Day: April 14, 2019

Categories
Major League Fishing - Bass Pro Tour/Cup Events

LOCAL PRO CLAIMS HOMETOWN WIN ON LAKE CHICKAMAUGA AT BASS PRO TOUR ECONO LODGE STAGE FOUR PRESENTED BY WINN GRIPS

DAYTON, Tenn. (April 14, 2019) – From the moment he announced his intention to compete on the Major League Fishing® (MLF) Bass Pro Tour, Tennessee pro Andy Morgan was tabbed by his fellow competitors as an angler to watch. Based on both his exceptional 23-year career and his catch-every-fish-that-swims fishing style, Morgan came into the season as a near-universal pick by his contemporaries to take home one of the eight regular-season Bass Pro Tour trophies.  It turns out that Morgan’s first Bass Pro Tour trophy didn’t have far to travel: 7.1 miles from Lake Chickamauga to the trophy room in his home in Dayton.   Fishing a lake that he grew up on – and finishing the day in a pocket that he and his dad have won “a number of April tournaments in over the years” – Morgan weighed in 34 Lake Chickamauga largemouth for 80-0 pounds to run away with the Championship Round of the Econo Lodge Stage Four presented by Winn Grips.  “I wanted to win one more tournament on Chickamauga,” Morgan admitted. “I can’t explain how hard it is to win an event at this level, and I can’t explain just how bad I wanted to win right here in front of my family and friends – I wanted it bad. It means the world to me to be able to come out here on this lake where I won my first tournament when I was 15, fish against this bunch of guys, and get that trophy. I’m awful proud of it.”  Jared Lintner finished second with 60-7, Todd Faircloth was third with 59-5, Jacob Powroznik was fourth with 54-4 and Mike Iaconelli completed the Top 5 with 54-2.     

Morgan Committed to One Spot Early  Morgan fished Championship Sunday as one would expect a seasoned veteran to work his home fishery, committing his entire championship round to a long backwater north of Dayton that locals refer to as “The Branch”. Morgan woke up on Championship Sunday, looked at the weather forecast calling for heavy morning rain and afternoon winds, and knew immediately that he had an outstanding chance for a big day in two sloughs inside “The Branch”.   “As soon as I saw the weather, I knew that I wasn’t going to leave that area all day,” Morgan confirmed. “I was going to fish it all day long and figure it out, because I thought it had the best population of fish to work on. I knew it could all go down right in those two sloughs, and that I needed to just stay put and be patient.”  Morgan’s patience paid off. The Favorite Fishing pro worked his way around two areas he refers to as “Back Slough” and “Bus Slough” with a jig and Zoom Super Salt Plus Z Craw, a lipless crankbait and a vibrating jig, picking up 11 fish apiece in the first and second periods to claim and hold a 7-1 lead heading into the final period.    Jared Lintner, who spent a good part of his day sight fishing, had crept to within 2 pounds of Morgan midway through Period 2 and had located one spawner that he identified as “a double-digit fish.” But while Lintner added 11 fish to his SCORETRACKER™ total through the final 2 ½ hours of competition, eight of those were under 2 pounds; Morgan, meanwhile, connected with his two biggest fish of the day – a 5-7 and a 6-9 – and a 4-4 to gradually open up his lead.  “I had no other competitors in my area and the weather kept the local traffic out, so I had the whole place to myself,” Morgan said. “I’ve had some pretty special days on Chickamauga – I won my first Angler of the Year title on this lake – but today was the one day in my whole career where the deck was stacked for me to win.”  

 Morgan finished the week with 224-8, a record for weight caught in a Bass Pro Tour event. He and Lintner’s 106 fish caught is also a record.   

Lintner Made a Run at It  Lintner made things interesting through the first two periods, catching solid numbers of 1- to 3-pound males in an area in Soddy Creek that had been fished heavily throughout the week. The Aftco pro made a serious run at Morgan’s lead in the second period with a series of 3-pounders, but ultimately couldn’t convince a couple of big females to bite.  “I didn’t know if that area would replenish, or if the ones that were in there would bite again, but the winning fish were in that area,” Lintner said. “I saw a couple of fresh big ones that I thought were going to go, but they just weren’t ready to bite.” 

