Mrazek makes it happen! Texas pro claims Toyota Series Championship with 7-ounce win on Table Rock

Top Canadians Evan Kung 10th & Erik Luzak 12th!

Bringing a sweet 16 pounds to the scales took Chad Mrazek to his first major win. Photo by Matt Brown.

MLF Press Release 

BRANSON, Mo. – Chad Mrazek backed up his impressive Day 2 bag with a five-bass limit for 16 pounds even on the final day of the Toyota Series Championship Presented by Simms. His Saturday bag was enough to boost his three-day total to 47-2 and earn him the win by 7 ounces over All-American champion Emil Wagner.

The victory represents the first win as a pro for the 23-year-old Texas native. He picked a good time for it. The win is worth $200,000 plus contingencies and a berth in REDCREST 2024. 

Down to the wire

Ideally, Day 3 of the tournament sails by – big fish bite early and often, and the winner ends up back at the dock with a good chunk of time to spare. Of course, that’s usually not the case, and it was certainly not the case for Mrazek, as the Texas pro didn’t have a keeper in the boat until noon.

“I fished drains all day, ‘Scoping them of course, mainly targeting singles, casting at every one I would see,” he said. “In the evening, I was fishing flatter, shallower pockets and creeks. Every school I had that was setting up late in the day, they were only setting up in flatter, shallower drains, and there aren’t a lot in this lake. I pretty much found five of them, and rotated them all day.

“I didn’t have a fish until noon. I was sitting on one until like 1 p.m. Then, I hit the back of this drain with a giant tree. The timber fields will have standing timber, and some that have fallen sideways. This one had a giant fallen tree on it, and I caught a 3 ½-pound spot and a 3-pound smallmouth off it.”

It was part of a hot afternoon that saw Mrazek go from a goose egg to 16 pounds and the win.

This week, the young Texan started out fishing deep with an ice jig and a Damiki rig – basically on the same game as much of the field. Then, he adapted.

“Day 2, I needed to go swing, and the only way I knew how was to fish for smallmouth all day,” he said.

Swinging meant fishing “shallow” in 20 to 37 feet. Targeting main lake pockets and “drains” with a flat contour and timber, Mrazek was able to pick off fish with a jig that were in and around the trees.

TOP 10 BELOW

2020 FLW Tour Harris Chain of Lakes Day 2: Laramy Strickland Smashes 31-06lb Limit for Lead!

Canadians Luzak 18th; Sim 71st

By Justin Onslow

FLW PRESS RELEASE

30 pound plus limit give Strickland a commanding lead.
(Photo: FLW)

Laramy Strickland fished clean on day two of the Tackle Warehouse Pro Circuit event on the Harris Chain, which is presented by Bad Boy Mowers. He fished so clean that he weighed in 31 pounds, 6 ounces – the biggest bag of the tournament so far – despite a cold front that shut down the bite for a lot of his competitors.

For the Pro Circuit rookie and Harris Chain regular (he hails from nearby Bushnell, Fla.), the biggest difference between day one and day two was making the most of his opportunities.

“I had 14 pounds [day one], but I had three swimmers,” he explains. “I lost like two or three giants. Today, I caught my giants and I was out of there by 10 o’clock.”

“There” meaning his best spot of the day, which Strickland unequivocally plans to hammer again on Sunday, the final day of the weather-shortened tournament. It’s a spot he doesn’t want to get too specific about, mostly because he knows how good it can produce for a second day and he doesn’t want the 30-angler final-day field to know too much about it.

“I’ve had it to myself, and I hope to keep it to myself,” he says. “I’m just going to go fishing and do what I do to know how to catch them, and I’m going to either hero or zero tomorrow. We’ll see how it goes.”

If Strickland’s spot is as good as it appeared to be on Saturday, the more likely result is going to be “hero.”

The Florida pro stuck with one primary bait on day two – an undisclosed flipping bait. He did cast around a Zoom Ultra Vibe Speed Worm a bit, as one often does bass fishing in the Sunshine State, but for the most part, it was one bait and one technique in one area of the chain that did all the damage – and all before lunchtime.

Strickland’s most encouraging sign is that he laid off his fish so early in the day, accompanied by the fact that the cold, blustery weather helped his pattern. It’ll be warmer on the final day, but not necessarily warm by Florida standards, and the wind should still be blowing.

