|
|
|
|
|
1
|
2
|
3
|
|
4
|
5
|
6
|
7
|
8
|
9
|
10
|
|
11
|
12
|
13
|
14
|
15
|
16
|
17
|
|
18
|
19
|
20
|
21
|
22
|
23
|
24
|
|
25
|
26
|
27
|
28
|
29
|
30
|
31
|
|
|
#11305 - 04-09-2008 15:38
Re: Falcon Reservoir Predicted to break BASS records!
[Re: Roboworm99]
|
Nunz
Bassin' USA Moderator
Veteran Member
Registered: 09-29-2004
Posts: 148
Loc: Bluepoint
|
The story behind the win:
Elias' Crankbait Skill Carried Him At Falcon
Elias never broke the 40-pound mark at Falcon, but his 4-day average was well over 30 pounds.
In BassFan's preview story of last week's Lake Falcon Bassmaster Elite Series event, Alton Jones said the anglers who'd be most successful on the southwest-Texas reservoir were those who fished their strengths. That proved to be a spot-on prediction.
Twenty-six year bass-fishing veteran Paul Elias amassed a record-breaking 132-08 4-day total at Falcon to earn his first tour-level win since an FLW event at the Atchafalaya Basin in 2003. And he did it by sticking with his strengths.
Saying Elias likes to throw a crankbait is like saying Lake Falcon has a few big bass swimming in its depths. He's a crankbait guru, and when there's a big-fish bite to be had on a diving plug, you can bet on him to be a strong contender.
At 56-years-old and over 5 years removed from his last victory, some might have written off Elias as past his prime, but he proved last week that he still belongs at the top level of the sport.
Here's how he cranked up the win.
Practice
Elias came down to scout Falcon earlier in the year, but he only had about half a day to explore and 25 mph winds kept him confined to the upper portion of the lake.
"I wasn't out there long, but I knew right away it would be the kind of lake I was going to like," he said. "There was lots of deep cover and that fits right in with my style."
He hit the lake last Monday not really knowing what to expect and "just went fishing." He ran the lake focusing on various structures labeled on his GPS and easily located several schools.
"I think everybody was really kind of feeling each other out that first day (of practice)," he said. "That lake has so many fish in it that nobody really knew what was good and what was just average. But I figured out really quick that 4- and 5-pounders weren't going to cut it.
"The good thing was that there were 7- and 8-pounders mixed in with my cranking fish, so I thought I might be on to something. The next day of practice I caught a 10-pounder cranking and that's when I knew I'd probably be throwing a crankbait a whole lot over the next 4 days."
Days 1 and 2
> Day 1: 5, 28-05
> Day 2: 5, 39-01 (10, 67-06)
The tournament started off on the wrong foot for Elias when he got a late boat draw on opening day.
"The fish were pretty easy to find on this lake and I think that's why you had so many guys who were sharing spots and fishing the same water," he noted. "I didn't know if guys would be on my areas or not, but I had a feeling I was going to have to change some stuff up."
His feeling was right. He arrived to his A spot to find it occupied by Ish Monroe. He watched Monroe for a few hours in hopes he'd move off the spot, but he never budged. When he arrived at his next spot and found Scott Rook working it over, he knew he'd have to scramble.
"I guess you'd call the areas I fished on day 1 my backup, backup spots," he said. "I caught a decent limit of fish on a shallow-diving crankbait, but I just didn't have the numbers or the quality in those areas that I knew were in those other spots."
He weighed 28-01 the first day and settled in 26th. To put it in perspective, Rook caught 35-12 and ended the day in 2nd, and Monroe weighed 35-06 and finished in 3rd.
With the boat order flipped from the previous day, Elias got the early jump on his best area.
"I told Ish that I was going to go in there, get my five fish and then leave," he said. "But I went in there and caught four that probably weighed 30-plus so I left early and let him have it."
He caught another fifteen fish over the next several hours, most of which didn't help his limit. With time running out on his day he ran back to a creak near the takeoff where he cranked an 8-pounder off a road bed that bolstered his sack by nearly 4 pounds. His day 2 total of 39-01 rocketed him up the leader board 22 places into 4th.