Bass Pro Tour Stage Four By the Numbers  

Total Weight                     7,415 pounds, 9 ounces     

Total Fish                         3,829 fish

5-plus pounds                  74 fish

6-plus pounds                  36 fish  

7-plus pounds                  17 fish    

Records Broken  

Total Event Weight            7,415 pounds, 9 ounces    

Total Event Fish Caught    3,829

Most Overall Weight          224 pounds, 8 (Andy Morgan)

Most Fish Caught              106 (Jared Lintner & Andy Morgan)

Two-Day Weight                105 pounds, 6 ounces (Zack Birge) 

Next Up on the Bass Pro Tour  The 80-man MLF Bass Pro Tour field will have a two-week break before returning to competition for Stage Five on Smith Lake in Cullman, Alabama, April 30 to May 5.

Categories
MLF BIG-5

THIS OKLAHOMA ANGLER LEADS WIRE-TO-WIRE, WINS FLW TOUR ON CHEROKEE LAKE PRESENTED BY LOWRANCE

JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. (April 14, 2019) – Pro Andrew Upshaw of Tulsa, Oklahoma, won the FLW Tour at the Cherokee Lake presented by Lowrance after catching five bass Sunday weighing 15 pounds, 6 ounces. Upshaw’s four-day cumulative total of 20 bass weighing 67 pounds, 10 ounces, was enough to edge second-place pro Grae Buck of Harleysville, Pennsylvania, by 1 pound, 2 ounces, at the event that featured 164 of the world’s top bass anglers. For his win – the first of his FLW Tour career – Upshaw earned $100,000.

“This week was phenomenal – there’s no other way to describe it,” a visibly emotional Upshaw said on the FLW Tour weigh-in stage Sunday afternoon. “Through practice, I knew I was on something special, but I didn’t know just how special.”

Upshaw’s week on the water primarily involved targeting spawning bass. Early on, he said he lured bites with a drop-shot rig, using a green-pumpkin-colored Strike King KVD Drop-Shot Half Shell with a 1/8-ounce weight, but ended up switching after breaking it off 30 minutes into day one of competition. He proceeded to pick up a 4-inch, wacky-rigged Strike King KVD Perfect Plastic Ocho of the same color and went to work putting together consistent limits around mid-lake islands. He said he preferred 10-pound-test Seaguar Smackdown braid line with a 6-pound InvisX fluorocarbon leader.

“These fish stay around these islands all year long – they don’t leave,” said Upshaw. “I caught some on banks, but all my big ones came on islands. I wanted to be around the deepest water and the steepest banks. It had to have boulders out in front, and more importantly, the bank had to have somewhat of a turn in it. It didn’t have to have a cove, but just a turn – those smallmouth were spawning in them. There was just enough [curve] to get them out of the current where they could spawn.

“I took the Ocho and pitched it behind those boulders because that’s where they were spawning,” continued Upshaw. “Everybody was casting out in front and in the cracks, but they were actually behind the boulders the entire time. Anybody throwing a weighted bait, whether it was a Ned rig or a shaky-head, wasn’t able to effectively fish it because it was dropping so fast. By pitching that very, very light-weight Ocho around, I was able to get the fish that no one else was fishing for.”

On Championship Sunday, Upshaw slipped and surrendered the lead for a significant period of time, but after a last-minute stop at a secondary area he’d been saving – two points a quarter-mile from takeoff – the Oklahoma pro made two culls that would end up putting him over the top.

“Off to the side of one of the points there was a rock pile – it had isolated boulders and only big ones were moving up on it,” said Upshaw. “I caught a 3½-pounder and one that weighed about 2½ pounds to cull out two small fish.”

Upshaw caught his final two fish using a 3.25-inch, Ghost Shad-colored Strike King Rage Swimmer on a ¼-ounce jighead.