“I laid off my fish,” he says. “There is so much I haven’t fished in there, so we’re just going to go fishing tomorrow and see if I can catch a ‘dirty 30’ again.
TOP 10 BELOW

Kyle Walters Wins 2018 Costa FLW Series Championship with 44-03lbs!

2019 FLW Cup for Eric Luzak (Canada) Top International angler 

by Curtis Niedermier

FLW PRESS RELEASE

When Kyle Walters wants to punch mats with big tungsten and sling hawgs around his boat, he doesn’t need to travel very far from his Grant-Valkaria, Fla., home to do it. That’s one of the perks of living in the Sunshine State. There is grass and bass everywhere.

Walters is also a businessman who builds custom homes and a father of four, so he has good reasons to stick close to home to scratch his bass fishing itch. That’s why, when you browse Walters’ FLWFishing.com profile page, you’ll see that he doesn’t venture too far from the typical Florida tournament waters where he competes in T-H Marine FLW Bass Fishing League and Costa FLW Series tournaments.

Yet this season, Walters fished the entire Southeastern Division of the Costa FLW Series for the first time since 2004. And his reason had nothing to do with fishing Florida waters. He wanted to fish the championship on Lake Guntersville.

In 2013, Walters won the BFL Regional on Guntersville with a very Florida-like approach of punching mats up around the BB Comer Bridge. It was his biggest tournament accomplishment to date, and it earned him a $60,000 prize package.

Walters wanted another crack at G-Ville. So when FLW announced that the famed north Alabama reservoir would host the 2018 Costa FLW Series Championship, he told his buddy JT Kenney that they had to fish the Southeastern Division to try and get to the championship.

Mission accomplished. Walters qualified by finishing 23rd in the Southeastern Division standings, and this week he put a flipping stick in his hands and punched his way to the Costa FLW Series Championship title with a two-day tournament total of 44 pounds, 3 ounces. His total prize package is worth $92,700.

“If you’d have told me when I started fishing the BFLs that I was about to win this championship, I’d have told you you were crazy,” Walters said about midway through the final weigh-in, once Bryan Thrift, his closest competitor, failed to surpass Walters’ weight.

The champ says he has no intentions of pursing an FLW Tour career. He lives vicariously through buddies like Kenney, who recently retired from professional fishing, and fishes for the sport and a love of competition.

This week, though, he definitely put together a pro-level performance to hold off some of the best sticks in the game.

Walters spent both days (day one was cancelled due to the risk of severe weather) flipping main-river grass mats up around BB Comer. When he won the 2013 Regional, he says he flipped hydrilla that had canopied over on the edge of the main channel. That grass was washed out recently due to heavy rains and high flows. This time he keyed on the bank side of the same mats, which grow on a ridge that parallels the channel for miles.

Two key areas – one a mile or so above the bridge and one a couple miles below it – produced all of his keepers. The spot above the bridge was 4 to 5 feet deep, with a mix of hydrilla and milfoil. Dead eelgrass and other vegetation had blown in on top of the grass and created dead, brown mats. Below the bridge, he mostly flipped hydrilla that was about 8 feet deep. The deeper spot produced a big kicker on Friday and his final keeper today. The upper spot was his real moneymaker. It’s where he sacked up a mid-20s bag early this morning, before culling out a 2 1/2-pounder on the second spot with 90 minutes left to fish.

Walters shared the area above the bridge with his buddy Robert Crosnoe, who finished third. The two Floridians shared notes in practice and realized their best spot was the same one. They basically prowled opposite ends of the key stretch. Crosnoe added 23-5 on Saturday to go with Walters’ 24-4 closing limit, proving just how great the spot was.

“Robbie was a real class act today,” Walters adds. “He had a stretch he was going to give me if I needed it, but I didn’t end up needing it. He’s a class act.”

In practice, both Walters and Crosnoe flipped beaver-style baits rigged with a screw-lock bait holder instead of a hook. In the tournament, Walters did work with a pair of Beaver-style baits, including a black and blue/green pumpkin Gambler Stinger. A former college basketball player who stands 6 feet, 7 inches tall, Walters is a big man and doesn’t need much help getting leverage on giant bass, but he went in geared for hawgs with a 7-foot, 11-inch Halo JT Kenney Signature Series rod, 75-pound-test Halo Winch braided line, a 4/0 straight shank hook and 1 1/2-ounce Picasso tungsten sinker.

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