Million dollar man

On Saturday, Sept. 6, NASCAR Winston Cup driver Ryan Newman won the Chevy Rock and Roll 400 NASCAR race at Richmond International Raceway in Virginia. For his win he was awarded $160,970.

Exactly one week later, David Dudley, a professional bass angler from Manteo, N.C., won the 2003 Wal-Mart FLW Tour World Championship on the James River in Virginia. For his victory, he was awarded $500,000.

Welcome to Richmond, Va., the end of the road for the 2003 FLW Tour and a place where history was made.

The FLW Tour Championship presented by Castrol Sept. 10-13 marked the first time in history that a half-million dollars was awarded to an angler in a bass-fishing championship.

The history does not stop there.

Even pros who did not catch a single bass in the championship were awarded $12,200 just for qualifying for what is now the most coveted big-money event in professional bass fishing. In all, the 2003 FLW Tour Championship paid out a total purse of $1.5 million.

The FLW Tour Championship once again featured its unique bracketed head-to-head matchups, which provided some real excitement for fans attending the daily weigh-ins.

This year’s bracket highlights included a come-from-behind victory by Kevin VanDam over Terry Bolton of Paducah, Ky., and an epic battle between Tommy Biffle of Wagoner, Okla., and Greg Hackney of Gonzales, La.

On opening day there were more than a few gasps when Bolton opened up a solid lead over VanDam. Bolton’s limit weighing 6 pounds, 13 ounces dwarfed VanDam’s single keeper weighing 1 pound, 1 ounce. But on day two the Chevy pro from Kalamazoo, Mich., demonstrated why he is the “VanDaminator.” He toted a 12-pound, 13-ounce limit to the scale to send Bolton packing.

Biffle was all grins when he toted his own five-bass catch of 12 pounds, 13 ounces to the scale on day three to challenge Greg Hackney of Gonzales, La., for a final-round berth. Amazingly, however, Hackney extinguished Biffle’s fire with an astounding 14-pound limit of James River bass, the heaviest limit of the tournament.

The day-three clash between Kellogg’s pro Clark Wendlandt of Cedar Park, Texas, and VanDam was another dogfight that would have sent full-grown pit bulls whimpering away from the stage.

Despite the smiles and compliments that VanDam and Wendlandt graciously traded with each other on the stage, one could not help feeling the let’s-take-this-outside-and-settle-this-with-fishing-rods tension in the air.

In the end, the VanDaminator prevailed with four bass weighing 6 pounds, 12 ounces to Wendlandt’s two-bass catch weighing 2 pounds, 3 ounces.

Heartbreak happened elsewhere in the brackets as well. Matt Herren of Trussville, Ala., could not advance with a two-day catch of nine bass weighing 14 pounds, 14 ounces because he was clipped by 7 UP pro Shad Schenck of Waynetown, Ind., with 10 bass weighing 16 pounds. Bill Chapman of Salt Rock, W. Va., caught 10 bass weighing 14 pounds, 7 ounces in two days, but it fell far short when compared to Hackney’s two-day total of nine bass weighing 18 pounds, 7 ounces.

As one pro eloquently said, “It stinks to get eliminated like that, but what this format essentially boils down to is having to beat only 13 other anglers for a half-million dollars, and I kind of like those odds.”

One thing is for certain. Bass fishing is no longer just man against beast. Human drama, which has long been missing from the sport, is now certainly part of the equation.

Conditions

Name a weather or water condition, and the pros got it on the James River.

Sunny skies and comfortable temperatures graced the field for the first two days. Wind and rain blitzed the James on day three, and clouds and drizzle persisted on the final day. But forget the weather; the tide was the real topic of discussion throughout championship week.

The biggest curveball the 48 pros and co-anglers received from Mother Nature was an unusual high tide on days one and four.

Many anglers had studied tide charts and carefully incorporated the tide times into their fishing routines. But when the James greeted anglers with water over the docks at Osborne Landing on opening day, the tide charts became obsolete. A full moon caused a higher than normal tide, and a low pressure system in the Atlantic had the whole Chesapeake backed up with water.

