June 13, 2008 – basszone.com
Gilbertsville, KY – This week the sprawling Kentucky Lake, along the Kentucky-Tennessee border, is the site of the eighth stop of the 2008 Elite Series. It plays host to the Bluegrass Brawl, where 107 of the nation’s best bass fishermen will test the waters of one of the nation’s greatest fisheries.
Covering over 160,000 surface acres, plus another 58,000 acres at Barkley, there’s plenty of water to fish, which is a good thing, considering that on a week like this, making it to Saturday is half the battle.
Customarily, by the time the weekend rolls around and half the field is on their way down the highway, the tournament waters are much less congested. This week, however, the weekend will see three times the amount of tournament contestants given the fact that there are two other regional tournaments slated – with one, a Wal-Mart BFL, drawing close to 200 boats.
In this tournament, much like last week’s event at Wheeler, spot fishing will be the bread and butter of a successful week. Guys who find the right ledge or two and can milk them for all they’re worth will exceed the estimated 17-pound-per-day weight required to make it to Sunday. However, if they let their guard down, it’s possible that they can look up and find that they have company.
Added to all the drama of fishing for a $100,000 top prize and playing bumper boats all weekend, are important Toyota Angler of the Year points and a potential Classic berth. Todd Faircloth entered the week as the AOY point’s leader and there are many pros on the bubble when it comes to Classic qualification. All of them need a solid finish this week to keep the dream alive.
The man in charge at the moment, Kevin VanDam, crossed the scales with a five-fish tournament limit weighing 24-13 to set the pace for the week.
http://www.basszone.com/2008eliteseries/kentucky/day1/story.htmJune 13, 2008 – fishpaa.com
Source: BASS Communications – GILBERTSVILLE, Ky. – After barely missing out on his 13th BASS win at Alabama’s Wheeler Lake last weekend, three-time Toyota Tundra Bassmaster Angler of the Year Kevin VanDam is back in the saddle again, leading the Bluegrass Brawl presented by DieHard Platinum Marine Batteries® with a Thursday catch of 24 pounds, 13 ounces.
VanDam’s nearest competitor was Mike McClelland of Bella Vista, Ark., who weighed 23 pounds, 6 ounces. Perhaps the best angler in the history of bass fishing, VanDam continued his assault on the Tennessee River chain. He finished second at Wheeler last week, finishing behind first-time BASS winner Jeremy Starks of Charleston, W.Va., by just 8 ounces, and again used a similar pattern to propel himself into the early lead of the four-day tournament.
More important, VanDam moved up significantly in the Toyota Tundra Bassmaster Angler of the Year race. If his position holds, he will be in good shape with only three events remaining to score his fourth AOY title. Texan Todd Faircloth, who led VanDam by just 18 points heading into the Kentucky Lake event, was 39th and Skeet Reese of Auburn, Calif., who was in third in the season-long points race, was tied for 10th. McClelland, who was in fourth in the AOY standings, could also gain significant ground. The winner of the AOY will receive $250,000 and the points will also determine the brunt of the 2009 Bassmaster Classic qualifiers.
With a victory, VanDam, 39, would earn $100,000, pushing his BASS career earnings mark to nearly $3 million. Also a two-time Bassmaster Classic winner, VanDam is seeking his fourth victory in Elite Series competition, which would be the most for any angler since the inception of the groundbreaking circuit.
http://www.fishpaa.com/news/article/paa_board_member_kvd_leads_paa_charge_at_bass_elite_series_bluegrass_brawl_/June 12, 2008 – fishpaa.com
Source: BASS Communications – Recent unsafe conditions on the Mississippi River have prompted BASS to relocate the Bassmaster Elite Series’ River Rumble presented by Longhorn, set for June 26-29 and originally scheduled in Fort Madison, Iowa, to Old Hickory Lake and Hendersonville, Tenn. The new event, renamed to the Tennessee Triumph presented by Longhorn, will mark the eighth Elite event of the season and will take place on the previously scheduled dates.
