Posted - July 13th, 2008 10:30pm CST

Vatalaro Falls Three Ounces Short

Story by Pete Robbins - Photos by  Matt Pangrac

Trenton, MI – So much for the local advantage. 

It’s well over 500 miles from Alvin Shaw’s North Carolina home to the Detroit River. Vic Vatalaro had less than 200 miles to travel from his home to the launch site for this week’s FLW Tour event. Mark Modrak’s home in China Township, MI is about 70 miles away. And Kim Stricker’s abode is even closer. 

But when the scales closed, the top four finishers from top to bottom were sorted out by who lived the longest distance away. That meant that it’s Shaw who will have to spend the most on gas money to get home, but it also means he’ll take home the biggest check. He weighed in 18-13, his smallest limit of the event, but it was just enough to claim the victory over Vatalaro.

On a day when no competitor sacked 20 pounds, Vatalaro’s 19-07 left him a scant three ounces short of what would have been his first FLW Tour victory. It was his best finish to date in a tour-level event – he came in third at Lake Norman last year – but that provided little solace when the difference between first and second may have been as small as one spit up perch or a couple of gobies.

Modrak and Stricker were the only other pros to weigh in over 12-12 today, with 18-11 and 14-05, respectively. In what turned out to be a two man race, neither Modrak nor Stricker ended up within eight pounds of the lead. Four of the remaining anglers failed to complete their limits and fell by the wayside.

Shaw Managed His Fish
Shaw had no idea during practice that he was on the type of fish he’d need to win: “I didn’t know how good these spots were in practice. You don’t just go out and hammer them in practice. You go around and try to get a feel for what’s going on. I figured I’d definitely get a top 100, maybe even a top 50, you know, a $10,000 check.”

But after the first day, he knew that he might be in the running for the big prize come Sunday. Unfortunately, today didn’t start off the way he had hoped.

“I went to my first area, where I’ve been keying and getting two, maybe three good bites each day,” he said. “I got there and it was rocking and rolling. There were a lot of spectator boats and local tournaments going on, plus there were some walleye boats there. They had churned the water up there. I kept working in there and working in there and finally I got one crucial bite there.”

At that point, he abandoned that primary spot and started to key on other areas he’d located in practice. “It was going slow, slow, slow. Then I finally went up in one area where I’d been in practice but hadn’t gone in the tournament. I went up there and caught another good one. Then I caught some more keepers”

While other competitors may have been hampered by the past two days’ brutal winds, the gusty conditions may ultimately have worked to his advantage – they prevented him from running to a big fish spot up in Canada and forced him to tough it out longer than he otherwise would have “because it was harder to run.”

Yesterday he noted that his co-angler had turned him on to a leech as a key big fish bait, but he “couldn’t work it today” so he stuck with the green pumpkin gold flake tube that had taken him this far. And while he wasn’t able to bring local knowledge to the table, he was able to bring a bit of good old fashioned southern fried bass fishing to St. Clair.

“I keyed in on something we do back home, on grass lakes like Guntersville, Murray and Santee,” he said. “It’s more of a flipping bite I was using. I was having to make longer pitches into clear water. I was actually casting, but I was working it like flipping. I was roll casting, I wanted it to go down into a grass clump. Pick it up, make ‘em look at it, and shake it to get them to bite it.

Vatalaro Didn’t Know It Would Be So Close
Vic Vatalaro had no idea that he was within a few ounces of the winning weight. He expected that he’d need a 20 pound sack to win the whole enchilada, and he was right, but I didn’t suspect that his limit would weigh what it did.

“I didn’t even think I had 19 pounds,” he said. “I thought I had 17 or 18 pounds.”

Like Shaw, his main pattern was to fish a tube “down through bushy weeds” on big flats. He said that he fished an exceptionally clean tournament. 

“I never lost a fish. I just worked hard, but the bites were a little tougher today. I couldn’t get the big bites. 

Although he expressed disappointment that he couldn’t close it out, he said the tournament was “a lot of fun” and now he looks forward to “going to the championship, trying to win a million dollars.”

Modrak Third
Modrak went into the final day of competition with little pressure on him, knowing that it would take an exceptional set of circumstances, most of them beyond his control, to get him into the winner’s circle. 

“I knew I didn’t have a chance to win it, so on the way down here I turned on the weather man and it said small craft advisory. I didn’t want to get beat up, so I just stayed right here in the river, went five, six maybe seven miles tops.”

He spent the day flipping and pitching tubes and culled up to 18-11. That strategy was in marked contrast to the one he employed in the qualifying rounds, when he ventured into St. Clair and fished in 14-15 feet of water. 

“Those were fish that had spawned in shallow water and were moving out. I had one area that was about 100 yards long, but I just couldn’t get to it today.

