Denny Brauer, Camdenton, Mo.:
"It's taken sixteen years--you don't ever know if it's going to happen. I didn't know I'd win this Classic. Last time I finished dead last. Sometimes you make good moves and sometimes bad moves. It seems like everything went right this time."
"Yesterday morning, about 10 minutes into the day, I felt like I had a pretty good chance of winning this tournament (the 7-6 he caught in the first five minutes). I usually don't swing anything over a 4-pounder into the boat, but this time I did because I thought it was only a three-pound fish."
"I found these fish on a jig during pre-practice but the bite got tough. It was hard fishing. I was fishing laydown logs on a mud flat (no docks). I had my limit around 9:30 a.m. It took the pressure off for a little bit, but I knew all of those other guys behind me (Clunn, Cochran, etc.). The deepest I caught a fish was in three feet of water. I used a 7 1/2-foot Diawa rod and reel. Used 25-pound clear Stren."
"Bait was a generic tube bait (black/red), Texas-rigged with a 5/16-ounce slip sinker. They wanted a quite, subtle presentation. This lake gets a lot of pressure, so maybe the tube jig in dirty water was the key. The locals probably don't use such a set-up (tube jig in dirty water)."
"I just happened to find a good stretch of bank (7-8 miles uplake before the river) that everybody just bypassed. I was trying to get reflex strikes and had to fish slow, and hard."
George Cochran, Hot Springs, Ark.:
"I was fishing a four-mile stretch of river and had about 10 or 12 laydowns, stumps, and logjams, all on main-river points. I just rotated around them. And it seems that every time I'd come back to one the second time that there'd be a fish there. About every place I fished, I'd catch at least one. I never caught more than two. "
"The first day I had all good fish. The second day I lost that five-pounder. Today I never had a big bite. Evidently, I caught all of the good fish."
"My bait was a Strike King Series No. 4 crankbait (chartreuse/green back/orange belly), a new (hard plastic) lure that's just been introduced on the market. This bait will go pretty deep (he said it's designed to run about 12 feet deep) but I didn't want it to go more than 4 feet deep and that's why I used the heavier line and held the rod tip up high. I was using 20-pound Gamakatsu line. It wouldn't hardly hang up at all with that big wide bill. Using a 7-foot Diawa rod."
"I would make up to 10 casts to one piece of cover. The first day they'd hit it on the first cast. Yesterday and today it took 10 casts in a row. It's hot, they had plenty eat, and weren't in a biting mood, so that's how I'd trigger them into hitting."
"I tried spinnerbaits, tube jigs, leadhead jigs, and settled on this one. During the pre-practice, my son started catching fish on the crankbait and he was fishing behind me. I tried some other crankbaits but this one was the only one that I could get them to hit. So during the off limits I took it out and used it on some of the lakes around home, and I developed a lot of confidence in it."
"The key was in getting this bait down deep enough to run it along the submerged tree limbs. A lot of times the bait would dart off a log and the fish would be there by the time I could wind in the slack line. It was kind of like the action of an injured baitfish. This bait has a really wide wobble and when it would bounce off of something, I'd get the strike. I caught 14 fish today and four were keepers."
Randy Blaukat, Joplin, Mo.:
"I stayed in the more stained water and was running isolated, shallow cover with logjams, docks, rockpiles and laydowns. The key was in the isolated cover, though. (Areas in the lake and river)."
"I rotated between three lures: MegaBass Deep X 100 (shallow running) crankbait (fire tiger) around the perimeters of the cover. After that, I'd try a 5-inch Lucky Strike Greenie Grub (bluegill) on a 3/16-ounce slip sinker (Texas rigged) around the perimeter of the cover. (Used 30-pound Tough line on the crankbait and 18-pound on the grub.) If that didn't work, then I'd flip a 3/8-ounce Lunker Lure Rattleback Jig (black/blue) with a Biffle Megacraw (black/chartreuse)."
"I just fished slow and tried to work every bit of the cover thoroughly and just tried not to stir up the silt too much. More than anything, the key was in just fishing slow. The bigger fish seemed to come on the pieces of cover that were in deeper water. I caught fish as shallow as 1 1/2 feet and as deep as 3-4 feet deep. I didn't catch my last fish until 2 p.m. I had seven keepers today, six yesterday and five on Thursday."