BIRDSEYE, Ind. (May 16, 2022) – Boater Clint Bissonett of Dayton, Ohio, caught five bass Saturday weighing 19 pounds, 14 ounces, to win the MLF Phoenix Bass Fishing League Tournament on Patoka Lake. The tournament was the second event of the season for the Bass Fishing League Hoosier Division. Bissonett earned $4,435 for his victory.
“I had 140 waypoints marking bed fish that were spawning, so I just ran through them and caught the ones I could,” Bissonett said. “Some you could catch on one cast, and some you’d have to work on a while.
“My last fish I had tried for an hour on Thursday to get it to bite and on Friday for an hour to get it to bite during practice,” Bissonett added. “At the end of the day during the tournament I didn’t have any other big ones located that would help me, so I ran back up the river and went back to that fish and caught it within 10 minutes.”
Bissonett said he relied on “typical” bed-fish baits – creature baits, tubes and finesse worms – manufactured by Bent Rod Baits to load his limit.
“This feels really good,” Bissonett went on to say. “I had a really good chance to win this same event last year, but I ended up coming in fourth. It just wasn’t my day. It was a day where everything went wrong. Every single day since then I have thought about coming back and winning. So, to finally get to go back and win feels great.”
The top 10 boaters finished the tournament in:
1st: Clint Bissonett, Dayton, Ohio, five bass, 19-14, $4,435
2nd: Chris Klosterman, Dupont, Ind., five bass, 17-10, $2,413
3rd: Brody Campbell, Oxford, Ohio, five bass, 17-8, $1,413
4th: Chris Martinkovic, Hamilton, Ohio, five bass, 17-0, $1,688
5th: Blake Knies, Jasper, Ind., five bass, 16-11, $811
5th: Sean Mickey, Terre Haute, Ind., five bass, 16-11, $1,311 (includes $500 Phoenix MLF Contingency Bonus)
7th: Nick Uebelhor, Jasper, Ind., five bass, 15-10, $706
8th: Kevin Meunier, Lamar, Ind., four bass, 15-3, $635
9th: Mike Quinlin, Mooresville, Ind., five bass, 15-0, $565
10th: Chris Myers, Madison, Ind., five bass, 14-6, $494
Complete results can be found at MajorLeagueFishing.com.
Klosterman and boater Jamil Abdullah of Indianapolis, Indiana, both caught largemouth that weighed 5 pounds, 10 ounces that were the heaviest of the event in the Boater Division. Klosterman and Abdullah split the day’s Berkley Big Bass Boater award of $590. Patrick Myers of Lebanon, Indiana, won the Strike King Co-angler Division and $2,082 Saturday after catching three bass weighing 9 pounds, 5 ounces. The Patoka Lake event was Myers’ debut in MLF Phoenix Bass Fishing League competition.
The top 10 Strike King co-anglers were:
1st: Patrick Myers, Lebanon, Ind., three bass, 9-5, $2,082
2nd: Tobie Ummel, Leitchfield, Ky., three bass, 8-1, $1,041
3rd: Ryan Sykes, Fairfield, Ohio, three bass, 7-10, $992
4th: Jeremy Johnson, Austin, Ind., two bass, 7-5, $486
5th: Troy Gorham, Indianapolis, Ind., three bass, 7-2, $416
6th: Mark Dehart, Brownstown, Ind., two bass, 7-0, $382
7th: Shon Smith, Dubois, Ind., three bass, 6-12, $347
8th: Chris Reynolds, Lewis, Ind., three bass, 6-6, $312
9th: Collin Hillen, Evansville, Ind., two bass, 6-3, $278
10th: Daniel Czaja, South Bend, Ind., two bass, 5-15, $243
James McWhorter of Hamilton, Ohio, caught the largest bass in the Co-angler Division, a fish weighing in at 4 pounds, 14 ounces. The catch earned him the day’s Berkley Big Bass Co-angler award of $290.
After two events, Chris Martinkovic of Hamilton, Ohio, leads the Bass Fishing League Hoosier Division Boater Angler of the Year (AOY) race with 496 points, while Ryan Sykes of Fairfield, Ohio, leads the Strike King Co-Angler Division AOY race with 488 points.
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