PRESS RELEASE
LA CROSSE, Wis. – While there was a level of excitement shared among the 25 pros in Group A that set out on the Mississippi River for the first day of Qualifying Round action in the Tackle Warehouse TITLE Presented by Mercury, uncertainty was another frame of mind they all had in common.
Water level and clarity on the Mighty Miss had changed almost by the hour thorough practice – with that, the smallmouth and largemouth were equally as fickle. With a full day between Sunday’s final round of practice and today’s competition, so much could have changed.
Picking up where he left off in practice, Mike McClelland set the pace on Day 1 with a limit weighing 13 pounds, 12 ounces to take a 2-ounce lead over Alex Davis heading into Thursday’s final round of competition for Group A.
One thing playing into McClelland’s hand this week is the the fact he’s made several trips to the Upper Mississippi River over his career and has witnessed it in low water years to flood stage.
“The fortunate part about my practice is that I’ve actually fished here when the river was down,” McClelland confirmed. “It seemed like every time we showed up for a tournament in the past a massive flood hit, so anything I did in practice didn’t actually work. This week as we got to town there was localized heavy flooding, the river came up a foot and a half, two foot – maybe a little more – and muddied the water up and really messed some areas up.
