Edwin Evers Wins BPT Lake Conroe Event with 51-12lbs!

A big 8-pounder seals deal for Evers

By Joel Shangle

BPT PRESS RELEASE

Evers adds a win and a 2nd place in 2 BPT tournaments.
(Photo BPT)

In the immediate aftermath of the first MLF Bass Pro Tour event in Kissimmee, Florida two weeks ago, Edwin Evers’ dissatisfaction with finishing second was palpable. Ever the professional, Evers complimented his fellow competitors and smiled for photos at the Berkley Postgame Show, but no talk of Cup points could bring the Oklahoma pro comfort.

Sunday afternoon on Lake Conroe, Evers made sure that the only postgame talk would be of how he earned his first-ever MLF Bass Pro Tour trophy.

Evers racked up 51 pounds, 12 ounces to outdistance Jeff Sprague, (40-8), Boyd Duckett (35-15), Brent Ehrler (34-13) and David Walker (34-7) and claim the win at the Bass Pro Tour Huk Stage Two presented by Favorite Fishing. The Oklahoma pro caught 24 scorable fish on the day, including an exclamation point with 9 minutes left in competition: an 8-1 that hit a drop-shot Berkley Havoc Bottom Hopper.

“You can’t imagine how good it feels to catch a fish like that,” Evers admitted. “I knew there were big fish in there, because I shook some big ones off the second day of the event. The big females just hadn’t gotten there yet, but they’re coming.”

Evers’ winning area

Evers’ pattern was to flip his way down the bank with a Black Blue Berkley Havoc Pit Boss, picking out small indentations and grassy, undercut banks and flipping his bait as close to the bank as he could. He also caught some fish on a vibrating jig.

2019 BPT Lake Conroe: Duckett Leads Top 10 Anglers into Championship Round

Stephan Browning jumps into Top 10 at very last moment!
By Rory Connellan
BPT PRESS RELEASE

Battle for the win starts tomorrow!
(Photo: BPT)

For the better part of the past year, Boyd Duckett has been "Mr. MLF" as he worked endlessly to establish the Major League Fishing® (MLF) Bass Pro Tour. But for the seven hours of competition in the Knockout Round of MLF Bass Pro Tour Huk Stage Two Conroe presented by Favorite Fishing, Duckett was "Mr. Consistency".

Duckett caught his first scorable bass 22 minutes into the competition at Lake Conroe and then steadily added fish to SCORETRACKER® throughout the morning and early afternoon, swimming a small worm. By the time Period 3 got underway, Duckett had already weighed 31 pounds, 14 ounces, and owned a 9-plus-pound lead on the field.  

 

The Alabama pro would eventually finish the day with 38-5 on 21 fish, followed by Gary Klein (30-1), Edwin Evers (29-2), Brent Ehrler (28-12) and Jordan Lee (28-12).

"I've always been decent at compartmentalizing my fishing and my work, but I just couldn't make fishing the most important thing at Toho," Duckett admitted, referring to the MLF Bass Pro Tour's inaugural event in Florida two weeks ago. "Coming into this one, I told everybody that I was going to concentrate on my fishing. It's been nice to just be an angler at this event."

And Duckett the angler has been consistently stout on Conroe from Day 1. He recorded 46 fish in his first three rounds, despite spending the majority of each competition day either looking for new water, or guarding what he considers his best area.    

"I like that this fishery is tough," Duckett said. "I've traditionally done well in events that are difficult to fish. You really have to figure out how to catch these fish, you can dial something in that's just a little bit different than what the other guys are doing."

Surviving the battle for the Championship 10

Randall Tharp (27-13), David Walker (27-10), Wesley Strader (27-5), Jeff Sprague (26-6) and Stephen Browning (25-13) filled out the Top 10 and will compete in the Championship. And while all five anglers endured their moments of stress, Browning had to work especially hard for his spot in the finals.

Entering the last 10 minutes of competition, Browning, Shin Fukae, Keith Poche, Andy Montgomery and Jonathan VanDam all sat within 14 ounces of each other in the race to make the 10 cut.   

