EUFAULA, Okla. — Seeking shelter from the storm proved key to Josh Wray’s B.A.S.S. Nation Central Divisional win Friday on Oklahoma’s Lake Eufaula.
On many parts of the 100,000-plus acre lake, heavy rain and persistent lightning prompted several competitors to seek shelter for an hour or more. But while they were waiting it out, Wray was filling out his limit — without getting wet.
“When the storm hit, we pulled up into a big box culvert at this spot I’d been saving,” said the angler from Omaha, Ark. “Current was funneling through there from the main lake, going away from the nose of my boat, and I was making casts from inside there — out to the mouth of the culvert — and they were stacked up there. I filled out my limit, and we didn’t even get wet.”
His five-fish limit weighed 14 pounds, 9 ounces, which was more than enough to best Day 2 leader Preston Frazell, of Cleveland, Okla., who brought only 11-13 to the scales. Wray’s three-day total weight was 41 pounds, 5 ounces. Frazell’s total was 39-9.
I just returned home last Friday from the first Northern Open of the year on Douglas Lake. I finished 48th out of 190, and with a little luck would have finished in the top 25. As it stands, I missed getting a check by 8 places. Douglas is a lake known for the deep bite. By deep I mean 25’-35+’. I spent the first couple of days of practice jumping from shallow to deep. The lake was 5’ high and there were lots of willows and bushes in the water. The only problem was the fish were smaller than the deeper fish, but they were plentiful! I knew the deep fish were going to win, but Douglas fishes small, and I really felt like I could probably catch enough fish shallow to have 12lbs-13lbs. The final 3 days of practice, I mainly graphed out deep and marked willow trees on my GPS. I felt like if I could get on a deep spot, I could catch them long lining a crankbait and have a chance to cull up what I caught shallow. While I was graphing, I made sure to log all of my sonar, so that when I returned to the house that night, I could upload it to Navico’s new program called Insight Genesis. This program allows you to upload sonar logs and create an exact map that shows all of the contours your road over, and also shows different bottom content. This is an invaluable tool when fishing offshore!! The first day of the tournament came, and I had a shallow limit by 8AM. I saw one someone leave one of the deep spots where I had caught a 4.5lber in practice. I ran over there, and the first pass, I hook one. It never jumps and bulldogs down. I get it beside the boat and look down. It looks like a drum, but on second glance, it is a GIANT smallmouth that is foul hooked. I get the fish into the boat and am excited because it is easily a 4.5lber. My excitement quickly turned to disappointment though. There is a 20” limit on smallmouth and this fish is only 19”. This was a tall thick fish that looks like it came from Lake Erie, and I had to release it. Think about that. I had to release a 4.5lber. That would have culled a 1.25lber and given me atleast another 3-3.5lbs. I continued switching between deep and shallow the remainder of the day, but it was difficult to find a deep spot someone wasn’t sitting on. When it all shook out, I had 8lbs 11oz due to a 4oz penalty for a dead one that swallowed my Missile Baits D Bomb. This left me in 92nd after the first day. A testament as to how tough it really was. That smallmouth sure would have helped!! Day 2, I knew I needed 14lbs-15lbs to get a check, but I felt like I my game plan from the day before was a decent one. I again went shallow in the morning and had a limit by 8:30. At 10am, I went by one of my deep spots and no one was on it. I drove over it, and there were two schools of fish on it. One in 25’ and another in 35’. I threw my DT 20 out and long lined until there wasn’t any line left on the spool. When my plug came through the shallower school it stopped dead in its tracks, and I had a big one. When I got her to the boat, she weighed 6.5lbs. That was a game changer. I put her in the box, culled, and made another pass. Again I hooked up with a fish, but it was a white bass. When I got it to the boat, there was another 4.5-5lb largemouth trying to eat the plug out of its mouth!! Had that white bass not eaten my DT 20, there is no doubt in my mind that I would have caught that largemouth. I had 2 really small fish in the box that I needed to cull, but I never could. I lost several more in the willows, and lost 1 more out deep. I didn’t have it on for very long, so I don’t know what it was. It could have been a white bass. That happens though when you have 200 yards of line out on a crankbait. When the day was over, I ended with 13.1lbs and moved to 48th, just barely missing the check. Had I not had to throw that smallmouth back, and caught the 4.5lb largemouth instead of the white bass, I would have been in the top 25. That’s the way this game is played though, and 48th isn’t a disaster. Sure I would have liked to have gotten a check, but I had a respectable finish and beat some great fisherman. The Insight Genesis played a huge role in my offshore fish, and I would encourage you to check it out. It is a game changer when it comes to mapping, as it can show hard spots on the bottom, vegetation, and accurate contours that will make your offshore fishing, dead on. So tool up, and go check it out. It will make you a better fisherman!!
