Quick Bites: FLW Tour Potomac River, Day 1

Wal-Mart FLW Tour

Potomac River, Charles County, Md.

Opening round, Thursday

Million-dollar miss … Forget the largemouth bass world record, Art Ferguson has officially caught a real million-dollar fish. Unfortunately, he did it two years too late. After weighing in his decent 13-pound, 15-ounce limit Thursday, he was putting water on his fish to return them to the release boat when he noticed a foreign object sticking out of the side of one of his keepers. Turns out, it was a tag indicating that the fish was a Tyson “Power Bass.” Two years ago, the former FLW Tour sponsor hosted a promotion throughout the season where they tagged and released up to six random bass and, if a tournament angler caught it during competition, he or she would win whatever amount of money was written on the tag. As the year wore on and nobody caught the fish, the amounts went up. By the time the tour arrived at the 2005 Chevy Open at the Potomac River, they really went up. The proof? On Thursday, the tag in Ferguson’s fish – which was a simple, small plastic rod – read in small print: “$1,000,000 Fishing Challenge.” Understandably, Ferguson was excited about his catch right up until the point he read the even-smaller print on the other side of the tag: “Expires 6-26-05.” (To see the $1 million fish tag, click on the photo to expand it.)

Oh, snap! They’ll eat anything … Sometimes bass cough up some strange things in the livewell, but David Walker couldn’t believe what he found in his livewell when he sacked up his limit at Thursday’s weigh-in. First, he found a crawdad that was so big that “it looks like a lobster,” he said. Then he found a snapping turtle – a small one, but a turtle nonetheless – that had obviously had the misfortune of becoming a meal for one of his caught bass. “I’ve been doing this a long time, but I’ve never seen anything like that,” he laughed. “A snapping turtle!”

High low tide … Fishing the Potomac River is all about managing the tides. However, what happens when the tide disappears? For whatever reason, the water level on the river fluctuated very little on opening day compared to what anglers are used to here. “It was weird. I was waiting for low tide and it never came,” Jonathon Newton said. “The tide stayed up all day. I ran 10 miles up and 10 miles down from here, and it didn’t change. It was not at all like it was in practice.”

Early Father’s Day gift … Last month, proficient pro Matt Herren finally won his first FLW Outdoors tournament in FLW Series action at Lake Dardanelle. So he’s feeling pretty good about himself, right? Well, he was right up until he got schooled Thursday at the Potomac by his 17-year-old son, Jacob. Matt caught just four bass weighing 10-10 while Jacob, fishing in his first-ever tournament as a co-angler, caught a contending limit weighing 13-0. Onstage, the veteran pro was diplomatic about being upstaged by his son. “When I saw the look on his face, that took me from being in a bad mood to having a really good day,” Matt said. Offstage, though, Matt let loose with a little father-son rivalry banter. “I don’t want to hear it,” he told a grinning Jacob.

Quick number

7-3: Weight, in pounds and ounces, of Shinichi Fukae’s big bass on the pro side. It was a huge bass caught on a fishery more prone to coughing up countless 2- and 3-pounders, with 5- to 6-pounders generally winning big-bass awards. It wasn’t enough to help the venerable Shin, who uncharacteristically managed to catch just three fish total and a 107th-place performance Thursday.

Sound bite

“You want to know what the definition of torture is? Weighing in two fish when everybody else has got 15 pounds.”

– Kim Bain, who finished the day in 178th place on the pro side.