Today’s Top 5
Second Beaver FLW win in a row for Matt Arey, here’s how he done it:
> He primarily focused on wood (both laydowns and bushes), but docks and rocky points were targets as well. He often got fish that he assumed were actively spawning to pursue the swimbait and thus reveal their location, then he’d follow up with the Lunker Stick to induce a strike.
> …the swimbait…about a foot below the water’s surface in depths ranging from 3 to 7 feet..
> He started each day in Prairie Creek and would would eventually get several miles up the White River.
> Swimbait: 5″ hand-poured swimbait (black back/silver flake), 7/0 Gamakatsu EWG Monster hook.
> Stickbait: 5″ Lunkerhunt Lunker Stick (coffee/red-black fleck), 1/0 Gamakatsu Split Shot/Drop Shot hook.
> Bed-fishing: Texas-rigged Lunkerhunt Lunker Bug (pumpkin and pearl sparkle), 3/8- and 1/2-ounce tungsten weight, 4/0 Gamakatsu SuperLine EWG hook.
When it’s your time to win, it’s your time. We’ve all heard and seen many examples of this in bassin’, here’s Arey’s from day 4:
> “First, that normally doesn’t happen,” Arey said. “But, back in the day when I was a rookie, I would have stayed standing and just kept winding my bait and the fish would have went back under the dock. Instead, I was able to keep my composure, knelt down and got the fish to bite and in the boat. It’s experience. You just have to block everything else out and fish against the fish.”
Cool. Take THAT Paul Elias! #kneelandNOTreel
Wonder if Arey will write his own book:
Top THAT beard Bertrand!
Cody Meyer does well on Beaver too — love to tell you ‘zackly how well, but the FLW website won’t let you click on anything in its s. Hope it gets fixed.
Anyhoo, this time he finished 4th chucking a Strike King Rage Tail Twin Tail Menace Grub (honey candy ) on a wobble head (a Strike King Jointed Structure Head maybe?), and also dropshotting.
Social sites be littered with travel shots from the Elites driving 1,000,000,000 miles to get to the Cali Delta. Couple of my faves:
> My wife said this three day trip was quality time together. Well I am all caught up, can we just be there already.
Hahahahaha! I’ve done that drive with my wife….
I would’ve failed that test….
View from Keith Combs’ boat on Pardee Lake. Gotta say I’ve been fishing all over the country, never seen that one before…you?
Maybe it was a mirage because Keith had to, you know, “use the washroom” as they say in Canada. Or:
News
1. Chapmaniac gets Plano/Frabill.
Elites take note: Second sentence starts:
> With nearly 100,000 likes on his Facebook page….
More and more deals are being made with social #s in mind.
2. Garmin adds two Elites, three FLWers…
…and may be the only company that doesn’t have the BassBlaster on its release list? Anyhoo, they are: Paul “I make the Classic every year so there” Mueller, Byron “Skeet knows all my secrets” Velvick, Andy Morgan, Todd Auten and Mark Daniels Jr.
3. Larry Nixon gets Solar Bat.
Solar Bats in Bee Branch yo!
Dude who “wrecked” in the FLW-supplied derby boat had another good finish at Beaver so he got another FLW-supplied boat:
> “I took it real easy pretty much anytime I came up on a turn — especially a left turn. I’d slow down to about 20 (mph) and just barely turn the wheel.”
Can’t blame him. Got a shot of Cox at the ramp:
Hahaha just kiddin’ man!
5. FLW now FLDQ?
Not one but 2 DQs at that derby.
Day 1 was Drew Benton. Bassin’Fan did a good job with that one, you can read the deets there, but was basically for allegedly fishing “within 50 feet of a marked No Fishing Zone in a commercial marina.”
Weird was that Benton used 2 hours of his day 2 to take TD Bill Taylor over to the dock, then “upon dropping Taylor off at the ramp, Benton said he again asked for a decision and Taylor said he needed to discuss it further with FLW operations vice president Kathy Fennel.”
Huh.
Mark Rose was DQd on day 2 after his boat broke down, and he and his co jumped into a boat to hitch a ride in. That apparently is a no-no:
> “Abandoning a boat and leaving it adrift without proper tie-off or anchoring after a mechanical failure may result in disqualification of that day’s weight.”
Note that 3-letter word: may. MAY. And here I thought it was still April (drum hit…).
FLW bought ’em some ice cream to make them feel better:
Oh snap.
7. CA: Endangered fish may kill Clear lake bassin’?
8. AL: B.A.S.S. opposes gillnetting.
Word.
Kristopher “KJ” Queen and Tyler Black of Bandys High School in Catawba, N.C won it on OK’s Grand Lake fishing Senkos (gp) and creature baits “on windy points and docks in relatively clear water.
#stout
10. Bassmaster All-State HS teams.
Cool.
11. ON: Nickel City club opening derbies.
12. NB: Smallies hurting salmon.
Ah well….
Bait of the Day
Cali Delta ‘Trap-only winning baits.
‘Bout a week back was the ‘Trap-only derby on the Cali Delta, won by Dustin Keen and Troy Dequchi, pictured with Wes Higgins, the head man at ‘Trap. Deets:
> The new Echo 1.75 (in 46R red craw) caught the big’uns.
> A regular 1/2-oz Rat-L-Trap in 559 (Cali craw) caught the rest.
Wes said: “The crazy thing is they were able to catch more fish when limited to only Rat-L-Trap and Echo than they caught the tournament the day before where they could fish any lure in the boat.”
Quote of the Day
Why did I not have a single topwater lure in my boat?
– Elite “rookie” Brent Ehrler, who didn’t have a topwater in his boat during the Gville Elite when:
> …100 pounds of Guntersville giants were playing volleyball with gizzard shad on the surface.
> …to add insult to injury, the schooling melee lasted for 45 minutes. I’ve never seen a school of big bass feed that long on the surface and all I could do was stand in agony and watch.
Love the honesty, but dude you deserve this:
Yep, the triple Star Trek facepalm.
Shot of the Day
This is as cool a Marvel comics-like bassin’ shot as I’ve ever seen — suh-weet:
Jay Kumar is the guy who created BassFan, co-hosted Loudmouth Bass with Zona, was a B.A.S.S. senior writer and a whole lot more in bassin’. His BassBlaster is a daily-ish roundup of the best in bassin’, and is the #2 or #3 daily read on any given day in the wide world o’ bass. Also available as an app:
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