Bass Champs North Division returned to Lake Lewisville for their 3rd stop in this 2006 season. Robby Rose and Robert Alexander won this bass fishing tournament with room to spare, weighing more than five pounds more than their closest competitor. This is not the first win for this team on Louisville, and all total this makes Rose's fourth Bass Champs boat win*. 172 teams participated, and Bass Champs paid out more than $69,000 in cash and prizes - a total of 155% payback!
For the most part, the bass have spawned out and are now in post spawn mode. Those fish are already pulling back into deeper water, and with the recent cold front others are also pulling back. Water temperatures dropped about four degrees after the cool front, and for this tournament there was plenty of wind to go around. A lot of teams tried to stay on main lake points and structure, but were blown off their areas. There were high rolling waves coming across the decks of many boats.
Robby Rose and Robert Alexander won 1st place and talked about their day. "With some fish in post spawn and others pulling back after a cold front, we found most of our fish in 6'-12' along tapering points. Both of our bigger bass were caught on a watermelon Carolina rigged Strike King worm. We caught several others on a Strike King crank bait along guts between points. The key was to stay with the shad, and using the wind as our ally. Patience was very important. We didn't have a limit in the boat until about 12:30, and it only weighed 17 or 18 pounds. When the sun came out, we started fishing a little deeper. We finally caught four more keepers and ended up with 23.16 pounds." They brought in the only sack over 20 lbs, taking 1st place winning the Skeeter 200 SX powered by a 200 hpYamaha motor valued at $34,000. Their kicker, 6.34 lbs also won Big Bass honors for an additional $1,000! "We'd like to thank Bass Champs for keeping the safety of their participants at the top of their list. We'd also like to thank our Lord & Savior."
Randy White and Mark Beedlow caught the 2nd place limit weighing 18.62 lbs. They fished shallow, catching their bass on spinnerbaits & crankbaits, 13 keepers. They won $4,000 for their 2nd place finish and doubled that to $8,000 being the highest finishing qualified Skeeter Boat owner team. They also received an additional $500 for the Fun-N-Sun bonus.
Rick Helmcamp and Dean Lathrop won 3rd place with 16.40 lbs. "We fished shallow water, along windy banks with rip rap. We were throwing really light white spinnerbaits with a flash of red in them. Some of our fish also came off of shad pattern crank baits. All day we caught about 11 keepers, some sand bass, and a few short ones. We had a limit in the boat by around 9:00, and caught a full second limit by 11:00. Our biggest weighed just over 4 lbs, they were all good chunks. As long as it was overcast, the fish were biting pretty good for us. Once the sun came out, they shut down." Rick and Dean were presented $3,000 for their 3rd place win.
The Community FFA helped out with this event, and Bass Champs and their sponsors provided over $1,600 in prizes up for grabs in the open drawing. Any person present can get into the drawing with a $10 raffle purchase. The non-profit organization gets to keep all the money raised, plus Bass Champs matched the funds up to $500.
Update on the points race - top 5:
572 pts Brady Winans& Spencer Turner
564 pts Gerald Bolin & Bimmy Boyles
542 pts Mick & Lee Batson
537 pts Bradly Brister & Johnny Jenkins
534 pts Ryan Glass & Chad Williams
There are two more North region events, the next is May 8th on Tawakoni and then they'll wrap up the season June 24th on Cedar Creek. The Region Championship will follow the final event on June 25th at Cedar Creek. For more information, click to www.basschamps.com or call 817-439-3274.
*Editor's note: Robby Rose later admitted to cheating.