Old Hickory, which BASS has visited seven times in its 40-year history, will also host the third event of the 2008 Women’s Bassmaster Tour presented by Academy Sports & Outdoors, set for June 19-21. The following week, the Elite Series pros will tackle the spacious reservoir. Tournament waters will also include Cheatham Lake, located just below Old Hickory Dam. The tournament waters are immediately off-limits to Elite Series pros until the official practice period, June 23-25. Co-anglers must observe BASS rules as previously outlined for Elite Series events.
Daily tournament launches and weigh-ins will take place at Sanders Ferry Park in Hendersonville. Launches will begin at 6 a.m. CT and weigh-ins will start at 2:30 p.m. CT.
“Our first priority is the safety of all those involved with BASS events,” said Tom Ricks, general manager and vice president of BASS. “We appreciate the flexibility of both Fort Madison and Hendersonville and we look forward to hosting events at both locations in the near future. Our thoughts and prayers are with those in Iowa who have been affected by the recent floods.”
In addition to the top prize of $100,000, pros will be competing for points in the season-long Toyota Tundra Bassmaster Angler of the Year standings, which will award $250,000 to the winner and determine the majority of the 2009 Bassmaster Classic qualifying berths.
http://www.fishpaa.com/news/article/bass_reschedules_ninth_event_on_elite_series_schedule_due_to_high_unsafe_wa/June 11, 2008 – bassfan.com
The Top 5 patterns from the recent Wheeler Bassmaster Elite Series were fairly similar. In fact, winner Jeremy Starks, 2nd-place Kevin VanDam and 4th-place John Murray fished close enough to see each other.
But there were several key differences worth pointing out.
What follows is a look at how VanDam, Terry Scroggins and caught their fish. Pattern details 5th-place finisher Matt Sphar will be posted at a later time.
2nd: Kevin VanDam
> Day 1: 5, 18-08
> Day 2: 5, 16-14
> Day 3: 5, 22-12
> Day 4: 5, 20-00
> Total: 20, 78-02
VanDam fished adjacent to the Decatur Flats, but he was right on the edge of the main river channel.
His spot was loaded with fish, but he noted the area around it didn’t have a discernible highway for the fish to use en route to their summer grounds.
“It didn’t have a creek channel or anything like that close to it. It was on a big inside turn of the river, and there were fish up and down the ledge. John Murray was a couple hundred yards up from me, and Jeremy (Starks) was not a half-mile away.”
About why the fish were on that edge, VanDam said: “They all end up migrating out toward the river channel off of the Decatur Flats. You just have to find something they’re relating to. Basically, it’s those mussel beds they like more than anything else. It’s a hard-bottom spot, and they sit there and wait for shad to come by.”
Most of his bites came in 8 to 12 feet of water.
He caught them on all sort of baits, but noted that day in and day out a crankbait was best. His other offerings included a jig, 10-inch worm, spoon, swimbait and lipless crank.
“I was throwing the kitchen sink at them,” he added. “You have to show them everything down here, and I caught fish on everything I threw. But I caught 85 to 90% of the bass I weighed in on the crankbait. It seemed to trigger the bigger ones.”
http://www.bassfan.com/news_article.asp?id=2923June 10, 2008 – bassmaster.com
In the homestretch of the 2008 season, the Bassmaster Elite Series makes its eighth stop in Gilbertsville, Ky., for the Bluegrass Brawl presented by DieHard Platinum Marine Batteries®, June 12-15 on Kentucky Lake.
The Bassmaster Elite Series made its last stop at Kentucky Lake in June 2006, when the top seven pros caught more than 60 pounds through four days. Winner Morizo Shimizu of Japan weighed in 66 pounds, 9 ounces.
Straddling the Kentucky-Tennessee border, Kentucky Lake is 185 miles in length, with 160,000 surface acres and 2,380 miles of shoreline. Barkley, a navigable canal, adds another 80,000 surface acres.
Elite pro Mark Menendez of Paducah, Ky., thinks that because Kentucky Lake has had a healthy spawn in the past year, the numbers of keeper-size bass will be up for the Bluegrass Brawl.
