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| Reese caps off one of best seasons in decades |
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The final tournament of the 2010 Bassmaster Elite Series season was supposed to be on the Arkansas River, but flood conditions forced a venue switch to Fort Gibson Lake about 25-30 miles away.
The field had only one day of practice on the lake, which was veteran pro Tommy Biffle’s home water. Everyone expected him to win, and Biffle did. But with a shallow cranking bite and persistence, Skeet surged into another second-place finish. He ended the regular season atop the point standings with two wins, three seconds and a fourth in one of the best seasons in decades.
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“Losing a couple of 5-pounders back-to-back on the final day was tough because I’d have loved to have won three tournaments this season,” he said. “But that’s the way it goes, and now I’m looking toward the post-season tournaments in Alabama.
“Fort Gibson was a much better event for me. The river was going to be full-on shallow with jigs and crankbaits, but they moved it and it turned into a full-on, so-called structure lake. The fish were out, but not really too deep … maybe 10 feet for me, but most of mine were less than two feet deep.”
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Fellow pro Mike McClelland of Arkansas keyed in Reese on a shallow cranking bite. Reese threw the RC 2.5 and 3.5 around the shallow rocks, saying color didn’t matter because he was burning it so fast the fish reacted with little regard to color. “I was burning and grinding through the rocks so hard that I was grinding off bills after a couple of hours,” he said. “I had been throwing jigs shallow but not crankbaits until Mike clued me in, and then I went back through my areas just grinding. I caught two or three good ones each day on the crankbaits and some on a Football Jig.” Reese threw the crankbaits on 15-pound-test Berkley fluorocarbon line on his 7-foot Wrght & McGill Skeet Reese Tri-Gressive SGlass cranking rod. The reel was a prototype, and Reese will announce his new reel sponsor at the ICAST show in Las Vegas next week. |
The late venue switch caused Kelly Jordon to scramble. “I caught ‘em on a Flat CB DR and a BDS 3,” he said. “Had I gone shallower sooner I would have caught them much better. The second day I was expanding my areas and caught only about 14 pounds. I had some keepers on the BDS 3 to go with some rats, but I should have caught them better.” Lack of quality bites despite the number of fish kept Jordon pushing to try to locate better fish. |
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“The whole deal was shad colored crankbaits even though the water was off-color,” he said. “They were not deep. They were shallow. Three feet was kind of deep. My trolling motor was dragging and hitting rocks where I was catching them.”
Gerald Swindle struggled in the lone practice day on Fort Gibson, failing to catch a legal keeper and growing frustrated at the inability to pinpoint anything significant. “I shook off four or five at the end of the day but never caught a legal keeper and don’t really know what was around there,” he said. “I was just doing what I could. I started off on the first tournament day at the marina area and caught a limit in about an hour before skipping shady docks with brush.” He did the same thing on the second day before going upriver to flip vegetation and didn’t get keyed in on a shallow crankbait bite. |
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“I never got that text memo about shallow cranking,” he said. “Those rocks are hot and it’s not something we do at home, throwing a crankbait in two feet of water, so I didn’t even think about that. I caught one on an RC 2.5 pretty shallow but it wasn’t anything to convince me to keep doing it.
“I’ve never had a season where I missed four checks. Never. But I was just barely missing them and finishing in the upper 50s (in the standings). I felt like I was chasing my tail all season. But I qualified for the Classic in New Orleans and I like that place. I’m going to spend some time down there and I think with it being in February, it will be a good tournament.”
Casey actually was fired up about the switch to Fort Gibson and keyed in on a small area “about the size of a 30-acre pond,” he said, where he targeted deeper outside turns of the channel hitting the creek bank.
“In practice I had one about 4 and another that was over 5 on a Pop-R, so I bent the hooks down and caught some more good ones and a few on a jig,” he said. “There weren’t any blowdowns or brush or anything in there, so I didn’t figure anyone would find it.
“I was boat No. 11 and the first day when I pulled in, right behind came Stephen Browning, Brent Chapman and another boat. We just all made a little circuit in there. They got some key bites but I never got one over 3 pounds. The wind got up and the topwater bite died, too.”
Casey was working an RC 1.5 crankbait in black/chartreuse, and said when the sun got high he switched to the Bull Bream color.
Takahiro was set to do one of his favorite things on the Arkansas River – power fishing in shallow water – but that flew out the window with the shift to Fort Gibson.
“My practice on Arkansas River it gave me a chance to go shallow and fish my strengths with shallow cranking and flipping or pitching,” he said. “When they moved it I thought I’d be ready because I fished in an Invitational there, but all my homework and practice for the Arkansas River meant nothing.
“I know the safety reasons for the switch but it still was one of those things that was tough. I had to have a really good tournament to make the Classic but didn’t. I tried every tournament to fish the best I can, and the way we ended up I’m not happy at all.”
Takahiro threw an RC 1.5 and 2.5 on shallow points in areas with shad that were less than 5 feet deep.