Free Hog Tonic with any Kit Purchase! (A $9.99 Value)
Build Dad (or yourself) a Custom PowerTeam Kit for Father’s Day! He’ll have everything he needs to crush bass all day long packed up in a convenient Plano box. It doesn’t get any better than that! Oh wait, it does!!! To make sure dear old’ Dad smells like bass slammin’ roses before he hits the water, we’re gonna toss in a FREE bottle of Hog Tonic with every kit that goes out the door! It’s kind of like giving Dad a big stinky hug straight from PTL! And who in their right mind wouldn’t want that??
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Use coupon code SWAGDAD at check out and hook the old man up the proper way so he can quickly become the “cool Dad on the block”!
Jeff Gustafson caught the biggest fish of the day, a 10-pound, 12-ounce beast! (Photo by Shane Durrance)
05.Jun.2014 by Curtis Niedermier Last week he was catching 65-pound sturgeon in British Columbia. Today, he was hauling his personal best bass, a 10-pound, 12-ounce brute, over the gunwale on day one of the Walmart FLW Tour event on Pickwick Lake, which is presented by Straight Talk Wireless and hosted by the Florence/Lauderdale Tourism Bureau.
Such is the life for Jeff “Gussy” Gustafson, the second-year pro and popular Canadian outdoor television host from Keewatin, Ontario, who took the early lead on what began as a beautiful, mild morning in Florence, Ala., and ended with a thunderstorm that washed out weigh-in and sent nearly the entire crowd running for cover.
Preston Frazell credits co-angler Teb Jones for putting him on the spot where he caught the 7-1 kicker that gave him the Day 2 lead in the B.A.S.S. Nation Central Divisional.
EUFAULA, Okla. — Preston Frazell was too polite to mention it when he weighed the 7-pound, 1-ounce kicker largemouth that gave him the Day 2 lead in the B.A.S.S. Nation Central Divisional on Lake Eufaula, but his co-angler Teb Jones fessed up when he weighed in moments later — Frazell had caught the biggun from the back of the boat, on one of Jones’ spots.
“I’m heartbroken,” Jones said, likely only half-kidding. “He caught that fish behind me.”
Frazell, a Kansas B.A.S.S. Nation angler from Cleveland, Okla., then walked back onstage and thanked Jones for putting him on a good spot. In the B.A.S.S. Nation Divisional format, each anger — whether he’s the boater or co-angler — gets half the day to pick fishing spots and run the trolling motor. Frazell was the boater today.
After a nice run of dry and mostly sunny weekends, our luck may be running out. As of now, it appears the weather will be nice Friday and most of Saturday, but by late Saturday evening out west and overnight east the risk of showers and storms creeps back and Sunday looks to have a decent shot of showers and storms everywhere, with Lake Anna having the best shot of avoiding the rain.
Forecast Details:
Friday: Sunny and nice, high temps within a few degrees of 80.
Friday Night: Fair and Chilly, temps falling back between 55-60.
Saturday: Sunny in the morning with increasing clouds late. We will have a slight chance of showers and storms LATE out near Claytor Lake. High in the low 80s.
Saturday night: Partly to mostly cloudy with a chance of showers and storms. Chance of rain 40%
Sunday: Variably cloudy with a good shot of showers and then showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon. High temps around 80.
One forecasting tool is model trends: Here are the rain outputs from the GFS model that has shown a trend towards a wetter outcome starting late Saturday afternoon. This is the rainfall totals until 2am Monday morning.
Ledger reads like this: Green is under a half inch of rain, yellow is over a half inch and red is an inch.
Late evening yesterday:
Note that the rain is confined to mostly the Blue Ridge west and amounts are in lighter shades of green, it’s really indicating showers where everyone may not get in on the action.
Early Morning run today:
Note that there is broader coverage AND more areas of yellow from near LYH to ROA and up a good portion of 81. Will keep watching this trend to see how it plays out. Will update late Friday evening about this weekends rain potential late Saturday into Sunday.
Our sunrise time is now BEFORE 6 am and Sunset time is AFTER 8:30 pm
FLW and Ranger Boats announce multiyear contract extension
04.Jun.2014 MINNEAPOLIS (June 4, 2014) – FLW, the world’s largest tournament-fishing organization, and Ranger Boats, makers of the highest-quality, strongest-performing boats on the water, announced today that Ranger has signed a multiyear extension of its exclusive sponsorship with FLW.FLW and Ranger have enjoyed the longest-running boat sponsor relationship in the sport, with a history that dates back to FLW’s formative years in the early 1980s as Operation Bass. Operation Bass was purchased in 1996 by Minneapolis businessman Irwin Jacobs and renamed FLW in honor of Ranger Boats founder Forrest L. Wood.