The predicted time of the tide turns was thrown completely out of whack, and the low tide never really occurred. Days two and three saw a little more of a tide change, but on day four many anglers again complained of no tide change.

When the low pressure system finally moved on shore on day three, it produced an all-day rain that muddied creeks for the finalists on day four. Indeed, the James River provided an obstacle course worthy of a $500,000 payday.

Dominant patterns

One of the trends of those who were successful on the James River in September was a tendency to run the low tide window from south to north as the tide fell each day. The dead low tide way down the James was early in the morning, while the low further up the river was not until midmorning.

Several of the top five anglers fished routines that involved starting in creeks far down river – Kittewan, Powell, Herring and Wards – and fishing north until they ended up somewhere around the Appomattox to catch the low tide again.

Additionally, top anglers revealed that the absolute best time to catch fish was the first hour of incoming tide.

Another commonality among the top finishers was that they were fishing in the backs of creeks. Even if there was not a complete tide cycle out on the main river because of the high water, the far back reaches of the creeks still had some drop in water level at low tide.

Finally, a couple of anglers found catchable fish suspended in the backs of creeks and targeted them with shallow-running crankbaits.

Naturally, the only dissenter to buck every aspect of these patterns was the Manteo Machine, David Dudley. Cutting against the grain, he ignored the tides and the creeks and ended up winning the event on a main river flat.

Shad Schenck: 5th

Seven-Up pro Shad Schenck finished fifth with three fish weighing 3 pounds, 10 ounces in the final round.

After defeating Herren in round one, Schenck survived a bout with George Cochran of Hot Springs, Ark., with a limit weighing 5 pounds, 3 ounces to advance into the final 12.
Schenck’s James River game plan was carefully orchestrated to fish the tides.

“The plan was to run down and fish a few places in the creeks down river during the outgoing tide,” Schenck said. “Hopefully, I could catch one or two quality fish in those creeks. Then I would run back up above the tide and make a little milk run up the Appomattox. The last place I would end up was a numbers spot in the back of the Appomattox to finish a limit.”

Schenck’s plan worked perfectly on day one when he brought in a limit weighing 11 pounds, 5 ounces. But on day two, his plan was derailed by motor trouble.

After making his lower creek run and catching his bonus 2-pounder, his motor quit. Schenck eventually got another boat, but in accordance with the rules, he had to restart his tournament day, which meant releasing his 2-pound starter bass.

“At that point I went straight to my limit spot in the back of the Appomattox to play catch-up,” he said. “I got there just in time for the tide, and I caught a limit that kept me from being eliminated by Matt.”

On day three, Schenck once again tried to get a big fish from his lower river areas but did not stay long. He decided to gamble on beating Cochran with a smaller catch from his trusty limit area.

“Those other creeks held better-quality fish,” Schenck said. “I wanted to save them for the last day in case I made it.”

Again, the Team 7 UP angler went back to his little fish hole and caught five keepers to beat Cochran.

His trusty “numbers” spot was actually a small creek way up the Appomattox.

“There was a logjam in this 90-degree bend in the creek,” Schenck explained. “When the tide turned and started to come back in, it created a little eddy, and it would load up with 12- to 13-inch bass.”

But 12-inch keepers were not going to win the 12-man shootout on the final day, and Schenck knew it. He scratched his small-fish area from his final day’s plan and spent more time trying to catch the better-quality fish he had found in Kittewan, Powell, Herring and Wards creeks.

“I got two bass early and thought about going back to the upper Appomattox, but I knew it was going to take about 10 pounds to win, so I kept looking for bigger bites,” he said.

Schenck caught his bass on a variety of baits. His primary lures were a Bandit 200 crankbait in a crawdad color scheme, two spinner baits, a 1/4-ounce black buzzbait, and an assortment of 4- to 5-inch worms.

“I had more rods on my deck in this tournament than I have ever had out in any tournament,” he said. “As I moved farther back in a creek, I tried to reduce the profile of my bait. I would start outside the creek with a buzzbait and 3/8-ounce spinner bait. When I got to the back flat where the arrowheads (pads) were, I threw a smaller 1/4-ounce spinner bait. When I got to the wood in the very back, I flipped a small worm.”