The top 10 pros on Cherokee Lake finished:

               1st:          Andrew Upshaw, Tulsa, Okla., 20 bass, 67-10, $100,000

               2nd:         Grae Buck, Harleysville, Pa., 20 bass, 66-8, $30,200

               3rd:          Dylan Hays, El Dorado, Ark., 20 bass, 65-12, $25,100

               4th:          Jason Reyes, Huffman, Texas, 20 bass, 65-11, $20,000

               5th:          Andy Young, Isle, Minn., 20 bass, 64-0, $19,000

               6th:          Yamamoto Baits pro Tom Monsoor, La Crosse, Wis., 20 bass, 63-1, $18,000

               7th:          Tim Cales, Sandstone, W. Va., 20 bass, 62-8, $17,000

               8th:          Derrick Snavely, Piney Flats, Tenn., 20 bass, 61-9, $16,000

               9th:          Matt Becker, Finleyville, Pa., 20 bass, 61-4, $15,000

               10th:        Tim Frederick, Leesburg, Fla., 20 bass, 60-12, $14,000

For a full list of results visit FLWFishing.com.

Overall, there were 50 bass weighing 146 pounds, 14 ounces, caught by pros Sunday. All of the final 10 pros were able to bring five-bass limits to the scale.

Television coverage of the FLW Tour at Cherokee Lake presented by Lowrance will premiere in 2019. The exact air-date will be announced soon. The Emmy-nominated “FLW” television show airs each Saturday night at 7 p.m. EST and is broadcast to more than 63 million cable, satellite and telecommunications households in the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean on the World Fishing Network (WFN), the leading entertainment destination and digital resource for anglers throughout North America. FLW television is also distributed internationally to FLW partner countries, including Canada, China, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Portugal, Spain and South Africa.

The total purse for the FLW Tour at Cherokee Lake presented by Lowrance is more than $860,000. The tournament is hosted by the Economic Development Alliance, Jefferson County. The next event for FLW Tour anglers will be the FLW Tour at Lake Chickamauga presented by Evinrude, in Dayton, Tennessee, May 2-5. The tournament will be hosted by Fish Dayton and the Rhea Economic & Tourism Council.

In FLW Tour competition, the full field of 164 pro anglers competed in the two-day opening round on Thursday and Friday. The top 30 pros based on their two-day accumulated weight advanced to Saturday. Only the top 10 pros continued competition Sunday, with the winner determined by the heaviest accumulated weight from the four days of competition.

Throughout the season, anglers are also vying for valuable points in hopes of qualifying for the 2019 FLW Cup, the world championship of professional bass fishing. The 2019 FLW Cup will be on Lake Hamilton in Hot Springs, Arkansas, Aug. 9-11 and is hosted by the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism and Visit Hot Springs.

Categories
BASSMASTER Elite Series/Opens

THIS ANGLER HOLDS ON TO WIN BASSMASTER ELITE SERIES AT WINYAH BAY

April 14, 2019 Photo courtesy of BASS
GEORGETOWN, S.C. —

Stetson Blaylock came to the Bassmaster Elite at Winyah Bay with one goal in mind: don’t finish last. He accomplished that goal — and then some.

The third-year Elite Series pro from Arkansas tallied a four-day total of 50 pounds, 15 ounces and earned a victory that was unexpected, to say the least. He capped the win with a Championship Sunday limit of five bass that weighed 9-3.

“I came here with the intentions of ‘Don’t ruin your season; don’t come here and finish dead last,’” said Blaylock, who earned $100,000 for the victory. “When I found my area, I knew it had fish, so I thought I’d get out of here with a Top 35 and roll on to the next one. I didn’t know it had winning potential at all.

“I look back at every bass I lost this week and think ‘Gosh, I should’ve caught that one.’ Today, I had one good one that jumped off that would have been another 2 pounds. When that kind of stuff happens, you’re not supposed to win, but when it’s your time, you can’t do anything wrong.”

Time management was essential throughout the week. While many of his competitors ran 100-plus miles to fish various areas of the Cooper River, Blaylock earned his first blue trophy by staying in a pond off the Waccamaw River, about 18 minutes from takeoff at Georgetown’s Carroll Ashmore Campbell Marine Complex.

