12 teams fished, 6 teams weighed in and 2 places were paid.
Bed fishing reigns supreme on Austin, and for one angler the spawn has paid off greatly. Over the last four Wednesday night tournaments, Brad Casebier has won the last two, finished second twice and won Big Bass three out of the four weeks; his winnings total $1025. Even more amazing is that Brad has fished solo three out of the last four times he’s finished in the money! Here’s how it went down this Wednesday night.
Brad only had about an hour to scout before the tournament; he found a couple two to three pounders and a single six sitting on a bed. His partner Randy had told him about some fish up north, so he decided to take a risk and ran up the lake to look at some new water while there was still daylight. Brad found two beds that had some fish on them and caught the males pretty quick.
“The females were very spooky. I finally landed the second at 9:45. I shot down lake WOT, and went to the spot where I saw the big one before the tournament started; a couple of casts later I felt some weight. That fish was my biggest of the night. I boxed her and when I checked the time it was 9:55. It was pure relief that the boat started, and I slid on the bank for weigh-in at 9:58!”
Brad’s five fish limit included two fish over six pounds, and one of those fish won Big Bass at 6.37 pounds. As mentioned earlier, this is Brad’s fourth consecutive time to finish in the money. We’ve been running these tournaments for three years now and this is the longest “win” streak to date. Brad also set a new mark for the biggest solo weight at 23 pounds, congrats again Brad!
Coming in second after winning the last Wed Nighter they fished on May 12 were Blake and Waylon Pabst of Banner Sign Graphics. The brothers fished the same stretch of docks from their win two weeks prior and started catching fish immediately. Blake reported this was one of the best nights they’ve had on Austin in terms of both numbers and quality fish and tells us more.
“I had a really nice three pounder boated in the first ten minutes and Waylon followed quickly after that with another three pounder. We continued fishing down the stretch of docks catching three other decent fish to finish out our limit by 7:30.”
“About ten minutes later Waylon pitched a wacky rigged Senko into the corner of a dock and caught our five pounder. Shortly after that we caught two more solid fish back to back off one dock. It was just one of those nights, we caught fish from start to finish and had about 20 fish…every one of them was a keeper!”
The Pabst brothers do everything in a big way; from big bass to big signs, Banner Sign Graphics recently put up one of the largest banners in Austin. The banner measures 110′ x 10′ and hangs on the side of the LBJ Library and Museum.
Winning the Yamamoto and Kinami tackle pack and finishing in third place with nearly 15 pounds were ATX Bassmasters members Ander Meine and Fabian Martinez.
The big fish were biting and out of the six boats that weighed in, five teams had a fish better than five pounds in their sack. Alongside the top three teams, here are the other teams that had nice kickers.
Thanks again to everyone that fished with us; who knows what next week will bring but we’ll be out there to find out!