Florida lake breakings Guntersville FLW bass record catching
If you're even thinking about a bassing trip to Florida, right now may be the time to go. Last weekend, anglers fishing the FLW Open tourney there eclipsed the FLW tournament record set at Lake Guntersville, which had held the nation's bass angling crown for 12 months with a 95-pound 7-ounce catch for a four-day event. The new champion is Lake Okeechobee, the new record 20 bass weighing 106 pounds, 10 ounces, caught by Belle Glade, Florida angler Brandon McMillan. In second place was Gardendale, Alabama angler Randall Tharp with 102 pounds, 2 ounces--remarkably, Tharp and two other anglers also broke the Guntersville record.
Okeechobee has been an up-and-down fishery, and is often cruel to winter tournament competitors; cold and wind can ruin the fishing overnight in this broad, shallow lake, and the fronts seem to time themselves perfectly to strike on weekends of major tournaments most years.
That was not the case this year, however; spring-like weather and calm winds had the bass in a spawning frenzy, and anglers found big fish everywhere, most caught by sight-fishing the beds.
Both McMillan and Tharp caught the majority of their fish flippin' grass mats on the north shore, a long run from tournament headquarters at Roland Martin's Marina in Clewiston, on the south shore of the Florida's largest lake.
"You can't argue that right now, Okeechobee is the hottest lake in the country," Tharp told me Tuesday. "It's gotten better every year for the last five years, and we had the perfect weather situation; the lake temperature went up 15 degrees over the three weeks prior, and it was 80 in the afternoons during the tournament--the fish went into the grass in droves."
Tharp said he caught his fish using a prototype lure of his own design, a Predator-Craw in black and blue flake, which will be marketed by Attraxx Baits this spring. He fished the lures with tungsten weights to 1.5 ounces on 70-pound test braid.
"I got 40 to 50 bites a day, and a lot of those fish were over 6 pounds," said Tharp. "I had three fish over 8 pounds that really helped out."
The average weight of the winning sacks was over 5 pounds each, and there were a number of real lunkers weighed in, including a monster 12-pound, 12-ounce fish by fourth-place finisher Terry Scroggins.
Tharp said the FLW event should be a good warm-up for the BassMaster Classic, coming up at New Orleans Feb. 18-20.
"Okeechobee is a big lake, but it's little bitty compared to the Mississippi Delta," said Tharp. "The fish will be shallow and it's going to be a fllpping bite and I like that. Strategy is a lot of it down there. Of an eight hour day, you'll spend six hours running, so you've got to take maximum advantage of those two hours of fishing."
He said the waters of the delta can be a navigational challenge, as well.
"A lot of that water is less than two feet deep and almost none of it is marked so you can run aground at any time. And then you cross some of those big open bays and if there's a strong wind, you may see really rough water."
However, Tharp said he likes his chances in the event, which most view as the World Series of bass fishing.
"Any time you've got Kevin Van Dam and Skeet Reese and Mike Iaconelli fishing against you, you know they're going to bring their A game, but I plan on bringing mine, too," said Tharp.
Read More ...
0 comments:
Post a Comment