Lined with overhanging trees, the area held deeper water and sprouted a few tributary canals. Here, Blaylock placed 11th on Day 1 with 11-6, rose to sixth the next day with 12-7 and surged into the Day 3 lead by sacking up a limit of 17-15, the tournament’s heaviest bag.

Today, Blaylock faced a tougher bite, but his 9-3 was enough to hold off a dramatic charge by second-place angler Scott Canterbury, who finished just 9 ounces behind Blaylock.

“I’ve never been here before, so I went to where I knew there were some fish,” Blaylock said. “That gave me the entire day to fish.”

Coming off a second-place finish in last week’s Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Elite at Lake Hartwell, Blaylock not only carried over the positive momentum, he also stuck with the same selection of lures. His primary bait was a 5-inch green pumpkin YUM Dinger stickworm with a 1/32-ounce nail weight and a Gamakatsu G-Finesse Dropshot Hook tucked under an O-ring.

Blaylock used this rig for skipping under tree limbs, a technique that accounted for most of his bites. He also caught a keeper on a P-70 Pop-R — and when he found bed fish, he pitched a white YUM Christie Craw on a 3/0 hook and a 7/16-ounce weight.

“Going out this morning with the chance to win, all day it seemed like I had given it away,” Blaylock said. “I figured I’d finish sixth or seventh with the way I lost so many and fished so poorly today. But it all comes down to those key fish you get in the box.

“Winning an event like this is everything to a fisherman. The money’s nice, but the trophy is what it’s all about.”

In second place, Canterbury’s ambitious venture was pure Bassmaster LIVE gold, as a long run up the Cooper yielded a limit of 16-2 — the day’s heaviest catch — and gave him a total weight of 50-6. Motoring well past where other competitors fished, the Alabama angler, who started the day in eighth place, made a key bait change that produced 10 pounds in two bites — a 6- and a 4-pounder — within 30 minutes.

“I went up there yesterday and I was only going to fish about an hour just to get away from everybody, because I struggled so bad the second day,” Canterbury said. “When I got up there yesterday I caught a 2-pounder and then a 5-pounder 10-minutes later, so I ended up staying in that area.

“Today, I went up there and threw the same Dirty Jigs swim jig I threw yesterday and couldn’t get them to bite it. I hadn’t thrown a buzzbait all week. But today, with muddy water and overcast weather, it just felt like a buzzbait day. I caught every one of my fish on that bait.”

Earlier in the day, Canterbury took advantage of the morning’s high water to fish around spawning areas. When the outgoing tide started draining the areas, he moved outside to the main creek channel and caught his fish on points of vegetation out of the main current.

“It’s all about making those adjustments and today, I made some good ones,” he said.

In third place, Canadian Cory Johnston also fished the Cooper River, but he focused on the expansive flats that once served as rice fields. In practice, he had marked several key areas with hydrilla clumps and isolated hard-bottom spots.

Targeting these spawning sites was his plan, but the day’s conditions were not favorable.

“The water was clear, but with cloudy skies, I couldn’t see the beds and the clear spots and that hurt me,” Johnston said. “I could get my bait in the area, but I wasn’t able to specifically throw it on a bed, so I had to blind cast.”

Johnston added a limit of 9-1 and finished with 49-5. He caught his fish on a wacky-rigged green pumpkin stickbait and a homemade swim jig with a Strike King Rage Craw trailer.

Rounding out the Top 5 were Jason Williamson with 46-3 and John Crews with 46-2.

Williamson won the $1,500 Phoenix Boats Big Bass Award with a 6-10 largemouth.

Williamson and Crews were also the two highest finishing anglers eligible for Toyota Bonus Bucks. Williamson finished fourth and added $3,000 to his purse, while Crews finished fifth earning a $2,000 bonus.

South Carolina rookie Patrick Walters claimed the lead in both the Toyota Bassmaster Angler of the Year and the DICK`S Sporting Goods Rookie of Year race, after four events, earning $1,000 for AOY and $500 for ROY.