Familiar Water to Test Select Pros
Bass Pro Shops Summit Select, Muskogee, Okla., May 19-24, 2014
(Lynn Burkhead photo)
By: Lynn Burkhead, MajorLeagueFishing.com
In Muskogee, Okla., where the first ever Major League Fishing GEICO Selects competition takes place, the Select pros will find themselves fishing in the watery backyard of MLF regular Tommy Biffle, on the Wagoner, Okla., angler’s home water of Fort Gibson Lake.
Not only is the 21,798-acre Fort Gibson known far and wide as Biffle’s home water, it’s also played host to plenty of tournament action through the years, some of those events being fished by a few of 2015 Bass Pro Shops Summit Select pros.
Randy Howell, the 2014 Bassmaster Classic champ, is one of those pros and he talked about his familiarity with Gibson prior to his first Summit Select Qualifier competition.
“I’m very surprised,” said Howell. “I didn’t know we were going to go to a lake like Fort Gibson, a lake that is such a well-known lake. A lot of times, they’ve taken us in the past to lakes that weren’t very well talked about or not much has been heard about. Fort Gibson is a pretty premiere Oklahoma lake; a really good lake.”
That’s pretty much where Howell’s comfort level with Fort Gibson ends, although he admits that he got a check at the previous B.A.S.S. event that he fished here due to the fact that the B.A.S.S. event scheduled for another Eastern Oklahoma water was moved to Fort Gibson at the last second due to severe flooding conditions elsewhere.
This means that while Howell and some others in this Day Two Qualifier field have actually been on Fort Gibson before, there isn’t much that they know about the lake or can take with them onto the water.
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