ProTourJournal 

FLW EverStart Championship

presented by

Art Ferguson III, St. Clair Shores, MI

Terry Bolton, Paducah, KY.

Brent Erhler, Redlands, CA Champion
Pre Fish 
Practiced for 5 days (more than I did for any tournament this year besides the Bassmaster Classic)....weather was pretty stable until today, it drizzled and cooled down from mid to high 70's to mid 60's....
 
I found a few schools of spots but nothing consistent with largemouth and never caught a keeper smallmouth.
 
Today, rumor had it that about 7lbs a day would make the top 10, so, not having much to go with but schoolers, I went for a limit of spots.

More info: water is dropping 6" to a 1' a day....much bait in the backs of creeks, but not much fish on them. Lake has a lot of cover, unfortunetely, it's mostly sitting up on the banks!!!!

Day One (5 fish 5-05  37th place)

 
Caught them exactly how I was wanting to but much harder than I thought it would be. Caught 3 bass around 1:30 to finish my limit.
 
The coolest thing is how I am catching them....absolutely unorthodox to bass fishing the way I know it and the few that know what I'm doing can't believe I'm doing it.
 
I would rather not say what I am doing right now, but it's cool.  

Lake looks too much a like everywhere you go. Once you don't catch fish hitting the similiar ten or so areas, you think the whole lake may not have fish....have to keep a positive attitude and for me, keep on praying and believing that the next cast will start off a frenzy.

Day Two (3 fish 3-10)  37th place)

8 fish 8-11 48th place $1,000.00

I feel kind of like I won the BassMaster Classic, and while that may sound kind of strange, finishing 48th.  Today was a tough day and I didn't have a fish until the very last couple of minutes.  I told my partner that we would fish an area that I caught only non keepers on during practice so that maybe we could at least get some bites.  We pulled up to the bank with about 15 minutes of fishing time left, (the spot was four minutes from the launch ramp.)  I caught three keepers, farmed a keeper at the boat and missed one bite.   The exciting part is that my measly three pounds, 10 ounces allowed me to cash a check by 9 ounces.  It really put a nice cap on a difficult tournament.

In this event I was using a "Kistler drop shot rod" to sling some tiny little baits.  The action of the Kistler rod, which by the way is a true drop shot rod, allowed me to cast a bait that weighed almost nothing about 30 feet, which was just enough to reach the fish.  I also believe that the Berkley Vanish 6 lb. line I was using made a big difference.  The line, as it's name says, is invisible under water.  I am positive, that when things got tough, that the invisible line was a factor to me being able to catch the fish I was able to catch.

The excitement on the final day was by no means one of the the most exciting bass fishing blitz's I've been part of....not even close...but, for only having 11 minutes to fish, it was one of the most exciting final minutes I've ever had.

Actually, when I won the Oneida Lake Bass Open last year, I caught 5 keepers in 6 casts and had over 13lbs in about 4-5 minutes....

In this tournament, I was fishing a white crappie jig on six pound Berkley line using my Kistler drop shot rod.  I would use all of my strength to cast that little bait (1/16 ounce) all of thirty feet, but it was the only thing I could get those schooling fish to even look at.  I had a lot of followers on that last day that just wouldn't bite.  It sure speaks volumes about fishing to the last minute.  If you can keep focused and keep your baits in what you believe are productive waters, anything can happen.

Next I will be fishing the BASS Open Championship in December.

 

 
 
 
 
 
Pre Fish I had a terrible pre fish.  In five days of practice, I caught five keepers and I didn't catch a single keeper the last two days of practice.  I mean this tournament had all of the makings of a train wreck.  I tried everything that I know how to try.  Sometimes you hear guys talk about eliminating water, well I just about eliminated the entire lake, it would have been ok with me if we moved to the next lake.