Cody Bird: 4th

Cody Bird of Granbury, Texas, posted a fourth-place finish in the championship with two bass weighing 3 pounds, 15 ounces.

In order to make the finals, Bird caught a two-day total of nine bass weighing 14 pounds, 14 ounces to beat fellow Texan Kelly Jordon. He then caught an 8-pound, 14-ounce limit to surpass Todd Auten of Lake Wylie, S.C.

Each day Bird ran three primary spots with the tide. The first area was a pair of small tidal drains in the back of the Appomattox River. The next spot was a creek in Turkey Island. The last stop was Falling Creek near Richmond.

The two tidal drains in the Appomattox River were “bonus” spots that Bird fished first while waiting for the tide to get right on his other two places.

“The critical thing for me was the tide switch,” he said. “I had to be at Turkey Island and Falling Creek when the tide was changing from outgoing to incoming – that’s when the fish bit. I would flip a jig at those two little drains, trying to get a big bite until the tide got low. The first day I caught a couple of good fish there early to get my day started. On the third day I caught a 4-pounder there, too.”

Bird used a pitching presentation all week. He rigged his flipping sticks with 60-pound-test braided line and tied a 3-foot, 25-pound-test Vanish Fluorocarbon leader to the bait.
His two primary baits were a 3/8-ounce green pumpkin jig with a green pumpkin Kicker Fish wacky worm as a trailer and a watermelon red Baby Brush Hog with a 1/4-ounce sinker.

In the Appomattox, Bird flipped the jig in pads around the small drain ditches. In the creeks, he fished laydowns in 3 feet of water with the small Brush Hog.

“They would not bite on those laydowns until the tide switched,” he said. “My knowledge of saltwater fishing and tides helped me more than I thought it would. I could tell by looking at the tide when I needed to leave one area to get to the next one before the tide switched up there.”

Bird’s plan held up until the last day, when he waited too long for the tide to switch in Turkey Island. “I got off to a great start,” he said. “I caught a couple of good fish from the two drains, and I knew I could fill out my limit between my other two spots. But when I got to Turkey Island, I waited what seemed like forever for the tide to turn. When it did turn, the water did not come in like it had been. I kept waiting for the fish to bite, and they never did.”

When Bird made his final run to Falling Creek, he was in for a surprise. “It was rolling mud from the rain the day before,” he said. “Since I had spent so long in Turkey Creek waiting for the tide, it was too late to run back down the river to do something else.”

Rob Kilby: 3rd

Rob Kilby of Hot Springs, Ark., finished third with three bass weighing 5 pounds, 15 ounces after fishing past Tim Carroll of Owasso, Okla., and Stanley Mitchell of Fitzgerald, Ga., in the first two rounds.

Like other top-five finishers, Kilby had a tide-running strategy that started south on the James and worked north with the low-tide window. As the low tide got later each day, Kilby would run further south and cover more ground.

On the first day, he started in Gunn’s Run, and by the last day, he was starting at the mouth of the Chickahominy. Each day he fished 10 to 15 spots and always ended up in Four Mile Creek.

Kilby was concentrating on the backs of creeks at low tide, where he discovered that fish were suspended over creek channels.

“The creek channel might be anywhere from 4 to 7 feet deep,” he said. “But the fish were suspended in the 2- to 4-foot range over the creek channels.”

He avoided the obvious laydowns in the backs of creeks because of the constant fishing pressure they received and instead focused on the underwater channel.

“Whether they have a log to suspend on or not, they are still going to suspend over those channels,” he said.

Kilby probed the channels with a shallow-running crankbait tied to 20-pound-test line to make the bait run even shallower.

“It’s easy to fish under suspended fish,” he said. “If the crankbait went under them, they didn’t see it. Their strike zone was between 2 and 4 feet.”

Sunshine was a key element in Kilby’s pattern.

“When it was sunny, they would suspend better and I think they could see the bait better,” he said. “When the clouds rolled in, they didn’t position as well over the creek channels – they wandered around more.”

