On a day when the weather got nasty, the Lebanon, Mo. team of Stan Green and Roger Cook made the most of their practice on Lake Norfork to come from behind and win the 2nd annual Bass Cat Owners Regional Championship with 10 bass that totaled 25.85 pounds.
Green and Cook had ended Monday’s first-day double session with three bass that totaled 6.94 pounds, putting them more than 8 pounds behind the leaders, Richard Villemarette and Josh Sikes of Louisiana. They stormed back with a tournament-best limit that weighed 14 pounds at Lake Norfork Tuesday morning to claim a lead they would not relinquish. They subsequently added two fish in the afternoon at Bull Shoals to claim the all-expenses paid trip to Brazil. Their winning margin was slightly less than 2 pounds. Villemarette and Sikes fell to 2nd.
After the seven qualifying teams competed in 70-degree weather on Monday, a strong cold front moved in over the course of Tuesday morning. At take-off, the temperature was 50 degrees, but by the time the first session ended at 10:30 it had dropped to 38 and never exceeded that mark again.
Many of the teams were hampered by the day's unrelenting 15- to 20-mph winds, but Green and Cook said the blustery conditions aided them. During Sunday’s practice session on Norfork they’d located large numbers of fish holding in brush on the fronts of docks. Tuesday it blew directly on their best bank and the fish had relocated under the docks’ walkways, or on any nearby shallow cover.
“The wind messed us up yesterday on Crown, but today it pushed them in and helped us,” Green said. “They were on the bank in less than 2 feet of water.”
Every fish that the winning team weighed in over the course of the 2 days came on one of Green’s homemade football jigs – brown with a green-pumpkin trailer.
“We tried a lot of different stuff – jerkbaits, spinnerbaits, crankbaits – but the jig was what worked,” Green said. “We fished it in brush and on Crown we fished it in rock piles. We’re stubborn that way.”
They fished the championship out of Green’s 2013 Bass Cat Puma, powered by a Mercury outboard. Green has owned other brands, but said that rough-water ride is at a premium on their home water, Lake of the Ozarks, and he’s yet to find a boat that handles the rough stuff better than the Cat.
