Two anglers take long road to EverStart Series points titles

Wily veteran rules the West; from school of hard knocks to smallmouth success up north

In the climb to the top of the standings in both the Western and Northern divisions of the 2004 EverStart Series, both points races came down to the 11th hour: one a come-from-behind victory and the other a neck-and-neck race to cap the season.

Wily veteran rules the West

Mike Folkestad has been in this game for a long time. With 29 years of tournament bass-fishing experience under his belt, the pro from Yorba Linda, Calif., has amassed one of the most impressive tournament resumes in the West. In May 2004, he added yet another prize to his overstuffed trophy case: 2004 EverStart Series Western Division points champion.

It was a close race in the Western Division that came down to the final tournament at the California Delta. Despite strong finishes the entire season – he ultimately made at least the opening-round cut in all four tournaments – heading into the delta event Folkestad trailed Art Berry of Hemet, Calif., by 27 points and was tied for second with 2003 Western standings champ Brent Ehrler of Redlands, Calif.

But fortune has a way of shining on Folkestad, who has amassed a string of Western Bass, U.S. Open and WON Bass victories throughout the West over the years. Berry, whose three top-10 finishes in the first three tournaments gave him a decisive lead in the points, faltered at the delta and finished in 48th place. Ehrler, too, barely missed the first cut. Folkestad, however, made the opening- and semifinal-round cuts that week and ultimately finished the tournament in third place.

Folkestad overcame his 27-point deficit to Berry and won the standings with 761 points.

“I went in there thinking there was no way I was going to win Angler of the Year because Art had a pretty big lead in the points,” Folkestad said. “I just wanted to have a good tournament and bring home some bacon for my wife.

“I felt pretty bad for Art because I think, in his mind, he thought he had it locked up. Honestly, this would have meant a lot more to Art than me because I’m so old and pretty seasoned, and this would have been his first time. But he told me that he was glad that it was me.”

For the 63-year-old Folkestad, consistency was the key to his success this year no matter what the fishing venue. While the Western Division is defined by its California tournaments that feature sometimes-massive bass, the year started at relatively light-fishing Lake Pleasant in Arizona. There, Folkestad finished in fifth place.

The next event, Lake Havasu, saw catch numbers increase and Folkestad made the opening-round cut again. However, Friday at Havasu, which was a spawning tournament, saw him fail to catch a limit for the only time the entire season and he ended up in 20th place.

“I feel I’m stronger at deepwater fishing and when the fishing’s tough,” said Folkestad, who said he caught the bulk of his fish this season on a drop-shot with a Berkley Power worm or Roboworm. “It’s easy to throw a cranking plug or spinnerbait and catch shallow fish. Everybody can do that.”

After that, Folkestad – many of whose career wins have come on desert impoundments like Lake Mead – welcomed the change of scenery as the tour moved into Northern California with Clear Lake and the California Delta.

“For me, I’ve fished desert lakes so much that I like going up north just because it’s different,” he said.

And it was also fruitful. At Clear Lake, Folkestad again made the opening-round cut but withered in the face of some heavy bass action on day three and ultimately finished 15th. That was also the tournament where Berry caught a 12-pound monster largemouth on day two and seemingly seized control of the yearly standings with his second runner-up finish of the season.

But Folkestad – among others – had some big-fish tricks up his sleeve for Berry at the last stop, the California Delta. Some huge fish crossed the scale at the delta, not the least of which was a season-record 12-pound, 9-ounce largemouth caught by Bernie Gaunt of West Sacramento, Calif., on day one.

Folkestad drop-shotted his way into his heaviest limit of the year – 20 pounds, 3 ounces – on day one and made his fourth opening-round cut in four tournaments. In doing so, he also managed to oust Berry for the points title after Berry couldn’t come up with the big kickers that are a prerequisite for success on the delta.

“Art just happened to have a tough tournament,” Folkestad said. “I didn’t even fathom that I’d be in the running.”