Kilby knew his pattern well. Under the sunny skies of days one and two, he brought in five bass each day weighing 11 pounds, 12 ounces and 7 pounds, 10 ounces, respectively.
“They were biting so well that on the second day, I had a limit by 8:30 and went practicing the rest of the day,” he said.

When the clouds and rain blew in on day three, however, Kilby struggled. He brought in just three bass weighing 4 pounds, 12 ounces, but it was still enough to advance.

The clouds continued to hinder Kilby’s creek pattern on Saturday and prevented him from finishing his limit.

Harmon Davis: 2nd

Weighing in 9 pounds, 4 ounces, Harmon Davis of Marlow, Okla., had the deplorable honor of finishing second – just 4 ounces shy of winning $500,000. To make matters worse, Davis weighed in just four bass on the last day and admitted that he had lost a couple of keepers. Instead of $500,000, Davis got $75,000 – not exactly a miserly sum, but still $425,000 short of the winner’s check.

“What I really missed was an opportunity to fish full time,” said Davis, part owner of a paint and body shop. “Four more ounces and I could have made a full-time career out of this. Now I have to go back to work.”

Like several of the top finishers, Davis also discovered his prime bite when the tide was switching from outgoing to incoming in the backs of creeks.

His plan each day was to run down the James to Kittewan and Herring creeks early and fish the low tide for a quality fish. Then he would run back up ahead of the low tide to Johnson Creek to finish his limit.

Despite the funky tides, Davis made the plan work and was one fish short of being the only angler to weigh in a limit every day.

“The main key was when the tide switched from outgoing to incoming,” he said. “That first 30 minutes to an hour of incoming tide was absolutely the best in the backs of those creeks. As the water drained out on low tide it was a clear-tannic color. When the tide turned to come in, baitfish would feed on the river water flowing back into the creek. It would get a swirly look to it, and the bass would just go nuts on those baitfish.”

No matter which creek he was in, Davis employed the same strategy. He went all the way back and idled over the back tidal flat until the creek channel was detectable again.

“The first place where the water got 3 feet or deeper was best,” he said.

Davis focused his fishing efforts on laydowns. On the first day he caught the majority of his 6-pound limit by flipping a Reaction Innovations 4-inch tube in goby green rigged on a 1/4-ounce weight. But on the second day, he discovered that the fish had repositioned on the laydowns.

“The fish suspended on the laydowns,” he said. “The only way I could catch them was to run a shallow-running crankbait down the sides of the logs and make contact with the wood the whole time.”

After making his adjustment with the crankbait, Davis caught bass with ease and brought in a limit weighing 10 pounds, 3 ounces on day two to handily defeat Aaron Martens of Castaic, Calif.

On day three, he again relied on a shad-colored crankbait and his milk run to beat Land O’Lakes pro Keith Williams of Conway, Ark., with a 10-pound, 8-ounce limit.

Davis’ tide-running game plan began to gel perfectly on the last day when he ran south early and caught a 4-pound bass from Herring Creek and another keeper from the main river. With his kicker fish in position, he ran to Johnson Creek to fill out his limit. But the tide was not on his side.

“The tide never really switched and came in good like it had the previous two days,” he said. “I knew it would be later and I waited on it, but it never got right. That water had to be coming in to get those fish going, and I only caught two more.”

David Dudley: Champion

Put big money – really big money – on the line, and Castrol pro David Dudley comes to life. Dudley was a threat to win the first M1 event in 1999 that paid $600,000. Then he won the second M1 event in 2002 to claim $700,000.

With $500,000 on the line at the very end of the Road to Richmond, he again rose to the occasion.

Besides the half-million-dollar first-place prize, what made Dudley’s win at the FLW Tour Championship so compelling was his utter disregard for basic James River bass-fishing conventions. Consider his candid comments about practice and tides.

Practice: “It makes no sense to me to practice on a place like the James River. Practice for 12 hours a day for a couple of bites? I’m not doing it. It’s just not worth it. In tough tournaments like that, I want to fish by instincts. Each hour of practice I’m out there not getting bites, I’m just destroying my natural instincts. I just want to find a little something to get me started.”

