The Wal-Mart FLW Tour is “The Next Generation” of bass tournaments and Clark Wendlandt is living proof.
Wendlandt won the FLW Tour’s Wal-Mart Open in April on Arkansas’ Beaver Lake, besting two veterans at their own game.
The Cedar Park, Texas, professional edged Bernie Schultz and Guido Hibdon by less than a pound during the final round of the tournament to win the $150,000 top prize.
Wendlandt, 33, who, other than winning the Red Man All-American, has never won a major professional event, did it sight fishing, a tactic that Hibdon and Schultz helped make famous. Both are considered sight-fishing experts and share more than 30 years of professional competition and more than 18 national titles.
To make things worse, Wendlandt did it in the most unorthodox of fashions. Typically sight fishermen locate fish during practice, mark them on a map and then go to them during the tournament. Once there, they often sneak up on the fish throwing small baits with light line, from 4- to 8-pound test, to coax the fish into biting.
“I don’t even know where I fished today,” Wendlandt said after the final weigh-in. “I went blind. I stopped at every cove and pocket I could find. I’m sure I would have trouble retracing my footsteps. It was almost like feeling your way through the lake.”
In addition, Wendlandt, rather than throw spinning tackle and light line, fished a red Gambler tube jig on 17-pound line and a 3/16th-ounce slip sinker, all connected to a baitcast reel.
“I think a mistake a lot of people make is using too light of line or equipment they are not comfortable with,” Wendlandt said. “I’m comfortable with a baitcast reel, and I believe that fish could care less what pound test you are fishing with. If those fish move off the beds and come back, I can catch them and it doesn’t matter how big the line is.”
Wendlandt said he would move from cove to cove, running down the banks with his trolling motor on high until he found a fish on the bed. Once there, he would stop to fish for it. Often waiting several minutes for the fish to bite. His biggest fish, a 4 pound, 8 ounce largemouth, hit after a 55 minute wait. “I spent an hour and a half on one that would have weighed 5 pounds or more, because I knew she would win it for me,” Wendlandt said. “But I didn’t spend a lot of time on many of them.”
The sight-fishing bite was the constant theme of the final five anglers, who despite a cold front that passed through the area the night before, found some of the best fishing of the tournament.
Cloudy, windy weather produced a dark atmosphere that allowed the anglers to better stay hidden from the fish. Even though water temperatures were in the upper 50s, the final day weather improved the topwater bite as well. Wendlandt, who won the 1992 Operation Bass Red Man All-American on a last cast with a buzzbait, also caught a keeper bass in the last five minutes of this tournament on a Bulldog buzzbait.
The variety of working tactics, the changing conditions, and the shuffling of good day, bad day production from the leaders produced a confusing mixture for those trying to settle on what to do or when to do it.
Going into the tournament, the lake was split into three sections with the anglers even more split on how the tournament would play out. A few fish, a sparse few in many of the angler’s estimations, were moving shallow to obvious beds in the clear water of the lower end of the lake. The same type movement was taking place in other areas, but the mid-section was dingy, and the upper end dirty, a result of rain the week prior to the tournament.
Unlike the 1998 event, when water levels were constantly rising to 9-feet above normal pool, the water level this year was 3-feet above normal pool and falling.
Fish were moving into flooded bushes, but they could also be found on the outside edge, on main lake points and every place in between. The expected winning pattern was a smorgasbord from flipping bushes in the upper end of the lake, Carolina-rigging on the outside edges of bushes in the middle section or sight-fishing in the lower end.
It was a confusing mix, that produced some very close competition.
Day 1: Not-So Obvious Bite
Curt Lytle of Suffolk, Virginia, took the first-day lead, muddying the waters a bit for those in the clear water.
Lytle weighed in a five-fish stringer totaling 19 pounds, an unusually heavy stringer for the lake, adding a twist to expectations. Lytle caught the fish flipping a jig in the middle to upper end of the lake. Rather than concentrate on bushes, he placed his jig close to sycamore and maple trees where spawning fish were bedded.
Although Lytle’s impressive stringer gave the flippers in the field hope, the sight-fishing bite was beginning to improve.
A big majority of the leaders’ stringers were caught on the lower end of the lake as the spawning bite began to improve.
Arkansan Rob Kilby of Hot Springs was in second with 16 pounds, 6 ounces. Cody Bird of Granbury, Texas, was third with 15-0.
All the anglers were fishing to make a top 10 cut, Carl Svebek of Sam Rayburn, Texas, occupied that spot with 12-0 pounds.
“In this tournament, you don’t worry about whose in front of you or who is behind you until the final-day weigh-in,” Kilby said. “From here until then, it’s doing whatever it takes to survive.”
Expectations were for a two-day total of 21- to 23-pounds would be needed to make the cut. Most anglers were giving little thought to catching Lytle. All their efforts were focused on trying to catch that total, and hoping that what they were doing would be enough.
Day 2: Guessing Is Over
Cody Bird, who tipped his hand at the weigh in by telling everyone that he watched every fish bite, lead the field with a two-day total 28-7. While Lytle could only manage two bites totaling 7-2, for a total 26-2.
The two differences left little doubt that the tournament had progressed into a sight-fishing competition. While they lead the way, the top 10 included: Rob Kilby in third with 25-3; Randy Howell in fourth with 24-12; and Johnny McCombs in fifth with 23-15.
