Waves, Wind Lead to Cancellation of Day Two
During Empire Chase

Buffalo, N.Y. (July 24, 2007) – As part of the Northern Run, anglers visited Buffalo, New York last week during the ninth stop of the Bassmaster Elite Series season. Lake Erie and the Niagara River hosted the top anglers in the world as they all vied for the prize-money and coveted Angler of the Year (AOY) points, not to mention bragging rights for conquering such a difficult body of water.

Lake Erie is the tenth largest lake in the world with a surface area of more than 9,900 square miles. One of the primary outflows of Lake Erie, the Niagara River, was also fair game for anglers this week. With both bodies of water, especially Lake Erie, known for the potential to have big waves and wind, anglers knew this week would be a fight to the finish.

Lucky Craft’s Skeet Reese came out unscathed this week and still in the top spot in the AOY standings, finishing 13th during the Empire Chase. As the story goes this year, practice didn’t go well for the California native, but he was able to find one little area he would end up relying on for most of the weekend.

“It was the same deal as usual,” Reese began. “The first day of practice was horrible, but day two was a little better. I probably could have had about 17 pounds had it been a tournament day. The last day of practice, I could have had about 12 pounds. I didn’t end up finding a whole lot, so I had to go with what I knew worked.”

After weighing in 18 pounds and 1 ounce on Thursday and battling the waves and wind, Reese was glad to hear BASS’ decision to cancel day two of the tournament. He did not want to go out and fish the river in the conditions he saw Friday morning.

When all the anglers were able to get back out on the water Saturday, Reese was having a frustrating start to his day.

“I caught one fish right off the bat but then lost three big ones in a row,” Reese said. “Obviously I wasn’t pleased about that. I caught one more and then my trolling motor got stuck in the down position.”

After going a long time without any bites and finally getting his equipment in working order, Reese was finally able to catch a limit with a dropshot and weigh in 19 pounds, 12 ounces for a two-day total of 37 pounds, 13 ounces.

“It looks like the fish were keyed in on some hard spots,” Reese said. “They were around rock piles in 22 – 25 feet of water. If you could get around them, you could see them on the graph and that’s really what I was trying to do. Overall it’s not a top 12, but I’m pleased. All I can really ask for is to stay in contention for the AOY title, and I did that, so I think I finished well.”

Reese’s next stop is the second Major of the year in Syracuse, New York on Lake Oneida and Onondaga Lake. Competitive as he is, Reese admits it will be very relaxing to fish with no points on the line.

“It will be a really nice break to fish next week,” Reese concluded. “My competitive juices will start flowing once I get there, I’m sure, but it will be great not to have so much pressure on me. I want to catch them, and I want to do well even without AOY points involved. To come across some fish and win a Major would be pretty cool.”

Finishing in 26th with a two-day total of 35 pounds, 10 ounces was Lucky Craft’s Takahiro Omori, who was still fishing with an injured right hand. Pulling out a good finish despite his obvious disadvantage was pleasing to the Texas resident.

“It was a challenge, but sometimes things happen, and you have to find a way to work with it,” Omori said. “Honestly, I’m glad it’s over, but I’m also very glad to have finished where I did. The good news is my hand should be okay for the next tournament, so I made it.”

Omori’s goal this week was to keep his hand in the best condition possible while also having a decent finish; and he was able to accomplish both. His injury did hinder him a bit this week, as he was disappointed about losing some quality fish when he couldn’t quite land them with his left hand.

In addition to his hand injury, Omori ended up in a back-up boat after fighting 10-foot waves on day one. He lost an hour and a half of fishing and was also in the first flight to check in, so time was not on his side. However, Omori was pleased overall, as he was able to find two patterns that worked well this week.

“I was doing two main things,” Omori explained. “First, I was fishing shallow jerkbaits, just as I did on Lake Champlain – the Pointer 78 and Pointer 100 (Sunfish). When I wasn’t throwing the jerkbait, I was fishing in 35 – 45 feet of water on offshore humps, dragging a tube for those deep fish.”

Lucky Craft’s Gerald Swindle came to Lake Erie with the assumption he’d be able to catch his fish on a deep-diving jerkbait. However, by the second day of practice, he had only caught a few fish on it and couldn’t find anything he thought would put him in contention.

“I realized I was going to have to slow down and fish deep,” Swindle said. “After I came to this realization, practice started turning in that direction. I had to do a lot of idling around and even got a little nauseous at times with all the wind and waves. I ended up being able to see the fish on the depth finder in about 28 – 34 feet of water. Once I found that, I was able to find three or four big groups of fish on the last day of practice.”

