Gustafason 36th, Richardson 66th, Cory Johnston 82th & Chris Johnston 105th.
by Rob Newell
FLW PRESS RELEASE
Imagine trying to shoot a game of pool on a table that rises a foot or two while you’re drawing back your cue to take a shot. Each time you draw for a shot, the table comes up.
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Cody stays deep for lead.
(Photo: FLW) |
That’s a little bit what fishing has been like for the 165 pros and co-anglers this week at the FLW Tour event presented by General Tire on Beaver Lake. Each day they get on the water, the targets they fished the day before are gone – submerged underwater.
Since practice started on Sunday, Beaver Lake has come up some 8 feet. Since the pros last saw the lake on Tuesday’s practice day, the water has come up more than 4 feet. The rising water creates a moving target that’s hard to hit when everything is in a state of flux.
While the ever-increasing water level has thrown many pros for a loop, Californian Cody Meyer only chuckles at the “epic rise.”
Meyer cut his teeth fishing lakes out west like Shasta and Oroville, where water can rise 10 to 15 feet in a day. What’s happened in eight days on Beaver Lake can occur in 8 hours on Meyer’s home waters.
Maybe that helps explain why Meyer is leading after day one with five bass weighing 16 pounds, 1 ounce. Meyer’s limit included three smallmouths and two largemouths.
“I’ve fished tournaments out west where the spot I started on in the morning was under 10 feet of water by weigh-in,” Meyer says. “So this is not that much of a shock to me. One thing I’ve learned when a sudden rise happens, especially out west, is that the fish generally stay at the depth they were in as the water rises.”