Posted - July 12th, 2008 9:50pm CST

Vatalaro Within Striking Range, Weather Plays Huge Role again

Story by Pete Robbins - Photos by  Matt Pangrac

Trenton, MI – With the FLW Tour’s Angler of the Year race settled and none of the major players still fishing, the remaining ten anglers set out onto the Detroit River, Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie today in a continuing quest for bronzebacks and a $200,000 top prize.

Before the tournament began, pundits and odds makers predicted that local expertise would play a role in the final outcome and speculated that a local angler might take the title. While approximately half of the remaining competitors are current or former residents of the nearby regions, the tournament leader entering Day 4 is from nowhere near the Great Lakes. Tar Heel state resident Alvin Shaw is the only angler to have sacked twenty pound plus bags each of the three competition days. After weights were zeroed for the cut rounds, he once again demonstrated that he’s on the right quantity and quality of fish. In addition to his own stout limits, he has guided his co-anglers to comparable sacks as well. 

Vic Vatalaro, a consistent competitor on the Great Lakes system, sits less than a pound behind Shaw, and he’s confident that he can catch another big bag of brown fish tomorrow.

Just as it seemed to be a lead pipe cinch that one or more local experts would populate the Top 10 anglers, so too was it obvious that weather would play a role in the outcome of this event. Any time Erie is in the equation, an angler has to factor weather into his practice plan and tournament strategy. After Friday’s winds and massive waves dashed many anglers’ hopes, some of those fortunate to survive the cut into Saturday only enjoyed a brief respite from Mother Nature. 

While wind by itself can ruin a tournament strategy, today’s heavy rains and severe lightning forced several anglers to take cover. The most notable casualty was Day 2 leader David McCrone, who allowed discretion to be the better part of valor and waited out much of the storm beneath a bridge. That limited his fishing time substantially and he slipped all the way down to ninth.

Shaw is Determined
Shaw may be among the few who hopes the wind blows a bit tomorrow. He’s fishing on St. Clair and is confident he’ll be able to get to his fish under any foreseeable scenario.

While he and his co-anglers have jacked dozens of big smallies off of his key spots, today he left when he caught his limit.

“This place is not about patterns,” he said. “I haven’t been able to put a pattern together. I’ve tried to put together a lot of locations that have just a conglomeration of different cover – grass, rocks, sand.

Of his general location, he said, “It’s got big fish on it, no doubt about it. It’s not about a pattern, it’s about an area that’s got big fish.”

He feels like his three key areas are capable of jointly producing a 24 or 25 pound limit so he intends to pound on them in hopes of catching at least one five pounder on each spot. He knows they’re there because his “first day partner lost a seven pounder off one of the spots.”

It has been an up-and-down year for Shaw: “I had that Top 10 at Beaver. I was leading after the first two days. Then it sort of went south on me. I didn’t work as hard as I needed to there. Then I went to Fort Loudoun and had one of my best practices of the whole year and had my worst finish of the year.

“When I’m determined I can do better. It’s like playing Clark Wendlandt in ping pong. If I’m determined I can beat him. If I’m not determined he whacks me.

Not only is he determined, but he feels like his execution has been virtually flawless, which is critical when dealing with brown fish that alternately bulldog and leap for the sky.

While discussions about the future of co-anglers rage on the message boards, Shaw, at least for one day, was a big fan of his amateur partner. “My partner yesterday, he caught that 20 pound stringer on a leech and I said I’m putting a leech on. My last fish on that last spot, I had laid my rod down so I could retie a tube. Picked the rod up and there he was. That leech is going to play a factor before tomorrow’s out.”

Vatalaro Culls and Culls and Culls
Despite the pre-tournament talk about Erie being the hotspot for larger-than-average smallmouths, the tournament’s top spot may come down to a St. Clair showdown. Like Shaw, Vatalaro is fishing on St. Clair and he was the only other angler to bring in over 20 pounds today.

“I caught a bunch of fish today,” he said. “The first 10 casts I had 10 fish. They were loaded up on this one little sandy spot I found. I caught them there until about 9:15, then I moved off of it. What I think is happening is the fish are spreading out over this big feeding flat, moving from the spawn to the flat and eating perch or gobies or whatever else is out there. Our big tubes come swimming through and they eat ‘em.”

He waded through so many fish today that he lost track of what kind of weight he had in the livewell. “I didn’t know I had 20. I thought I had 18 or 19. There’s a lot of those three and halves, close to fours. I need a couple of five pound bites.

He described his technique as “old fashioned as can be,” a combination of green pumpkin and watermelon Mizmo Skinny Tubes.

Kenney Rolling on the River
JT Kenney, who has spent hundreds of days fishing Florida’s Lake Okeechobee amidst unpredictable weather systems, knows a bit about big nasty storms, so he focused his Day 3 game plan on the nasty weather that he expected to see sometime today.

“It went exactly as I thought,” he said. “I knew we were going to have thunderstorms this afternoon. I ran out into Lake Erie, caught five on the first place I went to, turned around went right back into the river, which took me two hours to get back. I caught one big one in the river where I’ve been catching some big ones every day.

He was docked eight ounces for a dead fish. With a four pound deficit to make up, that penalty could prove costly. Accordingly, he intends to maximize his time with a line in the water tomorrow and may not risk Erie’s wrath.

“I might stay in the river all day tomorrow. That’s where I had 20 pounds yesterday and obviously I’m going to have to get 20 pounds tomorrow to even have a shot,” he said. He’s prepared to swing for the fences at this point.

“I may not even catch five in there but if I do, they could weigh 20 pounds.”

Every fish he’s weighed in this week has been caught dropshotting a Berkley Gulp Jerk Shad in the Arkansas Shiner pattern.

Reault Sings Boating Blues
The second local in the Top 4 is David Reault. But in order to make up any ground he’ll have to put together an enormous limit of fish and hope one or more of the other stumble. After weighing in over 39 pounds cumulatively the first two days, he only managed 13-09 today, leading a cast of six other probable also-rans.

Much of the problem, he said, was the boat he ran today. 

“It was a little tough for me today,” he said. “I had a little trouble getting acclimated to the boat. I probably pushed a little bit hard on trying to get some big fish out of an area. I don’t think I fished it right. I had some mechanical issues, some equipment issues. I think it made a difference. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was reading on the graph. “ 

His spot is a tapering weed edge, but with the assigned boat’s electronics “The depth was different than what mine read. I couldn’t tell if I was on it.”

His plan for Day 4 is to “cover a lot of water” and “execute a lot better.”

“I was jerking a little too hard a little too fast,” he said. “I just didn’t pop ‘em. But for the weight that I had, I’m pleased with my position.”

THE TOP 10 AFTER DAY THREE