2018 Bassmaster Elite Lake Oahe Day 3: MDJ Out in Front with 56-06 lbs!

Boyd Duckett 2nd, Casey Ashley 3rd. 

By James Hall

BASS PRESS RELEASE 

Drop shot key to Daniels' success.
(Photo: BASS)

Alabama’s Mark Daniels Jr., who vaulted to the lead in the Berkley Bassmaster Elite at Lake Oahe presented by Abu Garcia Saturday, distanced himself from the rest of the field today. The second-year Elite Series pro brought 17 pounds, 6 ounces to the scales for a three-day total of 56-6, which gives him a nearly 6 1/2-pound cushion going into Championship Monday.
 
“Man, it was tougher today. I need to get more bites,” Daniels said. “There is fishing pressure in the area, and I think the bass are starting to get hip to what’s going on. I had a lot of fish swim up and look at my bait and not bite today. The first day they would come eat it while it was sinking.”
 
Daniels is concerned that his school is almost fished out, so his impressive cushion does not make him overconfident. “Tomorrow, I’m going to expand on my area and probably try some new water. I need those 4-pound bites, and I feel like they will be pretty hard to come by if I stay where I’m at.”
 
Boyd Duckett made a huge surge to second place on the strength of a 16-pound, 6-ounce limit of smallmouth on Day 3. This pushed his total to 50-1. The Alabama pro and former Bassmaster Classic champion credits his success to fish management.
 
“During practice, I had found three schools of fish,” he said. “One was a community hole that a lot of guys found. One was a little less obvious. And my third was a little hidey hole that I was hoping nobody found.
 
“I started the first day on the community hole and then went and caught a couple on my second place. Yesterday I just fished my second spot and it had one other angler on it. Today, I finished out my limit on the hidey hole and nobody was on it. So, I feel good about starting there tomorrow.”
 

2018 Bassmaster Elite Lake Oahe Day 2: MDJ Grabs Lead with 39lbs!

Wind swept Oahe tougher than expected

By James Hall

BASS PRESS RELEASE 

Daniels ready for first BASS win.
(Photo: BASS)

Alabama’s Mark Daniels Jr., who was sitting in second place after the opening round Friday, vaulted to the lead on the strength of a monster 20-pound, 4-ounce limit today in the Berkley Bassmaster Elite at Lake Oahe presented by Abu Garcia.
 
However, before Daniels and the rest of the 107-angler field were able to make a single cast, they had to patiently wait through a 1 1/2- hour wind delay. A brutal storm passed through Pierre last night, pushing 70-mph winds and several inches of rain across the region, turning the 370,000-acre fishery into an angry ocean.
 
But once the water settled and the anglers were set free, Daniels started off the second round of competition just like he ended Day 1.
 
“Smallmouth are random. I fish randomly. Sometimes we just intersect,” explained Daniels, whose 20-4 worth of smallmouth gave him a two-day total of 39 pounds to take the event lead.
 
“I’m fishing transition areas where these big females are leaving spawning flats and chilling out before going deep,” the Alabama pro said. “I’m seeing a lot of the fish I’m catching on my Garmin Panoptix unit, doing the ‘video game deal.’ It’s how I like to fish.”
 
Daniels believes his fishing spots are replenishing daily with more big smallmouth. “The beauty of the areas I’m fishing is that postspawners should reload the spots. If I’m right, I should be able to bring in another 20 pounds tomorrow,” he said.
 
North Carolina pro David Fritts proved that his impressive first-day limit of Oahe smallmouth (19-7) was no fluke by bringing in an 18-pound, 1-ounce bag for Round 2. This gives the 1993 Bassmaster Classic champion a two-day total of 37-8, good enough for second place heading into Day 3.
 
“I’m proud of what I caught today, because where I was fishing, the wind was brutal. I had waves crashing over the bow of my boat all morning,” Fritts related. He believes this intense wave action has cost him the lead.
 