Guido Hibdon was in fifth with 23-10, followed by Clark Wendlandt 23-7. Of the top five, there was a mixture of tactics from Carolina-rigging on points, flipping bushes, and swimming a worm on bluff banks that produced fish. But the bulk of the weights were caught sight-fishing, although most of the five leaders reported having to include one of the other tactics to survive. “There’s a lot of things happening on the water,” Wendlandt said. “And it’s happening fast, almost too fast to keep up with.”
The second day saw a major move of fish toward shallow water, creating improved catches throughout the standings and stacking up anglers with precious ounces separating them.
The casualties included Tracy Adams of Wilkesburg, North Carolina, who missed the cut by 1 ounce, finishing 11th with 21-9. Six anglers missed the cut by less than a pound, and another dozen were within 2 pounds. A mere 6 pounds separated the cut from the top 75 anglers.
The sight fishing trend took off during the second round with the lack of wind, which had blown for the first day as strong as 30-miles per hour. In addition, there was an obvious move by keeper fish moving from deeper water to shallow water.
“You can’t tell it from my stringer, but the fishing seemed to pick up quite a bit today,” Kilby said.
Expectations were that the fishing would continue to improve for the third day, with more fish moving to shallow water and to the spawning beds.
Day 3: Flip-Flop Day
Things flip-flopped on the third day. Every angler in the top five on day two, with the exception of Rob Kilby, dropped out of the standings. Those who flipped, included Guido Hibdon of Gravois Mills, Missouri, in first with 12 pounds, 15 ounces. Carl Svebek of Sam Rayburn, Texas, in second with 11-10, Kilby in third with 10-9, Bernie Schultz of Gainesville, Florida, in fourth with 9-6, and Clark Wendlandt of Cedar Park, Texas in fifth with 9-2.
Those who flopped included Curt Lytle, who dropped from second to sixth with 8-15 and Cody Bird, who dropped from first to 10th with 4-13. The shift in the standings came after the forecast of severe thunderstorms and heavy rain passed through the area. Still, most of the top stringers were caught sight-fishing for spawning bass, but all of the remaining five said they had to add to their stringers by fishing for staging bass getting ready for the spawn while trolling between the spawning beds.
“If they get done, it’s libel to be unbelievable,” Hibdon said. The possibility was expected to open up new avenues for the anglers to catch better quality fish. While on their beds, big fish are often finicky and once they get into the act of spawning they become hard to catch. The majority of fish that are caught are the smaller male bass guarding the nest. “Every fish I caught there was a 4- to 7-pounder sitting right next to it,” Hibdon said. “But I couldn’t make them bite. They are in there rolling around, and I think they are about done.”
Added to the mix was the weather. To this point, all of the competition days had had wind, clouds and a mix of rain and fog. The unstable weather was expected to break into a clearer, calm day for the final.
The unpredictable fishing conditions, along with the stage the fish were in, had the anglers guessing what the winning weight would be.
Day 4: Down To The Wire
Being at the top of your game with a proper game plan in an FLW Tour final might seem like a given. But with the constant changes of the tournament, and the increase in movements of fish to their spawning beds, Wendlandt’s blind-faith game plan proved to be the best choice.
Like every angler in the field, catching fish was no problem. Catching the right one though, in the 3- to 5-pound range would make the difference. While other anglers, like Hibdon, had reported seeing a growing number of 4-pound or better fish, Wendlandt had found none. If he was to catch them, he would have to literally trip over them.
That trip occurred on one fish.
“Finding fish wasn’t very hard,” Wendlandt said. “I would go on 24 high as fast as I could, and when I found one I thought I could catch I would stop.” But Wendlandt said those stops would be brief.
“You can tell when one will bite,” Wendlandt said. “And I didn’t want to waste any time. If the fish would come back up on the beds after I stopped, I knew I could catch them.”
His tactic of rushing down the bank and pitching a red Gambler tube bait, outfitted with a 4/0 hook, worked well enough to land him a limit. Only on two occasions did he slow down to work on a fish.
The first, a 4-pound, 8-ounce lunker that took more than 55 minutes to bite. And the second, an equally heavy largemouth, that he worked more than an hour trying to catch.
“I thought that one fish would win it for me,” Wendlandt said. “I just knew I had to have it.”
Without it, Wendlandt thought his chances were hampered. Running back to the weigh in, he made short stops throwing a buzzbait around flooded bushes, to catch a keeper that bettered his weight by ounces. Still, that one fish that didn’t bite weighed heavily in the back of his mind.
Single fish gain a new importance during FLW Tour weigh-ins. The format is a far cry from the days when anglers carried their bags to the scales and plopped all of them down at once. On the final day, each fish is weighed one at a time in the form of a five-man shootout. The anglers catch are brought in black bags to five Ranger boats and dumped in livewells so no one, not even the other anglers know what the other has.
To start things off the previous day’s leader weighs in one fish, then sits down as the second angler has to beat that weight, and then third place and so on.
Svebek and Kilby were the first to drop.
With Schultz, Hibdon and Wendlandt left, each with one fish left, the importance of ounces became monumental.
Schultz, needed a 2-10 to take the lead. He weighed his last at 3-9, moving him to 12-15, and wondering if the others had enough.
The one-fish format, created the excitement as Hibdon needed 3-6 to take the lead with his last fish. It weighed 3-4, leaving him 1-ounce behind Schultz. “That was when I knew I had it,” Wendlandt said.
He needed 1-1 to win, and in his last fish topped the scales at 1-13 for 13-12 final.
“I’ve been close so many times,” Wendlandt said. “I was beginning to wonder if winning would ever come my way. Doing it like this, against guys who are my idols, who taught me so much about fishing over the years, just makes it special.”
And an example of “The Next Generation.”