209 teams fished, 136 teams weighed in and 27 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 April 4th, Bass Champs central division held its third event of the season on Lake LBJ out of McNair Park. On a tough, primarily post spawn day, many teams struggled. Fish were reported to be lethargic, and bites were short strikes and swats in many cases.
Not finding the conditions as bad as most, Lowell Bennett and Charles Reagan took home a cool $20,000.00, plus an additional $200 for the Sure Life bonus. Lowell and Charles caught their bag fishing shallow, real shallow…it is LBJ after all! But they did not get off to a great start, as they mentioned at weigh in. In fact, they did not land a keeper until 10:30. The fish were caught on green flukes and senkos, but it had to be worked very slowly around wire grass areas.
Ricky Durmon and Michael Gideon were close, claiming second with 17.12 pounds. Dale Read and Dwayne Kinley took third with 16.44 pounds. They also showed all the post spawn whiners that LBJ is a mystery by catching a bed fish in April…go figure. They too caught their fish on senkos and flukes, but really focused their efforts on shallow wood docks.
Big bass honors went to Charles Hice, who caught a 10.28 pounder! He reported catching it on a jig under a dock around mid-day. Interestingly, it was the very first fish weighed in under Bass Champs’ new “Lunker Program”. Since the issues noticed in the Champs event on Choke Canyon a few weeks ago when the big bass explosion took place, Bass Champs allows any fish over ten pounds to be brought in early for weigh in; hats off to Champs for reacting so favorably to big fish preservation in the tournament setting.
We talked to Chuck Guthrie at the weigh in, who had a nice 19th place finish with partner Randy Sitz. Showing adaptability by abandoning pre-fishing information early in the tournament after a lack of results, they stumbled on an isolated stretch of wire grass and began throwing spinner baits. They found when they would bring the bait through and “kill it” at the edge of the grass, allowing the bait to flutter and fall erratically, the bass would smoke it. Congrats to Chuck and Randy!
If there was any recurring theme for the day, it was the wire grass that 4 of the top 5 teams reported catching at least a portion of their fish in. Though many teams hit these grass patches, the high finishers reported they observed the less successful anglers to be fishing it way too quickly.
Bass Champs looks forward to its next central event on Lake Belton May 2nd.