the entire series, so he gave himself a week of practice time and was able to build his understanding of when and where the fish feed and was able to commit to running tides through part of the tournament.

He fished a variety of lures and techniques over the course of three days, but two of his most important approaches were calling bass out of the grass with a BOOYAH Pad Crasher and wacky rigging a YUM Dinger. Cortiana noted that the Pad Crasher produced some of the biggest fish he weighed.

“I was really glad to be able to successfully run the tides during that derby and to go in and catch the fish that I knew were in an area,” he said.

Lake Champlain Victory

Scoring his first win with MLF on one of has favorite lakes in the nation took special to another level for Cortiana. It was a tournament he felt great about from the onset, but achieving the win hinged on a couple of critical decisions.

The night before the tournament was one of only a handful of times in his career that Cortiana told his wife, “I could win this one,” and in the intro to his Day 1 video, he proclaimed, “Let’s go win this thing.”

He lost a few large and important fish that day, though, and despite catching fish all day and weighing 20 pounds, he really thought he’d lost his opportunity as that weight landed him in 27th place. That said, he noticed some important things that day about how the fish were relating to current and a surging lake that prompted him to commit to a completely different area of the lake on the second day.

Massive rains immediately before the tournament had the lake rising, which was changing everything and causing fish to relate to current. He knew an area where he was confident the current would be running hard and where he believed the smallmouths would be concentrated and feeding, based on what he’d seen on the first day.

Turned out it was the right call. The current was ripping and “the bottom was crawling with smallmouths.”  He started catching bass immediately and could see on his electronics that there were good fish there. At that point, he told his co-angler that they weren’t going anywhere else, anytime soon. Using a YUM 5-inch FF Sonar Minow, Cortiana caught fish all day and weighed 22-pounds 3-ounces, bumping him up to fourth in the standings.

Cortiana felt confident going into the final day, with a plan to return to the same spot and fish the same FF Sonar Minnow in the current. When he arrived, though, he discovered that a hard mudline had formed.

“I’d never seen that up there, so I didn’t know how it would affect the smallmouths. It could be good, or it could be bad,” Cortiana said. With other anglers coming and picking their starting areas, he had to decide whether to commit to the spot or make a move. He chose to stay and fish the mudline with a mindset of “If I’m wrong, I’m wrong.”

He was not wrong! He could see the mudline on his live sonar and could see the bass pushing bait against. Using the FF Sonar Minnow, coupled with his live sonar, just like the day before, he caught big smallmouths like he seldom had before. “There was rarely a cast where I didn’t catch a fish, get bit, or at least have fish following my lure.”

His 21-pound, 14-ounce final-day limit brought his total to 64 pounds, 1 ounce to secure the victory.

Second On the St Lawrence

Similar to Lake Champlain, Cortiana knew from practice and past experience on the St Lawrence River that he had a good opportunity to do well in the season finale and that the Angler of the Year title could be within reach.

There were some big challenges, though, including a two-hour one way run to and from his primary area that would leave him only four hours of fishing time. He also had a mix of shallow and deep spots that he would fish differently, and he would need to constantly evaluate how long to stay in a spot and whether to run new spots as the tournament progressed or return to those that had produced. He had to pay careful attention to what the fish showed him and make key decisions throughout the event.

For the shallower fish, which were using current-swept shoal areas with a mix of broken weeds and gravel, Cortiana relied on the new BOOYAH Flash Point Jerkbait, which has quickly become a vital part of his arsenal. Targeting specific fish he could see on live sonar, Cortiana caught key fish that he weighed all three days on the Flash Point.

For his deep fish, Cortiana relied on two approaches: swimming a YUM Flash Mob Jr and drop shotting a Great Lakes Finesse 3.5-inch Drop Minnow. The Drop Minnow, which was critical for big fish that were relating to boulders and tight to the bottom, had to be delivered naturally with the current and held completely still when it got in front of the bass.

“No lifting or shaking of any kind. I’d just hold it still and let that Drop Minnow do its thing,” he said.

Cortiana’s 70-pound, 15-ounce three-day weight earned him second place and secured the top spot in the Angler of the Year standings.

More Information:

• More on Cortiana’s St Lawrence River Success
• Kyle Cortiana puts together great videos about every tournament day, with catch footage from throughout the day (along with other cool content), on his YouTube channel, Kyle Cortiana Fishing
• Check out the new BOOYAH Flash Point jerkbait