2018 Bassmaster Elite Kentucky Lake Day 3: Wesley Strader Jumps into Lead with lbs!

Shad spawn key to leaders
David A. Brown

BASS PRESS RELEASE

Wesley Strader caught a five-bass limit during Sunday’s semifinal round of the Berkley Bassmaster Elite at Kentucky Lake presented by Abu Garcia that weighed 22 pounds, 6 ounces.
 
It was the biggest limit of the day — and it put the Spring City, Tenn., pro in position for his first-ever Elite Series victory with a three-day total of 59-9.
 
Despite his strong effort on Day 3, Strader said the fishing has been anything but easy.
 
“It’s a struggle to get bit,” Strader said. “But if you hang around, you can catch a few. I’m making it look a lot easier than it is. I only got eight keeper bites today.
 
“It’s really weird. One day you’ll get a lot of bites, and then one day you won’t get many. Every time I caught one today, it’d be on the very back hook, which tells me they’re not eating. They’re just slapping at it, but luckily my Trokar hooks kept them buttoned up.”
 
Strader took advantage of the daybreak shad spawn, but that window was smaller Sunday than it had been earlier in the event. The change was due to cooler, sunnier conditions.
 
“I think the shad spawn was shorter today because it got cold last night,” Strader said. “The water cooled off. The optimum water temperature for the shad to spawn at daybreak is somewhere close to 70, and this morning it was 64 to 65. That knocked it back a little bit, plus the bright skies didn’t help. We got about 30 minutes and it quit.”
 

2014 Bassmaster Elite at Delaware River Day 3: Ike Takes Command of Hometown Tournament!

Ike leads by 6 pounds!

By Deb Johnson

bass press release

PHILADELPHIA  — This week on the Delaware River, Michael Iaconelli has been the prince of tides. Judging by the mass of fans pulling for him at the Bassmaster Elite Series event out of the City of Brotherly Love, he’s also the fishing prince of Philadelphia.

Mike is pumped and ready to win this event.
Today he pulled away from the pack to take total control.
(Photo: James Overstreet BASS)

Saturday in the third of four rounds, Iaconelli not only repeated his Friday lead, he banked 6 pounds, 9 ounces against his nearest challenger by reading and adjusting to the tides.

Iaconelli’s leading three-day total was 37-0. Bill Lowen of Brookville, Ind., and Scott Rook of Little Rock, Ark. — both “river rats” who have tapped into their knowledge of current and river habitat to attack the Delaware — are Iaconelli’s lurking challengers.

2014 Bassmaster Elite at Delaware River Day 2: Ike Take Lead in Hometown!

Difficult fishing makes for tight tournament. 

By Deb Johnson

bass press release

PHILADELPHIA, Pa. — The crowd began to cheer and chant “Ike, Ike, Ike” even before Philadelphia-born Michael Iaconelli, now also a New Jersey fishing hero, took the stage Friday for the second weigh-in of the Bassmaster Elite on the Delaware River.

Iaconelli wows the hometown crowd with
slim lead on Day 2.
(Photo: James Overstreet BASS)

It was as if the boisterous Ike fans felt their voices could pull their hometown guy up from 21st place, almost 8 pounds behind first-day leader Boyd Duckett after the initial round Thursday.

But “Ike,” as it turned out, was able to get up all by himself. He turned in 15-1, the biggest sack of bass to meet the scales Friday, and deftly slipped the lead away from Duckett, albeit by only 14 ounces.

Duckett gave Iaconelli’s rocket ride from 21st place a boost by posting 6-7, relegating Duckett to second place. Iaconelli had 24-3 on the board to Duckett’s 23-5.

But Duckett, who’s from Guntersville, Ala., and Iaconelli, now living in Pittsgrove, N.J., have plenty of competition left before either can claim the Elite event’s first prize of $100,000 and an instant 2015 Bassmaster Classic qualification.

Morizo Shimizu of Osaka, Japan, is one prime threat. He produced 10-4 for a two-day total of 22-6. That put him in third place and 1 pound, 13 ounces behind Iaconelli.