LITTLE ROCK — Zack Birge and Blake Flurry fished like pros on the Arkansas River, catching five bass that weighed 17 pounds, 4 ounces to give Oklahoma State a commanding lead Wednesday after the first round of the Bassmaster College Series National Championships.
That put a lot of distance between OSU and the Murray State team of Justin Graben and Vincent Campisano, who caught five bass that weighed a respectable 12-10. In third place was the Virginia Tech team of Carson Rejzer and David Bryant (5/9-15), followed by the University of Alabama team of Dustin Connell and Logan Johnson (5/8-4) and the Auburn team of Jordan Lee and Matt Lee (5/7-15).
The second round will be today on Lake Maumelle. Takeoff is 6:30 a.m. Weighins begin at 3:30 p.m. at the Tractor Supply store on Colonel Glenn Road. The top five teams at the end of today’s round will advance to the final round that will be held on Beaverfork Lake near Conway. Weights will return to zero Friday, and the team with the heaviest one-day weight will be crowned national champion.
Anglers from the top four teams will compete individually for a berth in the 2013 Bassmaster Classic at Tulsa.
Birge and Flurry looked best suited for that role Wednesday, catching a surprising weight in a tough fishery during a time of blistering hot weather and no current. They did it on a patch of grass in the Little Rock Pool near Willow Beach. Their biggest bass weighed 5-1. It was the first 5-pound or better largemouth from Pool 6 ever weighed in during a tournament, according to tournament angler data compiled by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. They did it with plastic frogs in about 90 minutes.
“There are a bunch of islands down close to the dam, and tons and tons of grass,” said Birge, of Blanchard, Okla. “Yesterday morning, we got in there and found one stretch of grass probably smaller than 50 yards that had a lot of good fish in it. We caught a few real quick and left and spent the rest of the day at Maumelle. We went right back to it this morning. Within an hour, we caught what we weighed in.”
The bite ended by about 9 a.m., he said. Birge did not divulge the brand, size or color of the plastic frogs, but he said it was important. The place was even more important.
“I think it was more the frog than the presentation,” Birge said.
“You could fish all around that area, but if you didn’t hit that stretch, you didn’t catch fish,” Flurry said.
Flurry said the fish bit in no more than 18 inches of water, and their average bass weighed about 2 3/4 pounds.
Rejzer and Bryant had the one-that-got-away story of the day. Rejzer said he lost a 9-pounder at the boat that would have put them close in total weight to Birge and Flurry.
“I thought it was a carp at first,” Rejzer said. “It had the biggest, widest mouth I’ve ever seen.”
Lurking in seventh place was the UALR team of Trent Gephardt and Jeremy Hall. The best they could do was a limit of big Kentucky bass on shaky head jigs.
“I found some underwater jetties a long time ago,” said Gephardt, who was on the 2008 team that won the national championship. “I found one in practice that had a ton of fish on it, and that’s where we caught all our fish today.”
Only 14 ounces separates UALR from fifth place, and Gephardt said he is confident he and Hall can bridge that gap today.
“All we’ve got to do is make that top five,” Gephardt said.
In ninth place was the Henderson State team of Matt Harper and Will Reeder (2/6-13). The University of Arkansas team of Mook Miller and Kyle Billingsley were in 15th place with four bass that weighed 5-6. Billingsley said they caught 100 fish Thursday, but few were keepers. A keeper largemouth on the Arkansas River must be at least 15 inches long.
“There’s tons of shad, and the fish are gorging, but the little fish are way more active than the big fish,” Miller said.
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“All we caught were 14 /2- inch blacks and 11-inch Kentuckies,” Billingsley said. “The small ones were so thick they beat the big ones to the lure.”
Sports, Pages 19 on 07/26/2012