Monday, April 27, 2009
Smallmouths feed victory at Blue Ridge Brawl
Kevin VanDam wins his 15th BASS title.
JARED SOARES The Roanoke Times
Kevin VanDam celebrates during the final weigh-in for the Bassmaster Elite Series Blue Ridge Brawl on Sunday afternoon at Parkway Marina in Huddleston on Smith Mountain Lake. The angler from Kalamazoo, Mich., won the competition with a four-day total of 61 pounds, 13 ounces.
JARED SOARES The Roanoke Times
Kevin VanDam reels in a bass two hours before the final weigh-in for the Bassmaster Elite Series tournament on Sunday afternoon.
Mark Taylor is outdoors editor at The Roanoke Times.
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Photo by Jared Soares | The Roanoke Times
Kevin VanDam celebrates during the final weigh-in for the Bassmaster Elite Series Blue Ridge Brawl on Sunday afternoon at Parkway Marina in Huddleston on Smith Mountain Lake. The angler from Kalamazoo, Mich., won the competition with a four-day total of 61 pounds, 13 ounces.
HUDDLESTON -- The top prize at Bassmaster Elite Series events usually is $100,000.
Kevin VanDam got a bonus after clinching the title at the Blue Ridge Brawl at Smith Mountain Lake on Sunday.
VanDam had just gotten his trophy when fellow angler Kelly Jordon walked up and handed his friend a crinkled $1 bill.
On it were these words: "You are da man!"
VanDam left little doubt of that during the three final days of the four-day event, moving into the lead on the second day and never looking back.
His Sunday catch of a 13 pounds, 14 ounces gave him a four-day total of 61 pounds, 13 ounces and a 2 1/2-pound cushion over runner-up Matt Herren of Trussville, Ala.
Jordon, of Mineola, Texas, was third, while Greg Hackney of Gonzalez, La., and Aaron Martens of Leeds, Ala., rounded out the top five.
"This is one I'm real proud of for the decisions I made," said VanDam, a native of Kalamazoo, Mich., who has now won more than $3.4 million in BASS events. "Everything I did just fell into place. Everything I did was right.
"Every decision I made was the right one."
Like nearly every angler in the 99-man field, VanDam spent much of his time sight-fishing for bass that were moving into the shallows to spawn.
But his approach was just different enough to give him the edge.
Most of the anglers were seduced by big largemouth bass they were able to find on and around spawning beds.
But those fish were rarely easy to catch.
"I wasted 90 minutes on one fish today, and an hour on another one," Herren said of two big bass, either one of which probably would have helped him overtake VanDam.
VanDam said he was also struck by the numbers of big largemouths he could find.
"I didn't realize how many 4- to 7-pounders you had in here," he said.
When VanDam found a big largemouth, he would try hard to catch it. But he said he could usually tell pretty quickly whether or not the fish was going to be catchable for him.
"If it didn't seem interested," he said, "I was just going to move on."
The other key for VanDam was spending more time focusing on the lake's smallmouth bass.
Even though he knew that largemouths outnumber smallmouths in Smith Mountain Lake, and knew that the largest bass are largemouths, he felt that he could find enough nice smallmouths to make a difference.
"During practice I found only three smallmouths [on spawning beds]," he said. "But I knew more would be coming up every day, and they did."
That gave the northern angler confidence.
"Smallmouths are real aggressive," said VanDam, who grew up fishing for smallmouths on Michigan's cold, clear lakes "And I have a lot of experience fishing for them."
While spawning largemouths often seek out protected areas in coves around woody cover, including docks and stumps, VanDam said he was finding smallmouths on gravel bottoms on points off the main lake.
VanDam, a four-time BASS Angler of the Year and two-time Bassmaster Classic champion, said he spent plenty of time looking for those areas during the tournament. When he found them, he usually found smallmouths. And when he found smallmouths, he could usually make them bite.
Boat traffic that made the water choppy made it a little more difficult to see the fish, he said, but also kept the fish from being too spooked.
"Fish on a lake like this are not bothered by boat traffic," VanDam said. "Yesterday, it was a good thing."
VanDam's daily five-fish limits typically included three smallmouths in the 3- to 3 1/2-pound range, along with a couple of nice largemouths.
Only the top 12 anglers fished Sunday, with the fishermen being called to the stage to weigh their bass in reverse order of Saturday's standings.
Martens, his bag anchored by the day's biggest bass, a 6-pound, 7-ounce largemouth, jumped into the lead and held it until the final few anglers came to the stage.
Herren was sitting in the leader's chair when emcee Keith Allen called for VanDam, who made is way to the stage to the pumping sounds of Metallica and the day's loudest cheers from the estimated crowd of 5,000.
VanDam needed 11 pounds, 7 ounces to overtake Herren.
When Allen started a lengthy interview with VanDam before his fish were placed on the scale, it became clear that VanDam was going to claim his 15th BASS win.