Folkestad ultimately ended the tournament in third place – his best finish of a good year – but even if he didn’t win the event, he ended the regular season with a flourish. In Saturday’s finals, he wowed the crowd with a monstrous kicker bass that weighed 11 pounds, 5 ounces. It was the second-biggest bass he has ever caught in competition (his biggest weighed 12-13) and was the heaviest fish ever weighed in during an EverStart final round.

“Actually, I should have won the tournament with that big one, but I just couldn’t pull it off,” he said. “I caught that fish at 8:30. After that, 2 1/2-pounders were the best I could catch.”

From school of hard knocks to smallmouth success up north

Charlie Hartley is a self-professed student of bass fishing’s school of hard knocks. Longtime a shallow-water largemouth bass angler, about 10 years ago the Grove City, Ohio, pro began to learn the tricks of the deepwater smallmouth trade. His efforts paid off in 2004 when he won the standings title in the smallmouth frenzy that is the EverStart Series Northern Division.

Like the majority of the points races in the EverStart Series this season, Hartley’s standings victory came down to the last tournament of the season. Locked in a tight battle with Milton, Ontario’s Bob Izumi heading into the Lake Champlain event, Hartley scored his best finish of the season – second place – and handily walked away with the points title. With 731 points, his closest challenger ended up 34 points behind him.

“I’m tickled to death,” Hartley said. “I’m so proud of that. I mean, look at the guys who fished our division, guys like Dion Hibdon. It doesn’t mean that I’m a better fisherman than Dion, but for one season up north I was.”

Hartley began the season with a 21st-place finish in a lightweight, rainy affair on the Mississippi River at Red Wing, Minn.

The next event, launched on the Detroit River with access to western Lake Erie, was supposed to be a sort of homecoming for Hartley. A rabid tournament angler for years – he has also competed in a plethora of Wal-Mart BFL and FLW Tour events, as well as the EverStart Eastern Division – in the last decade Hartley made a concerted effort to learn the ways of smallmouth fishing to complement his largemouth technique. Much of that training came on the smallmouth Mecca that is Lake Erie.

Unfortunately for him, on day two in Detroit he came back with two dead fish in his livewell. That cost him dearly at a tournament where everybody was catching limits, and he finished in a season-low 39th place.

“That was at my place; it was on my end of the lake,” Hartley said. “It cost me 17 points.”

Luckily for him, the Northern Division returned to Erie for the next event, this time on the eastern end out of Buffalo, N.Y. There, the leading limits mostly came out of deep water under blustery conditions – conditions that favored Hartley and his proficiency with drift socks and deep jigging.

“The wind is my friend,” he said. “I like to run drift socks. Sometimes I’ll run as many as three of them.”

With three good limits in three days and an 11th-place finish at the second Erie tournament, Hartley maneuvered into a close second place in the standings with just one event left: Lake Champlain. And, perhaps even more than Erie, Champlain has really been his turf. Earlier in the year, Hartley fished just one FLW event, Champlain, and he finished ninth.

“What can I say? Champlain has been good to me. I’ve fished really well there,” he said.

That trend would not end in the Northern Division. After quietly making the opening-round cut, he advanced to his first and only final round of the season. That Saturday, he popped his fourth solid limit of the week and finished in second place.

Despite a strong final push by Art Ferguson of St. Clair Shores, Mich., no one else really came close to challenging Hartley for the points title.

“Charlie doesn’t win a lot of tournaments,” he said, laughing, “but he can find a way to get into the top 50. And that 10 grand is enough to get you to the next tournament. I’m just glad I was able to finish the season in the top 10 so I could re-qualify for the FLW Tour.”

Hartley realizes that winning the standings in the Northern Division, which sees more limits cross the scale than perhaps any other EverStart division, is a true accomplishment.

“There are people who can only dream about catching fish like we caught up there this year,” he said.

One of the more compelling aspects about his standings win is that Hartley didn’t weigh in a single largemouth bass the entire season. Every single fish he caught was a smallmouth. Perhaps even more interesting, though not entirely surprising, was that he professed to catching almost all of his fish on the Northern Division’s favorite bait: a green-pumpkin tube.

“I’ll tell you what, my wife and are kind of becoming aficionados on these Great Lakes,” he said. “It’s just incredible smallmouth fishing.”