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KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – On a day that would’ve been more better suited to be a duck as opposed to a professional fisherman, SKEETER/Yamaha pro Mark Davis caught a final-round total of eight bass weighing 27 pounds, 11 ounces to win $100,000 in the $1 million Wal-Mart FLW Tour event presented by BP on Fort Loudoun-Tellico lakes.
Davis bested his closest rival, Kellogg’s pro Dave Lefebre of Union City, Pa., by more than two pounds to earn the win and 200 points toward qualifying for the $2 million Forrest Wood Cup in Hot Springs, Ark., where the winner will earn as much as $1 million – the biggest award in bass fishing – Aug. 5.
Davis opened the tournament Thursday in ninth place with five bass weighing 16-5. He then jumped into third place Friday with a five-bass catch weighing 13-15 and advanced to the final round of 10 pros with a two-day total of 10 bass weighing 30-4.
On Saturday weights were cleared and Davis caught five bass weighing 19-13 to advance to the final day of competition in first place. Davis added another three bass weighing 7-14 to his final-round total Sunday.
“I swung for the fences all week,” said Davis, who earned his first win this week on the FLW Tour. “It’s great that I finally won one of these. I have come close many times, and it’s sweet to be here on top.
“This place is a great fishery, but I had to go to great lengths to figure these fish out.”
Davis was the only one in the 10-man field to have a pattern that reliant upon looking at his fish in order to be successful. He was throwing a combination of swimbaits and wakebaits around points, humps and other submerged structure in 4 to 10 feet of water near spawning areas.
Mother Nature pulled out all the stops in order to make things as difficult as possible. “I think the wind kind of hurt me today,” Davis explained. “I needed slick, calm conditions for my wakebait pattern, so I had to make some adjustments.
Davis explained that the wakebait bite he’d found forced him to slow down and pick each area apart “I tend to fish by the seat of my pants, but I couldn’t do that here,” he said. “I had to slow down and concentrate on one area and stick to my guns.”
Counting his blessing by slipping out the door with a win, Davis knows that while he put a solid pattern together, luck played a large part in his day. “I thought I was around enough fish to win no matter what the conditions were,” he explained. “I was extremely lucky to win this.”
Kellog’s pro David Lefebre caught a final-round total of 10 bass weighing 25-11 to claim second place and $50,000. If not for a lost fish, things could’ve been totally different. “I lost a key fish today that might have hurt me,” said Lefebre, who was the 2006 FLW Series Angler of the Year.
“The fish have been really spooky and tough to sight-fish.”
Lefebre relied on his northern roots to make a run at the top spot. “Being from up north, I have lots of practice sight-fishing in rough weather so the conditions suited me fine,” he explained. “I love the Tennessee River chain. It has a lot of current and good numbers of fish. Overall, I think it was a great event.”
Rounding out the top 10 pros are:
3. Keith Williams 10 24-12
4. Derek Jones 6 22-6
5. Shinichi Fukae 10 22-3,
5. Jay Yelas 9 22-3
7. Harmon Davis 10 21-12
8. John Sappington 10 21-6
9. Darrel Robertson 9 20-5
10. Thanh Le 8 12-1
Overall there were 44 bass weighing 113 pounds, 4 ounce caught in the Pro Division Sunday. The catch included six five-bass limits.
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