News
Chapman rides rapids for lead
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alton Jones and Brent Chapman stood side-by-side. They were the first two Bassmaster Elite Series pros in line to weigh in Friday, the second day of the Alabama River Charge presented by Star brite.
Jones sized up Chapman’s weigh-in bag. “I'll go first,” Jones told Chapman. “I want to lead for at least one minute.”
Jones had it right. His 20 pounds, 4 ounces earned him a fleeting look at the hot seat. Chapman’s 23-5 handily beat him. Chapman’s two-day total was 41-1 to Jones’ 36-10 — a 4-7 difference.
Jones had nothing to feel bad about. Together the two squashed the hopes of the other 98 Elite pros who followed them to the scales. No one knocked them out of first and second. Read More
More than "just" practice
4th: Jones Still in the Hunt
BassFan.com Day 3: 5, 17-04 (15, 53-14) Jones will be about a pound farther back when day 4 starts than he was when he launched this morning, but still thinks he has a decent shot at his second victory in 2 years.
"It's still kind of anybody's game, really," he said. "Edwin had been catching 17 to 18 pounds a day and today he shows up with more than 22, and the areas I'm fishing are capable of producing a stringer like that. I haven't caught one yet, but it might be somebody else's turn tomorrow and I'd love for that person to be me."
Sabine River Bassmaster Elite
8th Place: Alton Jones (7-10, 10-0, 11-9, 3-6: 32-9)What was the biggest key to success this week on the Sabine River?
"The key to my week was my timing on day one. On day one I decided to start in a different area and didn't make the decision to make a move to my key spot until later in the day. I really would have liked to have had that first few hours on day one, the morning was really critical in that area because of the tide. But moving to that area was the reason I was able to do well in this event."
What was your primary pattern throughout the week?
"I was flipping a YUM Wooly Bug, and casting a YUM Dinger weightless all week to anything that looked good in that backwater area."
What were your primary baits and tactics?
YUM DInger (Watermelon Candy), YUM Wooly Bug (Green Pumpkin-Purple Fleck) Read More
26th: Jones To Timing Change
But he stuck to his rule and wound up pulling four of his five weigh fish out of the area, including a 4-pounder. But he thinks there’s more weight to be had there once the sun beats down on it for a while.
Those fish aren’t going to act right until it warms up,” he said.
He lost an hour of fishing time after coming back to the dock to swap out trolling motors. By the time he was back on the water, he didn’t have time to run to clearer water down lake, but he intended to fish it first on day 2.
“I found some fish in the clear water down lake so I will run there and try for them the first half of the day and hope to catch a limit,” he said. “Then, I’ll run to that dirtier water during the warmest hours and hope for a big one. I just needed to change up my timing.”