I had developed no strategy, I had no game plan.  I do know that spotted bass, which seem to be the easier of the species in Lake Cumberland to catch, (although I shouldn't talk, I haven't been able to even catch a 12 inch spot in the last couple of days,) are really affected by changing weather and we are suppose to get some rain tomorrow.  I plan to run to a clear creek arm and fish around some boat docks, although I am totally going off a hunch, I don't have anything else going.

Day One (5 fish 6-11 24th place)

I started on the docks this morning and went through two limits of small spotted bass.  It's like I struck gold, very small pieces of gold, but when you had the pre fish that I had, beggars can't be choosey. 

The rain totally activated these fish.  I dead sticked a Zoom Super Fluke around the edge of boat slips and under pontoon boats, and you could see the fish come storming up after the bait. I am sure the cold front is what got them going.  These spots were so aggressive that I literally could not reel the fluke fast enough to get it away from them. 

Day Two (5 fish 6-06)

Total-10 fish 13-01 13th place $3,500.00) Today I went back to my docks, but could tell almost immediately that what I had going yesterday was dying quickly.  I was able to catch three keepers but again, I could sense that things were changing.

Knowing that I needed about eight pounds to make the cut, I decided to go for broke so I left the creek, took out my top water bait and just started looking for a big bite.  I was rewarded with a 15" largemouth, my biggest fish of the tournament.

A little bit later I pulled up on a point, and caught a 12 and half inch spotted bass that rounded out my limit.

13th place in a tournament this size is a  great feeling.  For the pre fish I had, if you had told me I could do this well, would have been hard for me to believe.

 Pre Fish It's been good and it's been bad.  I have had some success on top water baits but that seems to be dying off now.  I have pretty much dedicated myself to hitting small little areas with reaction lures, running and gunning and trying to determine the areas that hold the better concentrations of fish.  I was able to go back through some areas with worms and jigs and I have been able to refine some things that will work.

As luck, (bad luck) would have it, I got hit with a flu bug yesterday and spent most of the day throwing up, so as you might guess it was fairly unproductive.  I am staying in my room today, just trying to get better.  It was a long drive, (from California,) I sure hope I can perform at my optimum level. 

Day One (2 fish 3-10 68th place)

I still was not feeling 100%, but I didn't drive all this way to be sick.  Today, I just messed up.  I made some bad decisions and I have been doing this enough to know that there are days like this.  The bite is very tough and I am convinced that there are biters out there and they are on somewhat of a pattern, its just that they are not on every spot on the lake.  

I am starting to feel a little better.  Tomorrow I will give it everything I have and try to hit as many spots as I can.  If the fish are there I will catch them, if not, then not.  I have a decent shot at getting a check in this event, I need to make the top 50 to do that.

I am trying to hit them with some top water each morning, and then I am putting my drop shot and a jig in as many spots as I can.  Today I caught one on a jig and one on a drop shot.  The bites are soft and I missed a couple.  We'll see about tomorrow.

Day Two (5 fish 10-10)

Total-7 fish 14-04 10th place

Unbelievable!  Today I fished about a million spots and got five bites that weighed 10-10. I mean, just a barely decent day by most standards.  However, at Lake Cumberland, where many limits weigh under 7 pounds, I was able to jump 58 spots and move up into the cut.

Tomorrow and Saturday I will be fishing for the championship.  I will get a lot of TV coverage, I am very excited.

My fish today came on a top water lure, (1) two on jigs, two on drop shot, junk fishing.  Yes I have a pattern, no I can't apply to every spot I pull up on.  For me, the next two days will be a matter of covering as much water as I can.

Oh yes, I am feeling much better.

Day three (4 fish 5-13  1st Place!)

When you lead the tournament, they put your picture on web pages, and give you a cool shirt.

Wow!  Today was the best of days and the worst of days.  Nobody caught a limit.  I could sense that it was tough out there, but I really thought someone would get them well.  I guess that someone was me, although I only had four keepers to weigh in. 

Today, I broke off one keeper and lost another, those could really hurt me, but I am not even thinking of those.

