KJ set new Bass Pro Tour single-day record
By Joel Shangle
MLF PRESS RELEASE
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| Kelly Jordon & Jackhammer Chatterbait have record day. (Photo: MLF) |
It took virtually no time for the chunky
northern-strain largemouth of North Carolina to reveal themselves on Day 1 of
the Favorite Fishing Stage Three Presented by Evinrude: Jason Christie boated a
7-pound, 12-ouncer just four minutes into competition on Jordan Lake, the first
fish of the day.
Christie’s opening shot was just the beginning: By the end of
Shotgun Round 1, 11 7-pounders and 48 fish over 5 pounds made it onto
SCORETRACKER, an astoundingly impressive showing for an unknown fishery that
most of the field of 80 had never even seen before practice.
But not nearly as impressive as the fish-catching clinic put on
by Kelly Jordon.
Fishing his way around a shallow creek arm on this impoundment
of the Cape Fear River system north of Raleigh, the Texas pro piled up 82-4 on
26 fish, not only winning the round by over 18 pounds, but also establishing a
new single-day Bass Pro Tour weight total.
“It was just an awesome, awesome day,” Jordon said. “This area
had gotten a ton of rain, and then the water dropped so much, I thought ‘Maybe
this isn’t going to happen’, but guess what? The fish are still here. There’s
no telling how much I could’ve caught if it had stayed warm. But what a
fishery.”
Jordon did the majority of his damage with an Evergreen Jack
Hammer bladed jig with a Lake Fork Tackle Live Magic Shad trailer, and he did
it consistently for the first five hours of competition, pinging SCORETRACKER
with four to five scorable largemouth per hour until he hit a brief lull late
in the afternoon. He found some good ones, too, highlighting his day with seven
5-plus-pounders, including a 5-2 and 5-6 in the final five minutes of
competition.
“Anytime you catch 82 pounds in a day of fishing is an awesome
day, and I didn’t want to quit fishing,” Jordon admitted. “It was sad, I wanted
to keep fishing because they were starting to fire off again. It was one of
those days to remember.”
The rest of the field, while lagging a sizeable distance behind
Jordon for most of the day, had some notable success as well:
-Todd Faircloth chipped away at Jordon’s lead all afternoon,
finishing the round with 63-10 and connecting with the biggest fish of the day,
a 9-4 giant that inhaled a jig early in the third period. Faircloth stacked up
over 35 pounds of largemouth in the final period to trim Jordon’s lead to 10
pounds before K.J. caught his final two 5-pounders.
