LYNN PIERCE AND DENNIS WHITED JR WEIGH IN OVER 21 POUNDS ON TRAVIS FOR THE WIN

Saturday saw 81 boats come out for the season opener of the TTZ Tournament Trail. With torrential rains around the area early Saturday morning at the arrival of the cold front, Lake Travis stayed pretty dry for us. This first event was plagued with sketchy ramp conditions, and with no public ramps in the lake anglers were forced to launch from Dink Pearson or Tournament Point. Some got stuck, but we prepared by marking off the best launching areas and had 4 wheel drives with tow straps on site to assist those that had trouble in the wet sand. Many found the fishing entertaining enough but described difficulty putting quality keepers, much less kickers, in the boat; and as predicted a multitude of patterns caught fish. But it seemed one technique, and more importantly one region, paid off in the end. In fact, we understand the top five teams had at least some water in common up in the Colorado River. Drawing boat number 15 and among the first to weigh in was the team of Dennis Whited Jr. and Lynn Pierce; after pulling their fish out of the bag we knew this sack would set the benchmark for others to follow. But in the end after the scales were closed, Whited Jr. and Pierce won the tournament with a limit weighing 21.42 pounds. Their kicker weighed 5.62 pounds, so you can do the math and surmise they had five very good quality fish. They were rewarded for their efforts with a check for $3,500; keep in mind that is at a $150 price point, and on well less than 100 boats. No wonder we stay broke…oh well, we’re having fun right? We caught up with Lynn after the weigh in and he gave us the scoop. “Pre-fishing found something real good and real consistent, so we stayed with it. Went up the river to the Perd side in practice but there just wasn’t enough water in it, so we headed up the Colorado side at around the split. Fished some good rocky areas near docks and caught fish from 4 to 6 pounds there several weeks ago. Went back a week and a half ago to check on ‘em and caught the same size with one above 7. I started feeling real good about the area. Then my dad showed me another area that was similar, so we really had two key areas to fish come the tournament.” Interestingly, Lynn shared with us that he felt a lot of fish had already spawned up in this water. Many had bloody and torn tails, and were bleeding in all the right places to indicate such. He had found 58 degree water there several weeks back, and has seen 60 to 61 degree water recently. “Today we caught those fish in those two areas mostly and spent four hours total on ‘em. We caught a couple of fours to start us off and had our limit by 8 am. We had 19.5 pounds by 9:30 and culled up to our final weight by the end of the day; it was one of the best days I can remember on Travis! We were talking about needing to cull a ‘little three pounder’ at one point in the day...then looked at each other and laughed when we thought about it for a minute. I mean, this is Travis you know! We later got it culled, and were nursing one about four pounds so decided to come in a little early. We figured it would take 24 pounds or so to win, so we were happy our bag held up!” The pair used jigs with a craw trailer nearly exclusively, and casted repeatedly to key areas. When asked what trailer specifically they were using, Lynn laughed and said he needed to keep a little bit to himself…we understand Lynn. You are off to a heck of a start in AOY points gentlemen, congrats to you both! Coming in with a great bag of fish at 18.72 pounds, good for $1,700, was TTZ team member Brian Mater and partner Chris Woehl. They also had five solid fish, and were fishing a similar pattern. Brian shared the details with us. “Spent three days practicing on New Year’s weekend, and that is really all the pre-fishing I was able to do. Caught ‘em good on a jig and a crankbait in 10 foot and less then. The lake level stayed pretty consistent so I was hopeful they’d stay up there.” Apparently they did. Brian went on to tell us more. “There was a little pressure up in the areas we were fishing, but we stayed with it all day and it paid off for us. We threw the jig a lot, then went back over the area with a crankbait and kinda turned ‘em back on…the crankbait was a Lucky Craft Rick Clunn 1.5. Just a different approach I guess. We caught 15 keepers all day and culled a 15 pound sack!” Brian mentioned they really didn’t break off any big ones that they knew of; just one fish broke off immediately on the hook set. Brian would like to thank Jack Allen’s Kitchen, Barley Swine and TTZ. Chris would like to thank Omega Jigs, Rod Slick, BBG Marine and Live2Fish.org. Well done guys! Third place honors went to Gary Weimer and Dan Gibson, who have had considerable success on Travis of late. If you remember, they won the ABF/TTZ open event in December; and this third place finish added $1,150 to their fishing fund. The 18.42 pound sack came complete with a 5.76 pound toad. “We hadn’t been on the lake since that tourney in December y’all had. We figured with lake levels and the water getting a little warmer the pattern would hold up…it seemed to. We kept the boat in about 10 foot of water and fished the mouths of creeks until we got in about 7 foot, and then would head back out. Couldn’t get bit any further back than that. We caught most of the fish on the bank to two or three cranks out. We focused on three creeks primarily in the Lago area and around Cow Creek,” said Gary Weimer. Gary and Dan lost one good fish on a crankbait they never saw. Catching nine keepers all day, they had one “small” 2.77 they could never cull. They found the water to be about 61 to 62 degrees, and most of their fish were caught on the spinnerbait. Gary also added, “We’d like to thank God first and foremost, our families for their support, and TTZ for a well-run tournament. There are a lot of very high caliber anglers in this thing, and most of them could win any event at any time. We’re looking forward to the rest of the season, and trying again. If you win one of these TTZ events you have done somethin’!” Thanks Gary and Dan, we appreciate your support. And we have a feeling we’ll be interviewing you again. Congratulations are also in order for our Big Bass winners, Brent Parish and Jared Hagaman, with a 6.32 pound Lake Travis pig. Brent caught the big girl and told us the big fish story that put $800 in their pockets! “Caught her around 11:30 around these two docks that were all by themselves. At that point we only had two fish in the livewell and a bunch of dinks. The river channel ran in pretty close, but where the docks were sitting was pretty shallow. Fished shallower there than we had all day...I’d say about 10 foot or so. She bit a shaky head with a Zoom finesse worm. Just kinda swam toward the boat with it, didn’t thump it or anything like that. She really didn’t even fight that hard, just swam from one end of the boat to the other and Jared netted her. That fish changed things for us a little bit.” You bet she did. Well done Brent and Jared! Congrats to everyone that cut a check including several other TTZ team members in the money: Jared Smith, Dan Taylor, Charles Whited and Brian Hughes! Special thanks to our sponsors: Tracker Marine (they had a beautiful Z8 on site tricked out at just over $38,000), FishFinders Marine, Shimano & G. Loomis, My Chihuahua Bites (who brought tons of salsa and chips for the anglers), Raesz Custom Floors, Choke Canyon Lodge, Marine Outlet, Pro’s Choice Baits (donating a huge tackle bag for first place out of the money) and GrandeBass.