Days 3 and 4
Day 3: 5, 27-07
Day 4: 5, 37-11 (10, 65-02)
Elias began day 3 on his A spot, but he had to share it with Monroe.
"I knew we were in trouble when we both showed up on that spot," he said. "You just can't throw four lines through there constantly and expect to catch fish. And I couldn't maneuver around to crank the point the way I needed to, so I left."
He had about 22 pounds in the well when he left his first spot. He returned to his shallow-crankbait area and tanked a 7 1/2-pounder, then followed that up with a 6-pounder he caught flipping. That added up to his smallest bag of the tournament at 27-07, but weights dropped for most of the Top 12 competitors and he only slipped one place into 5th.
"I was about 15 pounds out of it going into the final day, but the way this lake fishes there's always that little voice in the back of your head that says, 'It could happen.'"
He started the day with a 5 pounder on a deep-diving crankbait, but the next two fish that hit the crank jumped off.
"I hadn't been losing many fish on the crank so when those two jumped off it made me wonder if they were short-striking it," he said. "So I put that crankbait down and decided to pick up a Carolina-rig."
The Carolina-rig produced another 20 pounds for him by noon, which is when he decided to give his shallow point another go. All he found there was a bunch of 3-pounders, so back to his deep point he went.
"When I came back in on my point I thought to myself, 'I need to show these fish another angle,'" he said. "I'd been out deep casting shallow, so I decided to switch it up and go up shallow and cast out deep.
Elias made an adjustment in his crankbait angle late on the final day that paid off with the win.
"They'd seen that crankbait come by the same way too many times," he added. "Once I brought it through there at a different angle they started jumping on it again."
Three casts at the new angle produced his biggest fish of the day. He followed that up with two more on the crankbait that culled his two smallest in the livewell.
"I was just going up a quarter-pound here, a half-pound there. By the time I was done I figured I had about 39 pounds.
"I knew if anybody slipped I'd have a chance," he said. "I just had a weird feeling out there the whole time, like I knew something was going to happen. When I started catching those big ones I thought, 'Hmm, I remember these days.'"
Pattern Notes
> About his shallow-crankbait area, he said: "There were schools over there pushing shad up in about 2 feet of water. I was catching 2-pounders out of there and then I had one jump off and when he did a 5-pounder came up behind him and ate (my crankbait). That let me know the bigger fish were down below. If I could get the square-bill through there without a little one eating it I'd usually catch a big one. I'd burn it down to the bottom and just kill it. When it stopped, they'd eat it."
> The deeper point where he was throwing the deep-diving crankbait and the Carolina-rig tapered off into about 30-feet of water. His marker buoy was sitting in 28 feet of water off the side of the point.
> "I was kneeling and reeling to get that crankbait down deep enough," he said about his technique on the deeper point. "The sweet spot was right around 15-feet deep. I'd bring it down the side of that point and as soon as I felt it bouncing off the bottom I'd get bit."
Winning Gear Notes
> Shallow crankbait gear: 6'6" medium-action Quantum PT Series rod, Quantum PT Tour Edition 1160 casting reel (6.3:1 ratio), 20-pound Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon line, Mann's C4 square-billed crankbait (chartreuse/blue back).
> He swapped out the stock #4 hooks on the C4 for #2 Gamakatsu 4X Strong trebles.
> Deep crankbait gear: Quantum PT Signature Series Paul Elias crankbait rod, Quantum PT Tour Edition 1160 casting reel (6.3:1 ratio), 15-pound Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon line, Mann's 20+ deep-diving crankbait (Ol' Homer).
> He also replaced the stock hooks on the 20+ with #2 Gamakatsu 4X Strong trebles.
> He described the Ol' Homer color as a chartreuse bait with a light-green back. "I believe if you asked any good crankbait fisherman to choose one color, it'd probably have some kind of chartreuse in it."
> Carolina-rig gear: Quantum PT Signature Series Greg Hackney flipping rod, Quantum PT Tour Edition 1160 casting reel (6.3:1 ratio), 50-pound Stren Super Braid, 20-pound Berkley Big Game leader, 1-ounce tungsten weight, 6/0 Gamakatsu Superline EWG worm hook, 12-inch Mann's Jelly worm (plum).
