Third-period flurry key to win.
By Joel Shangle
BPT PRESS RELEASE
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| Bladed jig vaults Lee to first MLF BPT Trophy! (Photo: BPT) |
Is there any level of fishing competition that MLF pro Jordan
Lee doesn’t excel at? So far in the Alabama pro’s career, it sure doesn’t seem
like he has any limitations.
Lee won a national collegiate championship in 2013 at the age of
21, and put back-to-back Bassmaster Classic trophies on his mantle in Grant,
Ala., in 2017 and 2018. At the age of 27, Lee owns the most prolific Top 10
success rate in the sport (he’s made the Top 10 in just over 35 percent of his
tour-level tournaments).
And now a 43-pound piece of hardware that nobody else will ever
be able to claim: the inaugural MLF Bass Pro Tour championship trophy.
After finding an area of clean water on the north end of Lake
Garcia, Lee put together a flurry of 2- and 3-pounders in the third period winding
a vibrating jig through the grass, adding over 32 pounds to SCORETRACKER in the
period to distance himself from Edwin Evers and Jared Lintner.
Lee finished the day with 55-1 on 26 to Evers’ 44-3 and
Lintner’s 33-9.
“(The third period) was an unbelievable period,” Lee said. “I
fished my way into that last area and got bite after bite after bite – and
caught good ones, too – and just found myself in a spot with clear water and a
lot of fish. Fish were moving in to spawn, so there were bigger fish in there.
Edwin was coming on strong right there at the end, it feels pretty darn good.”
Evers did his best to overtake Lee. The Oklahoma pro matched Lee
fish-for-fish in the final 2 ½ hours of competition – Evers and Lee both caught
16 fish – but couldn’t match Lee’s quality. Only three of Evers’ fish in the
period were over 2 pounds, while 11 of Lee’s were between 2-4 and 4-11.
“I had the bites today, I just wasn’t on the right fish,” Evers
said. “It was that simple. I thought I’d find a few bigger ones, but I never
could get on bigger ones consistently.”
Lintner looked like he might be the man to beat until Lee and
Evers put the hammer down in the final period. The Southern California pro put
back-to-back fish of 4-1 and 3-15 on SCORETRACKER late in Period 1 flipping a
3-inch hand-poured black/blue/silver-flake craw, and then took the lead just
before the end of Period 2 with the Berkley Big Bass of the day, a 5-5.
His flipping bite faltered in the final period, though. Lintner
landed six scorable fish in the final 2 ½ hours, all but one of them between
1-3 and 1-7.
The battle for fourth through seventh was the tightest grouping
of the day. Anthony Gagliardi finished fourth with 24-5, trailed by Alton
Jones, Jr., (23-3), Randy Howell (22-2) and Michael Neal (21-8). Jess Sprague
(18-9), Dustin Connell (14-12) and Takahiro Omori (12-11) finished out the
Championship Rounds standings.
Up Next: Conroe here we come
Stage Two of the MLF Bass Pro Tour kicks off Feb. 12-17 in
Conroe, Texas, where the 80-angler field will compete on Lake Conroe. This
21,000-acre impoundment of the San Jacinto River north of Houston hosted the
2017 Bassmaster Classic (won by Jordan Lee) and the Toyota Texas Bass Classic
(MLF angler Dave Lefebre won the 2009 TTBC there), and is one of Texas’ most
prolific producers of trophy-sized largemouth.
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