Top Three At SQT

Roger Trageser Apr 22nd, 2012 Permanent Link

Weather your practice day becomes a repair day, engine issues shrink your map or you’re a competitor riding shotgun accomplished anglers find ways to produce.

Top place finisher Tom Bavaro III fishing for Team Outcast had his Friday practice day turn into a get it fixed day when his trim went on the fritz and repairs became a priority.

Be that as it may and after scoping out a lot of crowded Maryland main river shoreline he made a run across and toward Aquia Creek. Tom worked a stretch of rocky main river shoreline throwing square bill crankbaits and a football jig. “I’d make one pass on that stretch with the crankbait and then work it back again with the jig. If any of those fish weren’t interested in a fast presentation than I was hoping to pick them up by slowing it down” Tom said. It worked out well and by 9:00 Tom had a limit. Was tide much of a factor? “Not so much this time of year” Tom noted. “In fact I caught my big fish at 8:30 and any moving water was pretty much gone by then”.

Tom hung out on his first spot till noon and then headed back to Mattawoman Creek. The afternoon bite was slower but he still managed to cull two fish out to his winning weight of nineteen pounds.

His six pound seven ounce lunker was the big fish of the day but an oversight to get into the lunker pool cost Tom the prize. John Hansen would weigh in a six pound one ounce fish and with his ten dollar investment take home a hunk of cash.

Tying for first place points was Johnny Duarte another Team Outcast representative and one of the up and coming young guns in the Federation. A former JWC champion Johnny’s taking his extraordinary fishing abilities right to the veterans of this field.

Working the grass in Mattawoman Creek Duarte scored with a black and blue 3/8oz chatterbait, a 3/8oz green pumpkin grass jig and a green pumpkin baby brush hog rigged with a 2/0 hook and a 3/16oz tungsten weight. Two keepers were caught during the last part of the outgoing tide. Three more solid keepers were picked up with a chatterbait at the halfway point of the incoming tide including his big fish of five pounds and eleven ounces. Later, as the tide began to swing back out Johnny picked up a couple more fish with one in that group that culled him up to his nineteen pound bag.

As a non-boater Johnny had nothing but great thing to say about his boater partner Allen Moore.

Classic Bass’s Jim Iden had to make some major adjustments to his “where to fish” decisions because some nagging engine issues deemed he stay close to home. So with a quick turn out of Mattawoman and setting it down on hard shoreline Jim began pounding away with crankbaits. “I worked a combination of small and large rock areas and points” Jim commented. “I didn’t catch a lot of fish, nine all toll I think, of which seven were keeper fish. My better fish came off the larger rocks including my five pound five ounce lunker which I caught during the first part of the incoming tide”.

At the scales Jim would capture third place with a bag weighing seventeen pounds and ten ounces.