55 teams fished, 43 teams weighed in and 11 places were paid. Use the scroll bar on the right to view all the results.
The final regular season Fishers of Men event took place Saturday May 16th on Lake Travis. As usual, our local weather reports were way off as a “60% chance of isolated light and variable showers” turned into a solid several hour monsoon. 55 teams braved the conditions, while TTZ team member James Roberts and his partner Brian Burns took top honors with over 16 pounds!
Roberts and Burns caught some of their better fish early in the day with moving baits, specifically shallow cranks and top waters. Focusing on the mid lake, the team adapted to conditions as the day started fairly warm and muggy, and transformed into heavy rains and high winds around 10 o’clock. “The bigger fish were essentially on the bank early this morning”, TTZ team member James Roberts told us just after the weigh in. He and his partner picked apart Lake Travis and culled up throughout the day with Gary Yamamoto Senkos. The winners also mentioned bites during and after the steady rains could be found in the 10 to 15 foot depth range. While many teams moved to the shelter of covered boat docks to ride out the intense storms, the dedicated team forged ahead and improved their sack throughout this challenging day.
As this 2009 season has proved time and again, bass don’t read the same books we do. Conventional wisdom said the fish would remain shallow on reaction baits as they had in practice, but for many of the top teams that would not be the case. Fellow TTZ team members Robby Crabb and Brian Booker caught the lion’s share of their fish out deep and also managed to take home a check. “I don’t normally throw a drop shot, and wouldn’t have today, but what we had been doing just wasn’t getting bit as well”, shared TTZ team captain Robby Crabb. “Brian and I had been catching some good post spawners on jigs, but the better fish just weren’t interested in them today…maybe it had to do with this crazy weather.” The other top teams on Saturday we spoke with also shared similar patterns, as the day proved puzzling for most.
The always consistent team of Jeff Pitrucha and Ronnie Trower took home Angler of the Year honors as they closed out the season with another solid bag, and maintained their top spot. They caught the better part of their limit on flukes, which had been a steady money winner for them throughout the year.