According to Swindle, there aren’t many times in a year where one will see three spinning rods on his deck, especially rigged with baits he plans to throw in 35 feet of water. But that was the plan this week, as he wasn’t able to find a good reaction bite on Lake Erie.

The bite became the least of Swindle’s worries on day one of the tournament, as he was able to get to his spot and catch a limit without any major issues. The problems arose after five fish were in the boat and waves began crashing over the bow.

“The waves just started building and building,” Swindle explained. “The waves were crashing hard over the front of my boat, and it was lightning and pouring so hard I could barely see. I got ready to get out of there and realized my trolling motor was stuck down. So there I was, laying on the front of the boat with six- and seven-footers crashing over my head, with no rain jacket on because I couldn’t move in it. I took the trolling motor apart and an hour later, I finally got the bracket up.”

Troubles didn’t end there for the Alabama native, as after he got his trolling motor unstuck, his big engine blew, and he was getting seasick. It didn’t seem like it could get any worse.

“I definitely didn’t feel 100 percent,” Swindle admitted. But he kept right on fishing, trying to cull the limit he had put in the live well earlier that day before the havoc began.

“I’d sit in my driver’s seat, throw the bait out the back, drag it, sit there and look at my depth finder,” Swindle said. “Every time I’d get a bite, I’d stand up to jerk and fall all over the front deck. It was miserable, but I caught some big ones like that believe it or not.”

It became a battle of survival on day one, but Swindle made it in with a 16-pound, 2- ounce bag. After the cancellation of day two, Swindle had some time to think about his game plan for fishing again with the full field on Saturday. He couldn’t have known what was in store for him just outside the break wall early Saturday morning.

“I blew the lower unit up three miles from the launch site,” Swindle said, almost not believing it himself. “I was trying to race a guy behind me to my best waypoint. I ended up getting there an hour and a half later, and he said he had about 20 pounds from that one spot. It was just one of those fluke deals for me, and I missed the whole morning bite. It was a long battle on day two, and I’m really fortunate to have caught what I did.”

Swindle weighed in 16 pounds, 13 ounces on Saturday, finishing his week in 45th with a total weight of 32 pounds, 15 ounces. He is now looking forward to going back to Lake Oneida for the Major tournament.

“Last year we caught them really good there jerking,” Swindle said. “I’ll be looking to throw the Slender Pointer 112 and the Pointer 100 DD. They bit those baits really good last year in colors like Ghost Minnow, and I think they’ll do it again this year.”

Swindle admits he learned a lot on Lake Erie this week and plans to take those experiences with him as he fishes in Syracuse.

“I have a really hard time on these Great Lakes because they’re flat, and I look for too much structure,” Swindle concluded. “I’m automatically looking for a 4- or 5-foot drop, and when I realize I should only be looking for a one-foot variation, it gets tough. You may idle for an hour in one direction in 34 feet of water, not catch a thing, and then have it drop to 32 feet and start catching them. I hope to take that knowledge to Oneida. I have to stop looking for such drastic changes and look for more subtle stuff.”

Lucky Craft’s Kelly Jordon had a good practice, finding some rock piles with some big fish along with some deeper spots, as well, but admits there was one problem in his pattern – one he couldn’t necessarily control.

“I think too many guys found the fish and smoked them in practice too,” Jordon said. “No one caught them on the areas I found in practice, including me.”

Jordon decided against making any big runs this week, mostly because he didn’t want to get stuck in the bad weather.

“I wanted to get through this one with a decent finish,” Jordon said. “This is a crazy place, and you can get killed out there. I wish I would have made farther runs, because a lot of guys caught them really well down the lake. I never went farther than about 15 miles from the take-off location.”

Hindsight is always 20-20, but he made the best decisions he could at the time. According to Jordon, most anglers who were catching them well were fishing on the south side of the lake in a place called Dunkirk.

Even though Jordon wasn’t catching the weights he needed, finishing 83rd with a total two-day weight of 26 pounds, 14 ounces, he admits he had fun amid the frustration.

“I was mostly using a dropshot but did use a jerkbait some,” Jordon said. “I stayed with the deeper fish and dropshot, but I don’t know exactly what happened to those bigger fish. I really thought I could catch 18 pounds or so a day. It’s really frustrating because I knew how to catch them, but it just didn’t work out.”