Quick Bites: FLW Atchafalaya Basin, Day 3
Wal-Mart FLW Tour
Atchafalaya Basin, Morgan City, La.
Friday, pro semifinals, co-angler finals
Waiting game … Patience paid off this week for co-angler champion Brad Rodrigue, who won in his first-ever FLW tournament. The crowd favorite from Pierre Part, La., was seeded 120th on the waiting list to fish the event, but tournament officials called his number when all but one other co-angler on the list above him failed to show up. Rodrigue blanked on day one, but rebounded on day two with a five-bass limit. Then he outdid himself with his winning stringer of 14-3 today – an enviable weight even from the pros’ perspectives. His pro partner Friday, Andre Moore, who caught 11-1, said, “It was just one of those days where I got spanked.” Rodrigue explained how he bested his pro partner on his biggest catch of the day, “Andre had practically taken the bark off this log. Then I flipped it in there and she just ran off with it.”
Love that frisky bass … Leader Paul Elias‘ biggest bass of the day came as a sort of labor of love for the Mississippi pro. “I couldn’t be home for Valentine’s day, so I told my cameraman that I was going to catch a Valentine’s bass for my wife.” He did. His kicker fish weighed around 5 pounds and anchored his 17-5 stringer Friday. While he loved the catch, the fight it put up before he landed it was a struggle. “I don’t know if I had that fish or he had me,” he said. “I’ll tell you what, these are some of the meanest fish I’ve ever caught in my life.” … Elias is fishing a productive 200-yard stretch of water that he’s been saving for the last two days. One reason he saved it, besides trying to avoid fishing it out, is that he has to cross some six or seven miles of extremely shallow water to get there. “The fish are there because the water dropped,” he said. “If my boat comes off plane at any point, I’m done.”
The ones that got away … Dave Lefebre admitted that he should have weighed in 16 pounds Friday, but he broke off two good bass in the 3- to 4-pound range. He’s been getting 40 to 60 bites a day, and that trend continued today. “Every five minutes we get a bite,” he said. “It’s incredible.” But those two lost fish hurt him. “There’s 5 1/2-pounders where I’m fishing. Tomorrow, I’m just going to go out and get them.”
Favorite fishing techniques of the week … Hands down, flipping – mostly jigs and tubes – but a lot of anglers are working spinner baits as well.
Three’s company … Unless the pros from fourth-place Lefebre to 10th-place Dwayne Horton can stage some kind of miracle, it looks to be a three-way race for the title tomorrow among Elias, Bill Chapman and Jimmy Millsaps. Elias has a strong 1 1/2-pound lead over second-place Chapman, but don’t count out the West Virginia pro. This is flipping water, and he’s a flipping expert. Plus, he’s on a lot of fish.
He zigged, then zagged … Every fish that Gary Klein has caught this week he found after the tournament started. He only had one day of practice on the water prior to Wednesday, and he caught exactly zero fish that day. “In practice, I went one way and didn’t catch anything,” he said. “So I went the other way the next day.”
Sound bite
“Please be a bass.”
– Pro Bill Chapman on what he was thinking as he lay face-down on his boat deck with his arm plunged into the murky water trying to free his line from some brush. It was, in fact, a big bass, his kicker, that hung up his line – and he eventually landed it.
Quick links, Day 3:
Photos
Results
Press release
Elias breaks away from pack
Rodrigue defies all odds, wins co-angler title at Atchafalaya