Aaron Martens and Edwin Evers advanced to Sunday's final of Toyota Trucks All-Star Week with semifinal wins on Saturday at Illinois' Lake Decatur over Ott DeFoe and Gerald Swindle, respectively.
Martens, the No. 3 seed for the semifinals, caught the day's lone limit en route to defeating 2nd-seeded DeFoe 8-13 to 2-12. Evers, the runner-up to DeFoe at last year's event, downed Swindle 8-06 to 1-12.
Evers brought four fish to the scale and DeFoe and Swindle weighed just one each. DeFoe reported losing a fish that was in excess of 5 pounds.
Martens fished extremely shallow and covered as much water as he could. “The water’s really dirty ¬– zero visibility – and it’s pretty scary to motor through to get to my fish,” he said.
Evers ran for an hour and 20 minutes through silt and mud to get to deeper water on the upper end of the lake. “I don’t think I can get back to my fish,” he said. “That north wind dropped the water level so low that I’m sure I can’t get through.”
