Whitson and King grab Day 1 lead at Team Championship
LEESBURG, Fla. — Chris Whitson and Kevin King said they’d have been happy to weigh 12 pounds on Wednesday to start the Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Team Championship.
Instead, they doubled that and jumped to an early lead here on the Harris Chain of Lakes in central Florida.
Whitson and King, Tennessee residents who fish on the Morristown Marine Team Trail, weighed a five-bass limit totaling 24 pounds, 11 ounces on Day 1 of the two-day derby. That was enough to give them the lead in the final tournament of the 2023 Bassmaster season, which boasts 248 competing teams representing 77 different trails from 30 states and three foreign countries.
Whitson and King were tight-lipped about specifics of Wednesday’s haul, though they said they were surprised to see heavy bass in the area they fished.
“We caught a couple there in practice, but not nearly that size,” Whitson said. “We only had about three spots we planned to fish today, but we hit the right one. We’re not sure why they are where they are. There’s no bait keying us in on anything.”
“We really did kind of stumble on it,” King added.
And what a fortunate find it was.
“We caught one within 15 minutes or so on the first spot and then we got three in a row real quick,” Whitson said. “The other two came a couple hours later, in the middle of the day. We left there about 1 o’clock and we’ll head back there tomorrow…I don’t know if they’ll repeat themselves, but I figure we’ll beat around there and catch a few more.”
