256 teams fished, 143 teams weighed in and 35 places were paid. Use the scroll bar on the right to view the results of places in the money.
Click here for the full results.
On March 7th, Bass Champs Tournament Trail’s Central Region held its second event of the 2009 season. Lake Belton had seen a week of warmer days and nights, and hopes were high for some big sacks. High winds (what’s new) made the catching more difficult, and muddied the waters for some of the prevailing patterns during pre-fish.
But as is always the case, some anglers roll with the punches and figure them out. It was an amazing day for Killeen’s Craig Gilbert, who fished solo, and is always a threat on Belton. He and his wife Carla finished second there in the Tuff Man Championship just a few months ago. Anyone who knows Craig knows that he was popping the jiggin’ spoon. In a pattern that involved deeper water, points, and locating bait fish, Craig scared up a very impressive first place finish at 17.86 pounds, and a monster Belton kicker at 7.30 pounds. $20,000 isn’t a bad check to take home in any context, but when you get to take that check home by yourself you are really looking at a great day.
Locals Joe Medrano and Sam Jones took home a nice $5,000 check for a solid 16.18 sack, while the ever present Maynard brothers, Ronnie and Eddie, took third with a close 16.14 limit.
We were able to speak with Jeff Pitrucha and Scott Dyer after the tournament, who hauled in 15.76 pounds for 5th place. Jeff let us know exactly how their day played out. “We probably caught 70 fish today, and lost 2 fish that would have culled us up pretty good.” Tough to swallow for sure, when you look at how close they were to a win. They fooled their bass primarily by deadsticking flukes in water from just inches to 10 foot deep.
TTZ team members John Guerra and Paul Stokes also finished in the money with their 5 fish limit weighing 13.24 pounds. Paul mentioned they had found a particular area during practice holding some good fish. The team had their limit fairly early and moved to another spot hoping to pick up a kicker. Stokes was confident they could have culled their sack to the 15 pound range if they had stayed but made the decision to gamble and go for the win.
Another great event by the Bass Champs crew, and it is certainly worth mentioning that a record was set yesterday in Belton with a field of 256 boats! Congratulations again to Craig and everyone else who finished in the money.
