Thomas and Omori Make Top 50 Cut at Grand Lake

Grand Lake, Okla. (June 5, 2006) – Grand Lake proved difficult this week as anglers competed at the sixth Bassmaster Elite Series tournament of 2006.

Deep fish plagued some anglers, while others just couldn’t seem to get that big bite no matter what they threw. Joe Thomas had the best finish of the week for Lucky Craft, making the cut to 50 on Friday but coming up just shy of the top 12 cut to finish 21st. Thomas found the fish, but couldn’t seem to hone in on the sizes he needed to fish on Sunday. Even without making the cut, Thomas felt accomplished overall, knowing he did his very best.

“I figured out, pretty early on in practice, you could catch a lot of fish on topwater and jerkbait,” Thomas said. “I was catching them on a Lucky Craft Gunfish 95 (in MS American Shad) and on some Lucky Craft Pointers, but couldn’t get more than a couple keepers a day and they weren’t very big. The last day of practice, I committed to staying offshore and I Carolina rigged and threw a jig all day.

“As for the Gunfish 95 though, I was fishing it with a feather tail I added and I loved it,” Thomas added. “I like the Sammy too, but when the water is a little stained, like it is here, the big Gunfish will call those fish up. I think a lot of people overlook that bait. Everyone knows how good the Sammy is because it has such a great history, but people need to figure out the Gunfish can also be a great tool.”

Location was important in this tournament and Thomas shared the few spots he had with several other anglers, all staying respectful of each other’s space and honoring each other’s water.

“I found three or four places where I felt there were some good fish, and when I got a bite it was a good one,” Thomas said. “I was getting multiple bites, but it just wasn’t enough. I think I basically just ran out of fish. When you only have one or two spots to work with, you can’t really expand on your water and I was limited to running back and forth between two spots. Numbers were okay, but the fish just weren’t the size I needed to make the top twelve.”

With a three-day total of 41 pounds, 2 ounces and a five-fish limit everyday, Thomas will use this top-25 finish to ready himself for the next Elite Series tournament on Kentucky Lake.

“I’ve had some really good tournaments on Kentucky Lake over the years,” Thomas said. “However, they were all either in the spring or fall. I’ve never fished the ledges out there and I think that’s what I’m going to need to do. That means getting out the Lucky Craft Fat CB and digging hard. I think it will fish similar to Clarks Hill because the fish will be on a lot of little spots and you’ll have to fish several locations to find them. I feel like I have as good a shot as anybody. As long as we’re done with the spawn, I’m cool.”

Also making the cut on Friday was Texas resident, Takahiro Omori. Omori brought in limits everyday, ending his weekend Saturday in the 30th spot, just 4 pounds shy of fishing on Sunday. Even without making the top 12, Omori currently sits 12th in the Angler of the Year standings.

“I think overall, it went okay for me,” Omori said. “This kind of tournament is my weak point – fishing in the summertime is miserable. I am pretty happy overall and think I got what I wanted out of this, because it just wasn’t my kind of tournament.”

Omori would much rather be fishing crankbaits in shallow water, but found the opposite on Grand Lake. Looking ahead to Kentucky, Omori knows it will be another deep-water tournament, but is looking forward to throwing some Lucky Craft crankbaits and seeing what he can come up with.

“Mostly I was catching my fish on a finesse worm and fishing deep water here on Grand Lake,” Omori explained. “I’m glad this tournament is over and I’m looking forward to the crankbait fishing we’ll be able to do in Kentucky. It’s going to be another deep tournament, normally fishing in about 20 feet of water and I’ll probably be throwing the Flat CB D-12 or D-20. It’s not my best style of fishing, but all I can do is the best I can.

“My style is shallow cranking and I love to fish shallow with the Lucky Craft BDS series,” Omori added. “I always go check the shallow areas on the first couple days of practice, and will do the same in Kentucky. But this week, I never found anything shallow – it was all very deep fishing.”

 

Less than a pound shy of the top 50 cut on Friday was Gerald Swindle, finishing his week in 61st. Choosing to fish shallow, like many others, seemed the right idea at first, but didn’t produce enough weight to make the cut.

“This tournament turned out to be a big decision-making tournament,” Swindle explained. “You could choose to fish shallow or fish deep. I chose to fish shallow because I had a very successful shallow water experience in practice. I did fish deep for a little while, but, at that time, didn’t feel like fishing deep was better than fishing shallow. I felt like shallow would be just as good, but the deep fisherman actually excelled in this tournament, so it was a little bit of a bad judgment call on my part.”

Swindle thought 12 pounds a day would be enough to make the cut on Friday. On average, that’s exactly what he brought in, but it turns out that wasn’t the magic number.

“The deeper fish were about a quarter pound bigger on average,” Swindle said. “I didn’t quite know the weight it was going to take to make the cut, but I thought I could catch about 12 pounds a day in shallow water and turns out that is pretty close to what I ended up catching. I personally thought that would get you in the cut, get you a check and put you in the game for the last two days; but it turns out I wasn’t quite right.”

Swindle is, however, still in contention for Angler of the Year, sitting in 8th. Going into the next tournament, Swindle has high hopes for his performance on Kentucky Lake.

“I think most of the bigger weights will come out deep in Kentucky Lake and that’s where I will stay all three days of practice and from start to finish during the tournament,” Swindle concluded. “I’ll be hunting those one or two key areas where a man can win.”

>>> Skeet Reese

Provided by Cox Group

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