Quick Bites: FLW Series Western, Lake Havasu, Day 3

Wal-Mart FLW Series National Guard Western Division

Lake Havasu, Lake Havasu City, Ariz.

Opening round cut day, Friday

Tied at the top … How hard does it have to be for two pro anglers to fish for three days and end up exactly tied in weight? Well, for Mike Goodwin and Phil Strader, it’s probably not all that difficult to swallow since they’re both knotted up atop the leaderboard with 32 pounds apiece. Strader, for one, seemed unfazed by the close race and the tough fishing at Havasu this week. “I don’t know,” he said. “Everything’s just working, and I seem to be in the right places at the right time.” Thus far in Western action this season, he’s not kidding. Strader finished fifth at the Stren Series limitfest at Shasta Lake earlier this month, and he obviously isn’t slowing down at all here at Havasu. As for Goodwin, who dominated the first two days here, he did slow down Friday, catching just three keepers and allowing Strader and others to catch up a little bit. “I should have had my biggest bag of the week today,” said Lake Havasu City’s Goodwin, who lost a big kicker bass late in the day. “I know where he is. I’ll go get him tomorrow.” Asked if his local advantage will be of any help to him in breaking out of the tight race Saturday, Goodwin said, “Why not? Yeah, I like my chances.”

Pole position … Jay Yelas has been using a smaller aluminum boat to access backwater fishing areas that his bigger bass boat would have had trouble reaching. Today, even the aluminum didn’t help much. He got bogged down trying to get into his area and had to employ a push pole to keep moving. “It took my partner and me about four hours to push-pole into this backwater,” he said. “I had sweat rolling down my face for about three hours after that.” The manual labor paid off. “I didn’t make a cast until about noon, but then I caught a limit in about 35 minutes.”

Bobbin’ and weavin’ … Art Berry fell out of cut range with just a two-bass effort Friday, and he agonized over two lost fish that likely would have sent him into the top 10. Still, Berry was grinning about the unique method he used to catch fish here this week under wintry conditions that stymied a lot of veteran pros. “I caught every fish this week on a bobber,” said Berry, who employed an extremely light-line Float N’ Fly presentation to coax the stubborn ones into biting. “Today, it was really hard for me to watch the bobber in the wind, though, and I lost two of them. That wind kind of hurt me.”

Lake would know … Lake Havasu City pro Jayson Kisselburg made a run at the cut Friday with a limit weighing 9-2, but ultimately fell just short in 14th place. Obviously a die-hard fisherman, he was joined onstage all week long by his son and daughter, Lake and Berklee. He credited his big first catch today to Lake. “He picked the bait color I used last night based on a crawdad he found in the boat,” Kisselburg said. “That’s what I caught that fish on.”

Quick number

14-14: Weight, in pounds and ounces, of the heaviest limit of the week so far. Caught by pro Roy Hawk Friday, it pushed him way up the leaderboard, but he ultimately just missed the cut in 12th place.

Sound bites

“These are the first fish I’ve caught in seven days, so I’m glad I found that brush pile.”

– Co-angler Kim Bain, who caught her only two fish of the week off the same brush pile.

“I didn’t have to use my ice auger today. So that was a positive.”

– Co-angler Bob Bott, describing the benefits of fishing at Lake Havasu in January despite the tough bass bite. Bott hails from Wisconsin.

“Watch out for John Jr. For those of you who don’t know him, he’s the guy.”

– Co-angler Steve Lindner, describing his day on the water with teenage pro John Billheimer Jr., who rebounded from a rough first two days with day three’s second-heaviest limit, 12-7. Billheimer won the Stren Series tourney here last year at the tender age of 16, becoming the youngest FLW Outdoors champion in history.

“Every time I thought I established a pattern, I was just fooling myself.”

– Pro Gary Dobyns, who made the cut despite catching just two keepers Friday, a day he described as the “absolutely worst day of fishing. I have never lost so many 3-pound fish in my life.”