Dudley gave himself five days to practice, but he says in reality he seriously practiced about three.

Tides: “The tide thing is emphasized way too much in this game. People talk way too much about that stuff. You know how many major events have been won on the James running the tide? None. Look at the records. The reason everybody likes low tide is because anybody can catch a bass off a log that only has a foot of water on the end of it.”

Dudley caught his better fish at high tide and once again proved that in tournament bass fishing, conformity bears consistency, but being unconventional wins tournaments.

Dudley’s winning pattern was actually very simple. He caught the majority of his winning fish during the week in the very last bay of the Appomattox River before it dumps into the James River.

What caught Dudley’s eye about the flat was that “nobody was fishing it in practice,” he said. “It’s just a nothing-looking flat with a few laydowns, concrete abutments and grass beds on it.”

Dudley found the area after making a quick pass down it in practice. In fact, Dudley never even fished it; his co-angler practice partner Darrell Stevens of Roseland, Va., did.

“I was eating lunch,” laughed Dudley. “I idled over the flat up to this concrete wall, cut the motor and told Darrell to make a couple of casts. He caught a keeper on a spinner bait. I idled him to a laydown, and he caught another keeper. I told Darrell it looked like a good spot, and we went and put the boat on the trailer for the day.”

Not knowing what he had located, the Castrol pro started elsewhere on the first morning of the tournament and caught only one bass before stopping on the flat that afternoon.
“I missed a couple of fish right off the bat and then caught a keeper,” he said.

No one gave Dudley a second thought on day one when he weighed in two bass for 4 pounds, 7 ounces. At that point he was overshadowed by the romantic tales of the tide runners who were weighing in 10-pound-plus stringers.

On the second morning, he started on the flat and began to discover some interesting things about it.

“I thought I was fishing the key stuff on the flat, but as I spent some time on it, I began to learn more about it, namely how much the fish were relating to the grass beds,” he said.

He again missed several fish in a row. “That’s the one bad thing about not practicing; I forget how to set the hook and reel one in,” he said.

Once he got his hookset back, Dudley caught three fish off the flat, and then left and caught another one elsewhere. He returned on high tide to finish his limit on the flat and weighed in 7 pounds, 10 ounces on day two.

On day three, he had his limit by 9 a.m.

“I finally remembered how to set a hook,” he said. “After two days in the area, I now had a better understanding of how the fish were relating to the grass and laydowns on the flat.”

His day-three limit was his best yet, at 11 pounds, 10 ounces.

On the last day, Dudley caught eight fish and broke off two key bass that might have pushed his final limit of 9 pounds, 7 ounces even higher. He left the door open for another angler to catch him, but none could.

Dudley’s primary bait on the flat was a spinner bait of his own creation – one that will undoubtedly be showing up soon in the fishing section of a Wal-Mart near you.

“I call it the Rabbit Dog spinner bait because it goes in the bushes and grass and gets them out,” he said.

The 1/2-ounce spinner bait features a single gold 4-1/2 willow blade, a chartreuse and white skirt, and a pearl white curly tail trailer. He fished the bait on 17-pound-test Trilene XT on a Kistler Helium series rod with a Shimano Curado reel.

He also caught a few keepers on a Bandit Series 200 crankbait in root beer and chartreuse.

Regarding the tide, Dudley said his place was better on high tide but is adamant about not giving the tide any credit for his victory. He prefers to think of tidal bass as current-related bass.

“These bass are not going to move to eat,” he said. “They grew up having food brought to them by current – whether it’s flowing one way or another, it’s still current. Knowing how to present a bait so it comes to the fish naturally in the current is the key. You have to bring it right by their nose to get them to eat.”

As Dudley stood on stage accepting the $500,000 check with his wife, Angela, and their new baby son, his emotions kept him speechless. In the audience, tears streamed down faces and looks of admiration fixed on a new champion who just made tournamentfishing history.

The Road to Richmond has ended, but bass fishing’s superhighway is just getting started. Seeyou in Birmingham in 2004.