Lassagne tops 20 pounds, takes Day 1 lead on Lake Havasu
LAKE HAVASU CITY, Ariz. — When the Toyota Series Presented by Phoenix Boats made its postspawn debut on Lake Havasu Thursday, Western Division Presented by Tackle Warehouse anglers had no trouble catching keepers. Finding 4- and 5-pounders, on the other hand, proved more challenging.
Mark Lassagne caught two of those coveted 5-pounders, boosting his Day 1 bag to 20 pounds, 9 ounces. The only angler to top 20 pounds on the day, he leads Julius Mazy by 1-6, with Roy Hawk lurking in third with 18-12. Weights are tightly bunched behind those three, with 15 pounds extending all the way to 22nd place.
In the Strike King co-angler competition, George Fedor nabbed the early lead with 15-14. He’s trailed closely by Tracy Patton and Colton Underwood-Garside, both of whom also eclipsed 15 pounds from the back of the boat.
Spawning pair supplemented Lassagne’s postspawn pattern
Lassagne didn’t shy away from divulging the key to catching his two kickers – a hearty dose of luck.
The Dixon, California, native spent most of his day fishing for postspawn largemouth offshore. He started on a community hole and had around 15 pounds by 8 a.m. From there, he cycled through about 20 more spots, all between 8 and 15 feet deep, which he plumbed with finesse techniques using Okuma Psycho Stick spinning rods.
“I have a pattern going for postspawn fish that I caught a little bit deeper than I think some of the guys are fishing,” Lassagne said. “I started out at a community hole, and I caught a couple there — like a 3-pounder, one about 4. And then I kind of ran around.”
After culling up to about 17 pounds, he pulled up on “a special little spot” and caught a 5-pounder. Deeming it to be a spawning male, he wondered aloud to his co-angler whether there might be a female nearby. His next cast proved his suspicions correct, as he boated another over 5.
“I pulled up on a spot, threw at it, caught a 5-pounder, then I turned around, I said to my co, I go, ‘I wonder if the female is up there too?'” Lassagne said. “And I turned around and threw back and got another 5-pounder. So that brought me from 17 (pounds) to 20.”
Lassagne primarily fished the main lake on Day 1. He’s targeting different types of offshore habitat, but so far, it hasn’t seemed to matter. He also has a few spots in the riverine portion of the reservoir in his back pocket, which could come in handy with the wind forecast to increase as the event progresses.
“If I run into problems, I can go up the river,” he said. “But most of the fish were in the main lake today. I kind of hop-scotched around about 20 different spots, and there wasn’t really one spot that was better than the other. I pretty much caught ‘em on all of them.”
Lassagne isn’t sure he can replicate the bite that produced his two big ones. However, his strong opening bag might give him enough cushion that he doesn’t have to. He culled several bass over 3 pounds Thursday, which has him confident that he can catch 15 to 17 pounds with relative ease. If he can add one above-average bite per day and hit 18, he likes his chances of contending for his first MLF trophy.
“If I can catch 18 pounds a day, I think that’s going to be enough,” he said. “I think I can keep catching them — 15 to 17, 18 if I can get a couple good ones, 20 if I get lucky again.”
Big bait equals big bites for Mazy
Fishing the full Western Division schedule for the first time after spending the past four years traveling east for tournaments, Mazy turned to a tried-and-true Western approach to trigger Havasu’s above-average largemouth. After catching a few small keepers using his Garmin LiveScope to target postspawn fish on the main lake in the morning, he locked a glide bait into his hands for the rest of the day.
The Phoenix native had identified a handful of spots on the lower end of the lake where bass had shown interest in his glide during practice. He was able to get just enough of them to commit to climb into second place.
“I seemed to get just about one good bite every hour throwing a glide bait,” Mazy said. “So, I just kind of locked that in my hand and just covered a lot of water with a glide bait – a lot of places that I had followers in practice, fish that came out and looked at the bait. I just kind of re-ran those places – angles, shade lines, that kind of stuff – with a glide and caught some quality fish doing that.”
Mazy said it got to the point that he could pretty much call his shot when a fish would at least express interest in his glide. As is typical for big-bait bassin’, he didn’t get a lot of bites, but the ones he got were the right quality.
“I just feel like those bigger postspawn females are looking to feed up, and that big glide bait just checks all the boxes for them,” he said. “So, knowing that, I just kind of put it where it needed to be, and I just kind of targeted those deeper banks or steeper banks with laydown wood, and I could kind of tell where there would be a fish set up.”
Glide bait bites can be notoriously fickle from one day to the next, so Mazy knows he needs to find other ways to fill his limit with 3-pounders each morning. If he can do that, he’s hopeful he can add a couple kickers each afternoon.
“I need to catch a limit ‘Scoping in the morning – throwing a worm, shaking the minnow a little bit,” he said. “But once I get a limit, I think there’s enough fish to get two to three bites a day doing it. You definitely have to commit. It’s not just pick it up and run down the bank and get a bite. But I do think I can generate at least a couple bites each day doing it.”
Top 10 pros
1. Mark Lassagne — 20-9 (5)
2. Julius Mazy — 19-3 (5)
3. Roy Hawk — 18-12 (5)
4. Matt Shura — 17-6 (5)
4. Kyle Goldstein — 17-6 (5)
6. Kyle Grover — 17-3 (5)
7. Wade Curtiss — 16-14 (5)
7. Austin Bonjour — 16-14 (5)
9. Joe Mariani — 16-9 (5)
10. Cristian Melton — 16-8 (5)