“I think weights will be up a little bit,” Menendez said. “When Morizo won, a 4-pound average was winning most of the local tournaments. Now it seems to be closer to a 5-pound average, and that’s closer to the glory days of Kentucky Lake back in the late 1980s.
“I’m very optimistic as to what we’re going to find as far as the numbers of fish. As far as the patterns, it’s going to be an A to Z deal. There’ll be some guys who do extremely well shallow, but I think the deeper fishing will be what most of the guys will be doing.”
http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/tournaments/elite/news/story?id=3434417June 9, 2008 – basszone.com
Decatur (Flats), AL – The Southern Challenge…the seventh stop of the 2008 Elite Series season at Wheeler Lake which panned out to be more of a horse race. The “challenge” is still there though given Wheeler’s feast and famine record over the past three days, but at Sunday mornings launch it looked like only two anglers stood a real chance at taking home the $100,000 top prize.
More tournaments have been won from a single area of Wheeler than all the rest combined. The area, Decatur Flats, was said to be “off” during practice, and, like everyone else, we believed this to be the case. Come day one and it seems that, as is often the case, a bit of sandbagging was at play.
Yet while some 80 of the 107 anglers were camped out on the flats, only a small handful were able to decipher the subtleties required to excel.
For the first two days of the contest, despite an admitted “mediocre” practice on the flats, Terry “Big Show” Scroggins seemed to be calling his shots by fishing the outside edges of Decatur. And while he was quick to point out that Wheeler had the ability to take as readily as it gave, he still wasn’t able to shake the “take” Saturday when he came to the scales nearly six pounds off the pace he’d set the first two days.
KVD – the most dangerous man in professional bass fishing looking to repeat his title of Southern Challenge champion – crossed the stage with his heaviest limit of the week Saturday (and the heaviest of the tournament to date) and was more than happy to steal Big Show’s lead.
Just one pound seven ounces behind him, however, was third year pro Jeremy Starks who had, with limited fishing mind you (less than 30 casts by his count), managed to pull within striking distance of the lead. To say that Starks had confidence in the speck of water he’d guarded all week would be a glaring understatement.
http://www.basszone.com/2008eliteseries/wheeler/day4/story.htmJune 8, 2008 – bassmaster.com
As Jeremy Starks took his fish out of his boat livewell at the Southern Challenge final day weigh-in Sunday, he whispered to emcee Keith Alan he was so nervous he was about to pass out.
“You can’t imagine what I felt like up there in that boat, getting ready to weigh in,” Starks said later. “I knew it was going to come down to ounces and I was that nervous.”
With VanDam’s four-day total of 78 pounds, 2 ounces already on the leaderboard, the third-year pro from Charleston, W. Va., knew he needed a five-bass limit weighing at least 21-8 to win. When the weigh-in scales hit 21-15, Starks had officially beaten VanDam by a mere 8 ounces to win the Bassmaster Elite Series Southern Challenge presented by Advance Auto Parts.
“If you’re going to beat somebody, he’s the best,” the 35-year-old Starks said of VanDam, who is often referred to as the Tiger Woods of bass fishing. “Kevin VanDam is absolutely the best bass fisherman ever.
“Watching Kevin before I got into professional bass fishing, he was my hero. To come here and beat him is unbelievable.”
To go into the last day and beat Kevin VanDam, you couldn’t script it any better than that.
The idea of that happening seemed highly unlikely entering this event at Wheeler Lake, the seventh stop on the 11-tournament Elite Series. Starks was languishing in 96th place in Toyota Tundra Bassmaster Angler of the Year points; VanDam, as usual, was near the top, in fourth.
Earlier this year VanDam, a three-time BASS Angler of the Year and two-time Bassmaster Classic champion, won his third Elite Series title in the two-plus seasons of the tour; Starks best finish ever in a BASS event was ninth place.
http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/tournaments/elite/news/story?id=3432762June 8, 2008 – bassmaster.com
DECATUR, Ala. — Kevin VanDam, often referred to as the Tiger Woods of bass fishing, said he feels like the underdog going into what appears to be a two-man shootout with Jeremy Starks in the Sunday finale of the Bassmaster Elite Series Southern Challenge presented by Advance Auto Parts.
