Bass Champs Central held its second event of the 2010 season on a nearly full Lake Travis! The lake had been been ravaged over the last few years by historic drought conditions; reaching a low of 634 feet above sea level toward the end of 2009, it had only been lower twice in history.
Enter El Nino, and a few short months later Lake Travis was swelling at 677 feet above sea level at the time of this tournament. Rising steadily, most of the debris and cloudiness in the mid to lower lake had subsided and made the water color exceptionally good for such drastic water level changes; and even the backs of the bigger creeks in the upper end were fairly clear.
However, an unusually cold winter and rising cold water made fishing tough for most teams. To illustrate the point, half the field either didn’t weigh a fish or threw their meager sack back into the lake, and it took just over 9 pounds to get a check.
In practice many teams reported finding fish in the backs of major creeks as some areas of the lake warmed into the 60s. But when tournament day came, the water temps dropped well back into the upper fifties after the cold water runoff from the recent winter storms. All day Saturday it stayed overcast and breezy, and just didn’t bring those temps back up for most shallow patterns to hold.
But a few teams still managed to find their fish in the backs of the creeks they’d located during practice. One of those teams were Landon Glass and Jayson Kisselburg and TTZ had a chance to talk to the winners about their success.
Glass and Kisselburg practiced up until a week and a half prior to the prefish cut off day for a total of three days .
“We covered the lake from above the narrows to the lower end and hit every creek that came up on the GPS. I had no idea Travis had so many creeks! Only three of the many creeks we checked held a concentration of fish.”
Landon found the fish in the back of one of the major creek arms towards the lower end of the lake. He reported the last 300 yards of the creek were gin clear and had laydowns and “beanie” trees in it. He found the mother load here and told us he saw upwards of 200 bass up to 8 pounds that day!
“I cut the hook off of my tube and pitched it to a few of them and they ate it. At that point I knew these fish were catchable.”
The pair did not return to this area for the remainder of practice so they wouldn’t give the location away to other competitors.
On tournament day, having drawn boat number 58, there were already two boats in the creek. But due to low light conditions, it was assumed the other competitors couldn’t see what they were sitting on. The team of Glass and Kisselburg got in line and worked their way in.
“Once the other boats left we positioned ourselves in the middle of the creek in the 8 foot range and lowered the Power Pole and played defense. There was another competitor chomping at the bit to get in!”
While anchored, they made long casts with 1/8 ounce weighted tubes and wacky rigged Yamamoto Senkos. When there were no other boats around, they would lift the Power Pole and make a pass to the back of the creek and would then return to play defense again. Glass and Kisselburg saw every fish they caught, but the fish were not locked on beds. In fact, they were actually cruising in and out of the creek. The team’s big fish was 8.62 pounds, and was fooled on the Senko.
“We only had one big fish we saw that we couldn’t catch, and it was around 6 pounds. That fish would have culled our smallest…a 3.5 pounder. We even had the long idle timed to make sure we weren’t late for the weigh-in!”
Congratulations to Landon and Jayson on a very impressive 24.82 pound sack worth $20,200! They would like to thank Big Bite Baits, McCoy Fishing Line, Quantum reels, Super Pork, Gibb’s Propeller and 6th Sense Custom Lures.
Complete results are available here.