The Bottom Line
> Main factor in his success – "I think it was spending the majority of my practice time out deep and being able to fish my strengths. That really gave me a lot of confidence."
> Performance edge – "I think a little bit of everything came into play. All my co-anglers and even my camera guy commented on how far I was casting. That's a combination of the rod, the reel and the line. In order to get the bait down you have to make the longest cast possible. That fluorocarbon line is really sensitive and it helps the bait get down
Source
_________________________
Nunzio Prato : Bassin' USA Staff - Moderator 
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#11350 - 04-17-2008 13:02
Re: Falcon Reservoir Predicted to break BASS records!
[Re: johnnie crain]
|
wgbassgirl
Bassin' USA Moderator
Veteran Member
Registered: 09-03-2007
Posts: 257
Loc: Coram, NY
|
Here's another little article hyping up the Falcon Reservoir.
April 17, 2008, 1:01AM
Falcon Lake the place to be again
By SHANNON TOMPKINS
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Article Source
A new, nice hotel recently opened in Zapata. And it's staying booked, especially on weekends.
For a lot of places, this would be minor news.
But for the 5,500 or so residents of this sun-baked seat of Zapata County (population 13,600), the new hotel is another sign that things are looking up in this hardscrabble country hard against the Rio Grande.
The fuel behind the new hotel — the renovation of other Zapata-area hospitality businesses, the caravans of boat-hauling vehicles pulling up at local gas stations and groceries, and the constant stream of customers into brothers Tom and James Bendele's fishing tackle store — can be seen from some of the town's streets.
It's water. More to the point, the attraction is what's in the water of Falcon Reservoir, whose Arroyo Veleno arm sits on Zapata's southern boundary.
Largemouth bass — big ones, and lots of them — are bringing all the attention and traffic and dollars to Zapata.
Falcon Reservoir, all but evaporated for most of a decade, is back.
Its water level hasn't quite recovered; the lake is still about 22 feet below the "full" mark.
But the largemouth bass fishing in the reservoir shared by Texas and Mexico is more than back.
"It's just been crazy good," Tom Bendele, who runs Falcon Lake Tackle fishing equipment business with his brother James, said of bass fishing on Falcon Reservoir. "Bass fishing is as good as it's ever been on Falcon."
That's saying something.
Falcon, impounded 54 years ago on a stretch of the Rio Grande between Laredo and McAllen, was for decades one of the state's most outstanding largemouth bass fisheries. It may have been the best.
Through the 1980s and early 1990s, Falcon regularly ranked as the top overall bass fishery in Texas, according to a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department survey of fishing tournament results. The rankings took into consideration the number of bass caught and the average size of the fish.
Falcon annually blew away Fork, Rayburn, Toledo Bend, and other much more well-known Texas bass fisheries in the tournament rankings. And TPWD surveys of the fisheries through creel surveys and samplings of the fisheries with electrofishing and nets showed a booming bass population.
The big border lake drew a river of anglers from across Texas and the nation.
Then it all dried up.
A La Niña-triggered drought that began in Mexico in the late 1980s spread to cover South and West Texas by the early 1990s.
Falcon's water level began dropping. Fast. By 1995, the lake had fallen more than 40 feet below the full mark.
It remained more than 30 feet below normal level for almost a decade, falling to a record low of 52 feet below normal pool level in the summer of 2003.
At its lowest level in 2003, almost the only water in the reservoir was in the long-drowned channels of the Rio Grande and a few feeder creeks. Land that had been covered with water since 1954 was exposed.
Fish numbers way down
Falcon had shriveled to less than 10 percent of its "normal" size.
With the water went the fish and the fishermen.
Survival of young-of-the-year largemouth bass plummeted.
Young bass require cover — aquatic vegetation, drowned timber, etc. — in which to hide from predators, said Randy Myers, district biologist for TPWD's inland fisheries division, explained. The desiccated lake provided little.
