After winning the FLW Tour event on Grand Lake last weekend in Oklahoma, Jason Christie of Park Hill, Okla., is the most successful bass angler of the year.
Christie led from start to finish at Grand Lake. He reeled in 78 pounds, 1 ounce and $125,000. He topped off Sunday’s final round with a 19-13 stringer to give him a winning margin of 5-5.
He also won the FLW Wal-Mart Open at Beaver Lake in April, and then he won the Bassmaster Elite Series tournament a week later at Bull Shoals Lake. He finished in the top five at the Bassmasters Classic on Grand Lake in February, and finished fourth at the FLW Tour event at Lewis-Smith Lake in Alabama in March.
Christie said he was happy to win a big tournament on his home lake, but he said it was also stressful to perform at such a high level in front of a home crowd. He said his last round wasn’t as easy as it looked, and that he had to fight to keep his composure after some early setbacks.
“I didn’t get my first bite until 8:30 a.m., and it came unpinned on a tree, and I lost it,” Christie said. “From that point on, it was pretty slow and steady all day. It actually took all day to catch what I caught.”
Christie said he caught most of his fish around a willow island in the Elk River arm, where a strong current positioned big fish to all the points jutting off the island.
Christie said his goal at the start of the year was to finish in the top 10 two or three times. He’s done it five times, with three victories, on two tours.
On the other hand, four of those tournaments were on Grand Lake, and two were on White River lakes. At this point he’s still a regional phenomenon. Time will tell if he can perform as well consistently in other regions.
UMBRELLA RIG NEWS
In the near future, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission will likely consider a proposal to change regulations regarding the use of umbrella rigs for fishing.
AGFC Chairman Ron Pierce shared this information recently. He said he wasn’t sure what a new regulation would entail, but that it might specify that a single fishing line might be limited to containing a small number of hooks.
Commonly called the “Alabama Rig,” an umbrella rig is a device that contains four or five appendages that can each hold a lure. It can be very effective at catching big schooling bass. Bass fishermen discovered it only within the past couple of years, but striper fishermen have used it for at least 20 years. Crappie fishermen use it, too. Limiting the number of hooks on a line would eliminate umbrella rigs for all other fishing, too.
Pierce’s seven-year term on the commission will end June 20. He was an early opponent of the umbrella rig when anglers on the FLW dominated some tournaments with it. The “rig” is now a staple on the FLW Tour, but it is not legal in the Bassmaster Elite Series.
Pierce expressed concern in 2012 that anglers using umbrella rigs could decimate populations of big bass in public waters. He softened his criticism after he actually used the thing unsuccessfully on Lake Norfork.
Without question, the umbrella rig is very effective at catching big bass at certain times. Sometimes it catches more than one at a time, and that bothers some anglers, especially tournament anglers who prefer traditional shallow-water tactics. When bass are biting the “rig,” nothing else can compete with it.
It sounds like the same argument about spinning wing decoys, doesn’t it? SWDs work great at times. Some hunters love them. Others hate them. The AGFC has heard all the arguments pro and con, and research supports its position that spinning wing decoys are not detrimental to duck populations. That’s the scientific element. Whether it violates the “fair chase” ethic is a political calculation that the AGFC considers subordinate to the scientific element.
The umbrella rig debate has a notably different context. The “rig” allows anglers to catch more and bigger fish at times, but most bass anglers release their fish alive, especially big bass. Even though it might increase angler success at certain times and in certain situations, it probably does not effect bass mortality.
Until research proves otherwise, the Alabama Rig is not known to have a detrimental effect on the resource. That’s the scientific element. Only the sociological element remains, which gives the “rig” equal standing with the spinning wing decoy.
Sports, Pages 24 on 06/13/2013