LAKEVIEW - Right now, Jason Christie of Park Hill Okla., is the best professional bass angler in America.

One week after winning the FLW Wal-Mart Open and $125,000 on Beaver Lake near Rogers, Christie made the biggest comeback ever in a BASS event to win the Bassmaster Elite Series tournament and $100,000 on Monday on Bull Shoals Lake.

Christie started the day in 11th place, trailing the leader, Casey Scanlon of Lenexa, Kan., by 5 pounds, 3 ounces. Christie caught five bass weighing 18 pounds to amass a four-day total of 56-8. Scanlon caught five bass that weighed only 10-8 and finished third at 54-11. Only Fred Roumbanis of Bixby, Okla., came close, finishing second with a 14-14 stringer Monday and a 55-6 total.

Christie’s comeback eclipsed the previous Elite Series record, set by Mayflower’s Kevin Short on the Mississippi River in 2009. In addition to the FLW Tour victory last Sunday, Christie also finished seventh in the Bassmaster Classic on Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees in February and two Bassmaster open tournaments in 2012. He currently leads the race for Elite Series Rookie of the Year, and he is in ninth place in the race for Elite Series Angler of the Year.

“This is the greatest Monday ever,” said Christie, referencing the tournament’s Monday finish after Thursday’s opening round was pushed back a day by bad weather. “I don’t mind coming to work on a Monday. Everybody here wants the same thing. They want to win angler of the year, and they want to win every tournament. That’s what I want, too. I want to ride this train until it wrecks.”

Christie said he caught his fish differently all four days of the tournament, adapting to changing weather and water conditions. On the first day, he said he wanted to fish a Carolina rig in stained water near the Highway 125 area, but high winds prevented him from doing so. Instead, he threw a Bomber 6A crankbait in green crawdad color and caught a limit that put him in fourth place.

The crank bait didn’t work the second day, but conditions were ideal for the Carolina rig. He fell to 14th place.

“My wife said, ‘If you don’t make the cut, then come on home. And if you do, then put yourself in position to win,’ ” Christie said.

The weather knocked out the Carolina rig for the third day, so he spent the day flipping bushes with a Yum green pumpkin Wooly Hawg. He caught five bass that weighed 12-1 to make the 12-man cut. He started the final round 4 ounces behind 10th-place Greg Hackney and only 1 pound behind Casey Ashley, who was ninth.

Christie started his day fishing various lures in shallow water but had no luck, so he cranked up his outboard and prepared to leave. He said he rounded a bend and encountered a school of fish on the surface that covered almost five acres. He stopped and caught the winning limit with a One Knocker Zara Spook.

“I almost drove through them,” Christie said. “I thought they were little spots [spotted bass]. I stopped and cast into them, and it was boom-boom-boom. The first one I caught weighed about 4 pounds. The second one weighed about 5 pounds, followed by another 4-pounder.

“It was like a gift, like someone was saying, ‘Hey, take these fish back to the weigh-in,’ ” Christie said.

Last week’s victory at Beaver Lake turned out be a profitable experience, Christie said, both financially and for the purpose of gaining knowledge. Christie saidhe learned that bass in the White River chain of lakes are not as far along in the spawning cycle as most anglers believe.

“It got warm and the fish moved up. But then it got cold again, and they moved back,” he said. “Where I caught these today is in the last deep hole in that creek. It’s 50 feet deep there, and then it flattens out. They’re getting ready to go to the bank.”

Christie won with 22 pounds less than Brandon Palaniuk’s winning weight last year when the Bull Shoals event was held one week later. And several local anglers said they believe weights were lower because the water was considerably cooler than it was last year. Also, a big algae bloom in 2012 stained the water and improved conditions for catching big bass. This year, the water is much clearer, and anglers crowded into areas, mostly far up the lake around Lead Hill, where stained water was present.

“I fished in that one creek parts of every day,” Christie said. “That’s a part of the lake where clear water meets dirty. When you got to dirty water, there were a lot of people. I wanted to be where it mixed.”

The key to this victory, as well as the FLW victory, was making the right decisions at crucial times, Christie said.

“Fishing is all about the decisions you make during the day,” he said. “Everybody out here can catch them. I’m putting myself around fish and making the decisions I need to make.”

Sports, Pages 17 on 04/23/2013