It turns out that Shane Burns can catch quality bags from venues other than Lake Shearon Harris in his home state of North Carolina.
Burns teamed with fianceé Bonnie Kelly to catch stringers weighing 42 and 47 pounds in local events on back-to-back Saturdays at Shearon Harris earlier this month. This past weekend he traveled to Virginia to compete in a BFL at Smith Mountain Lake and came home with the trophy and more than $6,000.
“I’ve been so close to winning before and I've wanted one of those big winner trophies for a long time,” Burns told FLW media after his first career win in FLW competition in the wake of 15 previous top-10 finishes. “I have so many of the fish hook trophies that they give out to the top 10, but it was so awesome to finally get over that hump and get the win.”
Burns said that he caught his winning limit, which weighed 19-10, by fishing points in pockets in Craddock Creek. He was originally targeting smallmouth with a jerkbait, but found an area where big females were staging for the spawn (where have we heard that before?) and capitalized with a green-pumpkin Dave’s Tournament Tackle football jig with a Dave’s Tournament Tackle Sweet Tail Craw, also in green-pumpkin.
Burns said that he caught eight keepers throughout the day – seven largemouth and one smallmouth – and weighed in five largemouth.
“I had given up on trying to find the deep fish and was planning on committing to the docks, but my Lowrance unit showed me those big largemouth were there. They weren’t stacked up, but I worked the point up and down, both sides. There were enough females there to get me a good limit.”
Burns' next scheduled competition is another BFL this weekend at Kerr Lake.
