by Kyle Wood
FLW PRESS RELEASE |
| Rookie Beavers holding his own on pre-spawn bite. (Photo: FLW) |
Tour rookie Bradford Beavers of Summerville,
S.C., hauled in 18 pounds, 12 ounces to go with his 25-2 from day one to take
the lead with a total weight worth 43-14. Beavers will head into the weekend
with a 3-pound lead over Sheldon Collings, who is also keeping the fire stoked.
Beavers got off to a quick start yesterday,
catching all of his weight before noon. Today, things looked as though they
were going to go the same way.
“I went to the same spot and same casting
angle I caught them yesterday and couldn’t get them to bite,” Beavers says of
his morning. “I switched up my casting angle and I caught four in about 30
minutes. The feeding window wasn’t as long this morning for some reason as it
was yesterday, and I don’t really know why.”
After the flurry, things came to a screeching
halt. He’d spend some more time hoping to get another bite from his primary
area before running to another offshore spot. With no luck there, Beavers went
shallow.
“I only got seven bites all day and caught
five of them,” Beavers adds. “I went ‘till two minutes before I came back in
before I caught my fifth fish.”
A vibrating jig has been the major player for
Beavers so far, but he has a few other presentations that he’s keeping under
wraps until later.
The South Carolina pro has plenty of
experience on Seminole, though he’s finally dialed in on an offshore bite this
week – something that has always eluded him on the fishery. With potentially
$125,000 on the line, it’s hard to pull yourself away from a spot or pattern
that has treated you good, but Beavers is fully aware that warming weather
isn’t doing much to help his bite and anticipates having to make adjustments
along the way.
“I just don’t have any other deep spots to
run,” he says. “It takes too long to find them out deep, too. I don’t know if
the fish on my spot are educated or if the weather is changing them. I’m going
to go back there in the morning and see what I can get and then probably just
run new water from there.”
2. Sheldon Collings –
Grove, Okla. – 40-14 (10)
Moving from fourth on
day one, Sheldon Collings pieced together a solid limit worth 17 pounds to
slide into the passenger seat atop the leaderboard.
Things were noticeably
slower for Collings today as he only caught five bass all day, but that still
doesn’t deter his confidence. He has one spot that has produced all of his
weight, and he is committed to milking it for every bass.
“From what I’ve seen
on that spot, yesterday the fish were all grouped up,” Collings says. “Today,
they were more spread out. It’s like with the cooler weather the first day they
were bunched up and not moving around much, but it was warmer overnight and I
think that has them moving a little more.