I helped myself by getting on the score board early today.  On one of my first casts, I stuck a keeper on a spinner bait, and caught another in the same area a little bit later. 

It was another day of junk fishing, just trying to hit as many productive spots as I could.  I guess if you drop it in front of them enough, someone has got to bite it.

I don't have a commanding lead, most likely if a guy catches a limit tomorrow, he will have the best chance to win.  I will just fish on my instincts.  Every day I have started somewhere else in the lake.  Tomorrow, I am thinking  that I will go to a completely different area of the lake from where I have been fishing.  I may be in first, but the weights are all so close that anyone of the final ten could pull this off.  I'm going out to have some fun.

Day Four (4 fish 4-13  Total Weight 10-10 Champion) It's Monday, about 5:30 PM Mountain time (between Central and Pacific,) I have been driving for 12 hours and I am about 100 miles outside of Gallop, New Mexico.

I went to bed Friday night without having a set plan for Saturday, I figured it would come to me, and hey, I have to fish somewhere.  When you go to bed without a plan, it starts to grind on you.  I set my alarm clock for 5:00 AM, but at 4:00 AM I was wide awake and unable to sleep.  So I got dressed and went down stairs to where the tournament boats were and just sort of hung out by the boats, waiting for go time.

I wanted to take a shot at one of Cumberland's big smallmouth bass, but had noticed that I didn't catch any during day light hours.  I had a couple of good ones during practice but they were either early in the morning, during the dark overcast sky that we had or in the late afternoon.  I decided that I would run to an area where some big smallmouth had been caught and try to get one right off the start.

I caught my first keeper on a spinnerbait, it was not big but it was a bite and it was early so I felt encouraged.  After about half an hour, I decided to run to an area where I had two big fish break off during the tournament and I caught two keepers.  Keep in mind that the lake allows us to keep 12" keepers, so these fish were not giants, but the weights on Friday were very small, and I felt the key would be to get five fish.

At noon I hooked a big fish on a jig, got a couple of turns on it and broke it off.  The fish immediately came to the surface and tail walked, making sure that I could see my jig hanging from it's mouth.  I think that fish was flipping me off.  It was every bit of 3 pounds and my heart sank.  That was the bite I needed, it was clearly bigger than any fish caught yesterday and I knew I had just lost the tournament.

At 12:45 I was an hour from the ramp and I had a section of three consecutive little cuts that I wanted to fish.  I figured it would take about 15 minutes to fish them and that would still give me enough time to get back.

The first cut produced nothing.  As I moved to the second cut, on my first cast, I felt the bite, set the hook and boated my fourth keeper.  On the very next cast, I broke off another bite.  Disappointing.

When we got to the buoy line to weigh in, the FLW TV crew stopped me to interview me, you'll have to watch on the 21st of November because I don't remember what I said.  I think I said something about losing the winning fish.

The FLW weigh ins are amazing.  They started with the tenth place angler and have him bring up fish until his weight passes the first place angler.  Then they go to the 9th and the 8th and so on until the first place angler weighs in and he has to pass them up, if that makes sense.

The 10th and 9th place anglers could not pass me, but the guy in the 8th place, Lloyd Picket had eight pounds and he passed me.  Then the 7th place guy, HC Sumpter brought his fish to the scales and passed Picket and me.

Anyway, I brought my fish to the scales and took the lead from Sumpter by 7 ounces, the good news was that Sumpter had already weighed in 5 fish, the bad news is that Picket was just 12 ounces behind me and he had only weighed in four fish.  The word that I had heard is that there were two limits, Sumpter had weighed one, and nobody else, I certainly didn't have one.

Picket went to his live well, reached in, splashed around, and pulled up nothing.  I had survived!  Drama!

Besides the FLW money and the boat certificate, I also won $10,000 for being the original owner of a Ranger Boat and I also won another $10,000 in Ranger Cup money.   I also won the award from EverReady for coming back the furtherest, I did start in 68th place.  I did very well.