Despite some frustration over his inability to seal the deal, he noted that he was satisfied with his tournament and relied on local knowledge to land in third overall.

Sun for Stricker
After a disappointing 11-15 third day catch, Michigan’s Kim Stricker bounced back with a 14 plus sack today.

“It went better than it did yesterday,” he said. “Yesterday, I knew that with that other tournament going on that my best spot was probably going to have a boat on it and sure enough there was. He had caught three fish on it. There was no tournament up there today so I went up there and bam-bam I put my two biggest fish in the boat.

“My shallow fish needed sunshine. I got sunshine. The downside is that I lost another four pounder, but that stuff happens and I’m real pleased with my finish and I had a great time.

He spent the tournament fishing the flats in the St. Clair River system: “The fish would come up on those flats, especially in that nice warm sunshine, and feed. There were two other guys, two other locals, doing the same thing. Unfortunately we shared a few spots. “

He believes that the boat traffic and fishing pressure made the bass extraordinarily wary. 

“You’d work on them and you’d finally get them to get interested in what you were doing and they’d cruise away. You’d see them. You’d set the hook and they’d get off.”

Most notably, he praised the fishery and encouraged the city of Detroit to recognize the exceptional tournament resource they have at their doorstep.

Wind Frustrates Kenney
Florida’s JT Kenney didn’t start in Erie, but with a lot of ground to make up he felt he owed it to himself to venture out into the big lake to go for the gusto

“It was really rough,” he said. “I started in the river and the front blew through. It didn’t look at all like it was going to be windy, so I went out into Erie and as soon as I got there my first drop I caught one. As soon as I caught that one and it was like a wall of wind came at me. I stayed out there about 15 more minutes and I caught one more, but the weird thing was they were both really small ones.

“At about 11 o’clock, I turned around and I had like 31 miles. I started back at around four after 11 and I got back at 2:25.”

His fish on Erie were all in 22-23 feet of water. He targeted small rock pile and in some cases just single boulders. He’d line up, camp out, see the fish on his electronics and present his lure vertically.

He also developed a secondary pattern fishing current breaks in the river and caught two or three key fish in those areas.

“I think I had a pretty good tournament. I wish today wouldn’t have gone so terrible. I obviously wasn’t on the same kind of fish as Alvin and Vic, nobody was. They ran away with this thing. I’m ready to go to the Cup.”

Reault Has Mixed Emotions
Sixth place finisher David Reault had mixed emotions about the final regular season FLW Tour event of 2008. 

“I hate to say that it’s disappointing because I had a good finish,” he said. “A sixth place finish in a tournament like this is really good, but I would have liked to have finished a little higher. I don’t know that there’s anything I could have done to win the tournament, other than what I tried to do. I had other options that I thought would have gotten me 17 or 18 pounds, but I didn’t think it would have me on winning fish.

External conditions contributed to his inability to fill out a limit today. “I thought I could scramble and get some numbers and some size but between the boat traffic and the wind, it just put the kibosh on that. 

“I did some fishing up in the channels, the St. Clair River. The wind isn’t as bad in there, but the boat traffic can be a huge factor. When it started blowing like mad in the lakes all the boats went into the channels and it was crazy in there. I’ve never seen the Detroit River this rough.”

His primary lure was a jerkbait, but today he landed one fish apiece on a spinnerbait and a swimbait.

Bennett Bettered Expectations
California’s Michael Bennett was pleased to make it this far. He didn’t think his fish would last past Friday.

“I knew I was in trouble after the second day,” he said. “I just barely had enough to make the top 10. I really struggled, didn’t think I had enough weight. I pretty much tried to catch as much as I could.”

He caught the majority of his fish dropshotting a Gulp leech, and added a few fish on a jerkbait, all on St. Clair, but the wind prevented him from maximizing his time on the water.

“On Day 3 we had that crazy storm so I never got to fish my key area. I lost about two hours of fishing time. Today I got to fish it for a couple of hours. The wind kind of made it really difficult. I think if it was calm conditions I could have caught big bags but it never worked out that way,” he said.

McCrone Misjudged
After experiencing exceptional success in the qualifying rounds, the wheels came off on Saturday and Sunday for David McCrone. He sacked two fish for just under seven pounds yesterday and brought in the goose egg today.

“I learned something quite important,” he said. “Obviously I only know how to go fishing on Lake Erie, so next time I have a tournament that’s more than one or two days I have to learn how to catch some fish in the river or St. Clair because I have zero experience fishing out there.

He spent most of Sunday’s tournament hours in St. Clair riding around “looking for a place to fish. “ He lost the only fish that he hooked.

His prior success had come throwing a dropshot in 12-15 feet of water. One of his key spots was a muddy water area “where nobody ever fishes” and the others were caught in an expansive community hole. 

FINAL STANDINGS