“We’re proud of our relationship with FLW and excited about the future,” said Ranger Boats President Randy Hopper. “From Tour-level events and championships like the Forrest Wood Cup, to weekend tournaments across the country, FLW provides an incredible venue for Ranger customers of all skill levels and delivers a competitive experience that’s second to none. We look forward to supporting Ranger anglers and FLW for years to come.”
While complete terms of the agreement were not disclosed, Ranger Boats will continue its lucrative Ranger Cup program, offering Ranger owners valuable contingency awards in FLW tournaments.
“We’re extremely proud of our long-term partnership with Ranger Boats,” said Trisha Blake, president of marketing at FLW. “We’ve enjoyed building the sport of competitive bass fishing with them, and look forward to many more successful years working alongside the unquestioned leader in premium fishing boats.”
Ranger Boats is the exclusive boat sponsor across all of FLW’s media platforms, including tournaments and Expos, websites, social media, FLW Bass Fishing magazine and “FLW” on the NBC Sports Network.
EUFAULA, Okla. — Embracing the wind, rather than trying to duck it, played heavily into B.A.S.S. Nation Central Divisional leader Josh Wray’s successful pattern Wednesday on Oklahoma’s Lake Eufaula.
“I knew I could catch bigger fish if I’d stay where the wind was really hitting the worst and kind of driving everybody else away,” said the Arkansas B.AS.S. Nation angler. “I just followed the wind.”
Wray caught a five-bass limit weighing 14 pounds, 13 ounces on a day when limits were hard to come by — less than a dozen anglers caught five.
After catching a small limit early in the day, he kept battling the wind with his trolling motor, hoping to improve his bag.
“I culled three doing that, so it worked out,” he said. “Everything just went right today.”
A Green Forest Bass Club member from Omaha, Arkansas, Wray is fishing in his third B.A.S.S. Nation divisional. In 2011, he placed third in the B.A.S.S. Nation Championship as a non-boater, narrowly missing a chance to fish in the Bassmaster Classic.
Fishing for bass in deep water intimidates many anglers and it’s totally understandable. It’s not uncommon to spend hours and days locating suitable bass schools and when you find ‘em, the fun really begins—you have to figure out how to catch ‘em. It can be a bunch of work.
In my opinion, sensitivity is the most important aspect of deep water bass fishing. With so much line between you and the fish, you have to be able to feel what’s going on down there. For the last few months I’ve been using the Keitech Tungsten Model II Football Jig and it has made my deep bass fishing endeavors much, much easier.
Kerr Fishing Report June 2014 Wow! The bass fishing has been really good at Kerr recently, with numerous keeper size fish being caught. The water is still in the bushes and most likely will be for a week or so into the month. This June is looking good right now, especially for numbers. Kerr will have a little bit of everything to offer with some fish still spawning and fish moving to the deeper summertime haunts during the end of the month. I think you will be able to catch them however you like and at all depths throughout the month of June. Spawn will be the word for early part of this month and I’m not talking about the bass spawning. The late shad spawn will really help fatten the bass up after their spawn. Shad spawning make an easy meal for a bass, look for shad to spawn on rocky points during low light conditions. Early and late in the day are key times, but don’t be afraid to keep on looking for it throughout a day especially when it’s overcast. Of course top water is a bait of choice, along with swim baits and a spinnerbaits. Don’t be afraid to fish those same areas later in the day with a jig or shaky head. The fish will hang around those areas during June and they can be had. As the month heads toward the last third, deeper points and ledges should be your focus. Look for depths in the 8’-15’ range to be really productive. A swim bait, Carolina rig, and a football head jig are my favorites for fishing these depths. Don’t put away the top water either, this can be huge around chunk rock and rip rap well after the shad spawn is complete. It doesn’t need to be overcast for a topwater bait to be productive, try it in the heat of the day. You may be totally surprised. A good walking bait can call a fish up from a long way away. This June should be a really fun month for bass fishing at Kerr Lake. As always let the water levels dictate your fishing, if water is being pulled, points and ledges can be productive. If the water is rising you should move a little shallow and check it out for a while. I think if you go out and do what you like doing or have the most confidence in, you should be fine. Enjoy Kerr Lake this month; it’s at its most versatile time in the month of June.