VanDam the underdog, even though he’s leading Starks by 1 pound, 7 ounces?
If that’s true, it’s because Starks has such supreme confidence in the hole of water he’s found on Wheeler Lake. It’s a spot that Starks has managed so carefully all week that he’s made only about two dozen casts into it, including practice, and produced a second-place three-day total of 56 pounds, 11 ounces.
Saturday, Starks, who has never won a BASS event, only half-jokingly told VanDam, a three-time Bassmaster Angler of the Year, that he’d better catch 25 pounds today if he wanted to win.
“You know what?” VanDam said Sunday morning, when asked about Starks comment. “I don’t need a lot of motivation.
“He’s just got a lot of confidence. But I feel pretty good about where I’m fishing too.”
VanDam took the lead Saturday with the Berkley Big Bag of the tournament so far, 22-12. He’s found an area in the Decatur Flats where a mussel shell bed is holding big bass, just like Starks has. They are within a mile of each other.
The only reason that KVD might feel like an underdog is that Starks has taken such an extreme approach in managing the fish in his area that appears to be loaded with big bass. Starks didn’t intend to fish the spot at all Saturday. He concentrated on some smaller shell beds near the bigger sweet spot.
Inadvertently he found out that everything is still fine in the hole he’s been saving for today.
http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/tournaments/elite/news/story?id=3432124June 7, 2008 – bassfan.com
Kevin VanDam and Jeremy Starks have about as much in common right now as Britney Spears and Axl Rose.
VanDam smoked an astonishing 22-12 today at the Wheeler Bassmaster Elite Series in Alabama. The 18-year veteran is throwing a ton of different baits and catching lots of fish. He’s also sparing with his words.
Second-place Jeremy Starks, in just his third year at the tour level, has barely touched his best area – he makes a few casts with a worm, tanks his limits, then moves away. He caught 20-00 today and trails VanDam by 1-09. He’s talking some smack.
The two are locked in battle atop the leaderboard with 1 day left to fish. And about that smack flying around? VanDam said “it’s very motivating.”
Here’s a look the Top 12 who made the final cut and will fish tomorrow. Total weight is followed by distance from leader in red.
1. Kevin VanDam: 58-02
2. Jeremy Starks: 56-11 (1-07)
3. Terry Scroggins: 53-11 (4-07)
4. Todd Faircloth: 51-13 (6-05)
5. John Murray: 50-13 (7-05)
6. Matt Reed: 49-05 (8-13)
7. Morizo Shimizu: 48-01 (9-17)
8. Corey Waldrop: 45-12 (12-06)
9. Kotaro Kiriyama: 45-07 (12-11)
10. Matthew Sphar: 43-13 (14-05)
11. Shaw E Grigsby: 43-00 (14-18)
12. Mark Menendez: 41-14 (16-04)
June 7, 2008 – basszone.com
Decatur, Ala. – The talk of the tournament on the second day of the Bassmaster Elite Series Southern Challenge at Wheeler Lake was that the conditions made for up and down results. The amount of fishing pressure alone on certain areas of the lake this week could be enough to buckle the resolve of any angler.
However, the men competing on Wheeler are not just any crowd of anglers, they are all Elite Series pros, and are among the best bass anglers in the world. Any of these anglers has the potential to bring a massive bag of bass to the scales on any day, and true to form; the leader board got a little bit of a shake up on day three.
When someone mentions the name of Kevin VanDam as the best in the world, there would be few people who could mount a serious argument against it. When the Kalamazoo, Mich. pro is in the field, he is a threat to win, and this week is no different.
VanDam caught his biggest bag of the week, and the biggest sack of the tournament thus far to grab control of the Southern Challenge in an attempt to repeat as the tournament’s champion. In 2007, VanDam started day three of the Southern Challenge at Lake Guntersville in 4th place, the same position he began today.
http://www.basszone.com/2008eliteseries/wheeler/day3/story.htm