TTZ Trail – Travis 4/13/13

With dangerously low water levels on Lake Buchanan, the last regular season tournament of the 2013 TTZ Trail landed back on the shores of Lake Travis. 118 teams participated in what turned out to be some of the best weather we’ve had all season, but despite the favorable conditions and reported numbers of fish caught finding the right bites proved challenging for most of the field.

Charles Whited and Steve Magnelia caught 11 keepers for the day, including a 6.98 pound fish that made a run at winning Big Bass of the tournament, with their best five weighing 17.27 pounds to win the tournament and claim the $3,800 first place prize.

They started their day running up the river throwing cranks baits and finished around the Lakeway area with Flukes and Brush Hogs. Charles gave us some insight to their day and a decision that almost cost them the victory.

“We caught our best three fish on cranking and had a limit up the river. Around noon one of our two pounders was struggling in the live well so we decided to release it and avoid the one pound fish care penalty, figured with a later flight we had plenty of time to catch another solid fish. We went over two hours without another keeper and started second guessing our decision to let that fish go! We scrambled running to places we had caught them in the past trying to fill our limit, but most of the places were either out of the water or had a boat on them. Around 3 pm we finally caught our fifth fish and started working our way back toward the weigh-in.”

Turns out the decision paid off for Charles and Steve as they won the tournament by exactly one pound. And speaking of paying off, in addition to the first place prize Charles collected an additional $7,000 in incentive money for fishing out of a qualifying boat! Charles would like to thank Triton Boats, Texas Boat World, Power Tackle Rods and TTZ.

Taking second for the day was Brandon Bray in a huge solo effort. His bag went 16.27 pounds and earned him $1,600! We spent some time with Brandon after the weigh-in.

“I really just stayed mid lake all day, and caught every one of my fish on a jerk bait. Not a real exciting story I know, but that’s the truth! I only culled once after about 10:30, so keepers were hard to come by. But I was fortunate to get into some better fish early. All of my bites came in the same area, and really on two small spots to be honest. In the Bass-o-Ree last week I only caught small fish there but felt like some better ones were coming.”

They sure did. We asked Brandon how he felt about fishing by himself and being able to pull off such a stringer.

“The day really went my way, but another pound or two would have been nice! Seriously though, I wanna thank my Dad. I always enjoy fishing with him and he always took the time to take me, teach me and lead me. This was a big confidence booster for me though to be able to get a good bag fishing alone. I really want to thank my wife for being supportive and letting me do this. And of course I need to thank God, I could feel his presence all day.”

Awesome stuff Brandon and congratulations!

Our third place finishers were the well-known duo, and father and son team, of Flint and Danny Ray Fisher. Their five fish weighed in at 15.90 pounds and was worth $1,400. Flint filled us in on the details.

“We didn’t practice at all! That hadn’t been workin’ for us recently, so we fished memories and some spots that had produced in the past and one newer spot Danny found not too long ago. We really didn’t get many bites and only boated 5 keepers, but we lost three, maybe four keepers. Danny caught our big fish in the first five minutes, which is always nice. We stayed in muddy water, and stayed shallow; caught three keepers from the split up and the other two between the split and Cow Creek. And like I said everything was pretty shallow and caught on a 2.5 Strike King crank and an Oldham’s jig.”

Flint took a minute to reflect.

“Been a tough year for us, so we were glad to have this finish. We wanna thank Tim and Judy over at Power Tackle, and Terry Oldham of course. Also wanna congratulate Charles on the win, and Dale and Jake for the AOY. They sure deserve it! Also these TTZ events are a good time, and a well-run tournament…we can’t wait for the championship in October!”

Us either Flint! Congratulations to you and Danny Ray.

Big Bass of the tournament was an 8.94 pound Lake Travis giant won by Capital Bass Club members Kent Harris and Jason Dunbar. Kent caught the fish toward the end of the day on a jig in around 20 feet of water and mentioned they pulled her off a spot that another team, also a couple of Capital Bass Club members, had just left!

The fish added an additional $1,160 to their fifth place winnings and awarded the team a total of $2,160 for the day.

Here are the remaining teams in the money:

The regular season is in the books and it’s time to crown the Anglers of the Year for 2013. Congratulations to the father and son team of Dale and Jake Read on a very decisive finish as they topped the rest of the field by nearly 50 points!

Going through the list of anglers in the points standings realizes the level of competition in the field and further confirms the accomplishment of winning the AOY title; Dale and Jake will receive complimentary entries for the 2014 regular season and have their entry fee waived for 2013 Championship.

The Championship this year will be October 26-27, 2013 on Lake Travis with the winners taking home $10,000; as it stands, if you fished at least three out of four regular season events you qualify to fish the Championship. Details regarding off-limits, official practice day(s) and other relevant information will be released on ttz1.com. In the meantime, we’ll be running the Wednesday Night Tournament on Lake Austin through the summer and into early fall so come on out and join us…there’s big fish to be caught and plenty of opportunities to win Skeeter Real Money out of a qualifying Skeeter!