Just as damaging to fishing, the falling lake level made it nearly impossible for anglers to access what water remained. Boat ramps were unusable. Many were left hundreds of yards from water. Even if anglers wanted to fish what remained of Falcon, they couldn't reach the water.
But the drought set the stage for Falcon's fishery to rise from the ashes.
Over the decade of extremely low water, the exposed lake bottom exploded in vegetation. Grasses and a mix of brush and trees blanketed the fertile soil.
When the drought broke and water came back, as it began to do late in 2003, the rising lake covered that jungle of vegetation.
Falcon's water level jumped 20 feet in late 2003 and early 2004. By 2005, it was 40 feet higher than at its 2003 ebb. Surface acreage went from less than 10,000 to about 60,000 acres.
"What you had, essentially, was a 'new' lake," Myers said. "And history tells us that a reservoir is most productive during its first seven years or so."
The vegetation covered by the rising water fueled an explosion in the largemouth bass fishery.
"We saw great survival of young fish," Myers said. "They had so much cover to hide it."
Also, the deterioration of drowned vegetation pumped nutrients into the water, super-charging the lake's food chain. Primary bass forage species such as gizzard and threadfin shad boomed.
The result was a fishery on fire. The lake's largemouth population skyrocketed, and the fish grew fat and fast on the abundant forage.
Anglers began to flow back as news leaked of Falcon's resurrection. Still, fishing pressure was relatively light. Despite the 30-foot rise, only a few boat ramps were usable. And Falcon is a long way from Texas' major population centers.
"Falcon is four hours from San Antonio. It's a two-hour drive to Choke Canyon, and three to Amistad," Myers said. "Fishing's great at Choke and Amistad. So a lot of fishermen go to those lakes instead of Falcon."
The low recreational fishing pressure just added steam to Falcon's blossoming bass fishery.
"Lack of (fishing) pressure is a key on Falcon," Myers said. "It's such a big lake with so much cover, fishing pressure hasn't impacted it."
Evidence of Falcon's surging bass fishery showed up on TPWD surveys as early as 2005. That year, creel surveys indicated Falcon anglers' catch rate of largemouth bass was 1.4 per hour.
"That's the highest catch rate I've ever seen," Myers said. For comparison, a recent creel survey on Lake Amistad, considered by some as the hottest bass fishery in Texas, showed a catch rate of 0.8 bass per hour.
But the most in-your-face confirmation of Falcon's resurgence came earlier this month when a major fishing tournament was held on the reservoir.
Prosperous contest
The results from the Bassmaster Elite Series tournament were stunning.
Angler Paul Elias won the four-day tournament and its $100,000 top prize with 20 bass (five-bass limit per day) that weighed 132 pounds, 8 ounces.
Elias' catch averaged more than 6.6 pounds per fish and was the heaviest four-day stringer in Bassmaster history.
Six other tournament anglers also broke that four-day stringer mark.
The heaviest single-day, five-bass stringer in the tournament weighed a stupefying 44 pounds, 4 ounces — almost 9 pounds per bass.
It took a Falcon bass weighing more than 10 pounds to win big-bass honors each day of the four-day tournament. The heaviest of the lot was a 13-pound, 2-ounce fish.
Of the 109 anglers in the contest, 107 landed five-bass limits the first day, and 105 took limits the second day. Every one of the anglers fishing the third and fourth day of the contest took five-bass limits.
It took a two-day, 10-bass catch averaging more than 5 pounds per fish to make the cut to qualify for the third day of the contest.
The 1,386 Falcon bass weighed by tournament anglers averaged a bit more than 4.9 pounds.
The average amateur bass angler can't expect those kinds of catches from Falcon. But they can expect to have a shot at excellent numbers and quality largemouth.
"If you have any kind of bass fishing skills, you can go out and do great on Falcon," Tom Bendele said. "It's as good a bass fishery as there is in the country."
A lot of people agree. The parking lot of that new hotel in Zapata is packed every weekend, almost exclusively with trucks hooked to boat trailers.
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
Moderator: Brendan, johnnie crain, Nunz, wgbassgirl, mofish
|
|
