Quick Bites: FLW Kentucky Lake, Day 4

Wal-Mart FLW Tour
Kentucky Lake, Gilbertsville, Ky.
Saturday, pro finals second half

Ask not what your pro fishing career can do for you, ask what you can do for your wife … FLW Kentucky Lake champion Steve Kennedy said he didn’t catch a single bass over 4 pounds during his entire practice session. When it counted, however, over the last four days, he couldn’t beat them off with a stick – not that he would have wanted to. “I’ve never had four better tournament days in my life,” he said. “You can’t ask for anything more than that.” … If ever you were going to root for a guy to have his best four days and win a big-money FLW tournament, it’s Kennedy. Two years ago, he, his wife, Julia, and their dog, Louie, gave up the nine-to-five lifestyle to hit the tournament trail full time. “We moved all our stuff into storage,” Julia said. “We both quit our jobs a year and a half ago and we’ve been camping ever since.” And since then, Steve has had spurts of success by winning a number of BFL events and making several EverStart final rounds, always with Julia and Louie cheering him on from the dock. But fame and, most importantly, fortune had eluded him in his two years on the FLW Tour – until Saturday afternoon. With his $100,000 win this week, Kennedy more than doubled his entire $91,678 in FLW Outdoors career earnings dating back to 1996. When presented with the actual winner’s check Saturday, Kennedy said excitedly, “I think you can just give that to my wife.”

The price of success … Kennedy’s only real challenger Saturday, runner-up Davy Hite, already has a pretty impressive pro bass-fishing resume, including, among other things, a victory at the 1998 FLW Championship. So he took note of the eventual winner’s infectious nervousness and excitement while competing in his first FLW finals. After seeing Kennedy’s anxious, happy and even teary-eyed send off from his wife and dog at Saturday’s 6:30 a.m. takeoff, Hite laughed, “My wife didn’t even get out of bed this morning.”

Crankbait casualty … Third-place Tom Monsoor knew he was going to fish with a crankbait Saturday, and that’s what he did. However, he didn’t bank on losing the only good one he had. He found that a chartreuse Norman crankbait was his key bait and landed his two best bass with it. Then he got the bait hung up on one of the few snags in the ditch he was fishing and it broke off. He managed to fill out his stringer with other crankbaits, but the big bass seemed only to want that chartreuse color. “I had a bunch of (crankbaits) with me,” he lamented, “but I only had one in that color.” Still, the smiley Monsoor is a glass-half-full kind of guy, especially after posting his best FLW finish ever: “I’m ecstatic. I couldn’t be any happier.”

Everything and the kitchen sink … A testament to how many fish were biting at Kentucky and Barkley lakes this week was how many different ways the anglers were catching them. Crankbaits, spinner baits, jigs, Carolina rigs armed with tubes, lizards and Senkos – you name it, they used it. And they caught them. Fourth-place Mike Surman, who is also part owner of Gambler Baits, estimated that he caught some 75 bass Saturday using a variety of lures from a Gambler lizard and Bacon Rind to a crankbait. “I was throwing to the same spot over and over,” he said, “so I was trying to give (the fish) a little something different to look at each time.”

Mission accomplished … Kevin VanDam was hardly disappointed by his 10th-place finish at Kentucky Lake. He had a loftier goal in mind coming into this tournament: to make the Jacobs Cup. He put himself in a hole by missing the Beaver Lake tournament and falling down the standings list, but has now clawed his way back into championship contention – just barely. After this week and with just one tournament left, he stands in 48th place – the last Jacobs Cup qualifying spot – by one point. “The real key is that I came here hoping to earn the opportunity to fish for $500,000,” he said.

Well, you wouldn’t hang out there, either … Like many anglers dealing with water levels that reached some 8 feet above normal pool, ninth-place Gary Yamamoto worked different kinds of flooded brush to catch his fish, like willows and hardwood trees. Saturday, he ran across a strange phenomenon while exploring one kind of growth with his bait. “I found that, in the (poison ivy), there was no fish,” he said.

Misty-eyed … Another young pro enjoying the emotions of his first FLW finals was seventh-place Todd Ary. His wife, Misty, caught a last-minute flight from Grenada, where she is enrolled in medical school, when she found out he made the finals. “If I wouldn’t have found a plane home, I would have swum,” she said. “Somebody asked me if I was proud of him. The answer is ‘no.’ I would have been proud of him whether he had gotten first place or 175th. Now, ask me if I’m excited. That’s when I’ll about jump out of my skin.”

Sound bites

“Holy cow! This is the most fun I’ve ever had in my whole life. Wait, I take that back. My honeymoon was the most fun I’ve ever had.”
– Todd Ary, during Saturday’s weigh-in, who had trouble even looking at his wife in the crowd for fear of tearing up onstage.

Quick numbers

44-14: Weight, in pounds and ounces, of Steve Kennedy’s winning total in the final round. It stands as the heaviest final-round weight recorded since the FLW Tour switched to a two-day format for the finals at the beginning of the 2003 season.

10-1: Weight of Kennedy’s margin of victory over Davy Hite, which is also a season record.

Quick links, Day 4:

Photos
Final results
Press release
Kennedy claims first FLW win