The first Bass Champs fishing tournament of the year and things were looking tough on Lake Amistad. From all of the pre-fishing accounts discussed leading up to the launch, anglers were finding the fishing difficult and big fish were hard to come by. But everyone knew that someone would figure them out.
For the ArmyBassAngler team of Chuck Guthrie and Chad Nelson, the game plan was to fish slow and deep. This was Chad’s first big competition in two years. Between all of the preparation for and deploying to Iraq, his excitement almost could not be contained. “I thought I was going to throw-up this morning sitting in line at the ramp,” he recalls. He also talked about how much it means to him to be back with the ArmyBassAnglers following the DEFEND part of the mission statement…..”I am pumped to be SUPPORTing and FISHing again!”
The team began the day trying to find fish on the electronics on river bends where there was trees and rocks. But they were nowhere in sight, so they headed towards the bank to fish just a little shallower and around some trees. Guthrie hooked up first on a deep diving FURY Lures F18 crankbait but was unable to get it to the boat. Nelson immediately hooked up in the same area using a Texas rigged Lake Fork Trophy Lures 10” worm on his new Dobyns Rod and the first one was in the livewell. Guthrie proceeded to catch two more good fish on a JaRod football head jig. Within ten minutes the team had almost ten pounds with those three fish and the day looked like it was going to be awesome.
But, as fishing goes, they turned off just as fast as they turned on. Guthrie caught one more later in the day, but that fifth keeper would continue to elude the team the rest of the day. This was the first day the teams got to put their new weapons to use, Dobyns Rods, Air Sports Watch, TipSee Lights and Zero Tolerance knives and they were “blown away,” figuratively speaking, with the sensitivity and strong backbone of the rods, the balance enhancement of the watches, the multiple uses of the light at the ramp and on the water and the sharpness and durability of the knives. “We were equipped to do some serious battle/fishing—HOOAH!” Guthrie and Nelson, managed to secure critical points and bettered well over half of the 205 teams and is focused on the next engagement on Lake Falcon.
Overall the organization had a great turnout from ArmyBassAngler Pros and ArmyBassAngler & MarineBassAngler Coalition Pros across the board. 205 Team would compete with $53,300.00 paid out. Total number of fish brought to the scales was 637 with an avg weight of 3.14lbs. 103 Team would bring in a limit with 56 Team blanking. For individual standings visit http://www.basschamps.com/basschamps/results.cfm?tournament_id=116&type=team&yearSelected=2011&junior=no
HOOAH!
SUPPORT.DEFEND.FISH.