David Walker Rides Jig, Spinnerbait to Top
By Joel Shangle
MLF PRESS RELEASE
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| David Walker's 8-6 caught an hour into the competition anchored his total day's weight of 47 pounds, 6 ounces for 15 bass to finish on top of Group B Shotgun Round. |
Heading into the second Shotgun Round of the Favorite Fishing Stage Three Raleigh presented by Evinrude, Major League Fishing® (MLF) Bass Pro Tour pro David Walker had a suspicion that the conditions on North Carolina's Jordan Lake were setting up for his wheelhouse.
With dropping, dirty water and nighttime lows that dipped near the freezing level, the east Tennessee pro put his faith in two old-school techniques that he's built a healthy professional living on: flipping a jig and winding a spinnerbait.
His faith in that 1-2 punch paid off as Walker flipped and wound his way to 47 pounds, 6 ounces on 15 fish to finish on top of the Group B Shotgun Round.
"I didn't have much practice, so in that case, I'm going to fish the things that I have confidence in," Walker said. "So I was fishing (baits) that I have confidence in from all the years past, not from practice."
Walker did the majority of his damage early in the day, when the water was its coldest. Throwing a chartreuse-and-white spinnerbait and flipping a Moccasin Craw Z-Man CrossEyeZ jig with a BatwingZ trailer, the Evinrude pro stacked over 32 pounds on SCORETRACKER™ in the first period, weighing in 10 scorable largemouth.
He highlighted his day with an 8-6 an hour into the competition, the Berkley Big Bass of the day, and put himself in strong position heading into his Elimination Round on Falls Lake.
"This is a best-case scenario, because out of the two practice days, Falls was by far my worst," Walker said. "I really struggled on Falls. So to have a good start going into that is very helpful, because if not I would have felt like I was behind trying to play catch-up on that lake. I'm not saying that I'm safe or that I've made it (out of Elimination), because in this format they just keep catching them. It's relentless."
Ott DeFoe finished second on the day with 44-1, followed by Casey Ashley (42-8), Brett Hite (42-0), Ish Monroe (40-1), Takahiro Omori (32-3) and Dustin Connell (30-15).
Change of Venue for Elimination Rounds
The field of 80 will carry their Group A and B Shotgun Round weights to Falls Lake tomorrow and Friday for the Elimination Rounds. That fishery - a 12,000-acre impoundment of the Neuse River located 30 minutes north of Raleigh - has hosted a handful of BLF events, and produced a handful of 8-plus-pounders in the first local/regional events of the year in early March.
Like Jordan, Falls is a river lake that holds an abundance of wood and rock, with fish in similar pre-spawn staging.
