This winning thing is becoming a habit for Jason Christie.
The 37-year-old former teacher and basketball coach from Oklahoma won his first tour-level event just a month ago when he topped the Hartwell FLW Tour Major in South Carolina. Last week he did it again, prevailing over a field of 48 qualifiers and invitees at the inaugural PAA All Star Series event at Lake Ray Hubbard in Texas.
The 4th-year pro took command of the tournament with an event-best 25.33-pound sack on day 2, then backed it up with an 18.33 final-day stringer to outdistance runner-up Todd Auten by slightly less than 4 pounds.
Here's how he did it.
Practice
Like the majority of the field, Christie had never been to Ray Hubbard before. The impoundment, which covers less than 23,000 acres at full pool, is rife with quality fish, but they tend to be congregated at one end or the other (either the dam or up the river).
He had to start his practice somewhere, so he chose the dam end.
"I didn't do real good that first day, but I did find my backup area," he said. "It was a 5- or 6-acre cattail pocket and I caught two 5-pounders there in practice.
"I didn't think a lot about it at the time, but it ended up producing a lot of fish for me in the tournament. I got one or two every day there and some of them were good ones."
He went up the river the second day and got quite a few bites, and also found numerous fish locked onto beds.
"I knew that area suited the style I wanted to fish and with the wind in the forecast (it blew hard every day with gusts reaching 40 mph on day 2), I knew it would be my starting area. I like to run around a bunch, but as rough as it was, I knew (the conditions weren't) going to let me spot-fish.
"I could run up that river and put the trolling motor down and just fish."
Competition
> Day 1: 5, 18.25
> Day 2: 5, 25.33
> Day 3: 5, 18.35
> Total = 15, 61.93
Christie had hoped to start day 1 in a shallow ditch that branched off to the right of a major creek arm up the East Fork Trinity River. When he got there, however, he found Tommy Biffle, Takahiro Omori and Terry Butcher already in there, so he opted to drop back down to the flat that's formed by the junction.
He flipped up a couple of 4 1/2-pounders there, and then departed for his lower-end spot with about an hour left in the day and boated another 4 1/2, along with two keepers.
"That cattail pocket saved the day," he said. "When I got back in I was kind of surprised I was in 8th place – I didn't think the weights would be that high."
He did pretty much the same thing on day 2. He picked a 5 1/2-pounder off a stump on the flat, and then an 8.37 brute off a laydown, plus a few other decent fish out of some hydrilla. He had about 21 pounds when he headed for the cattails.
"The only reason I went down there is because I knew if I didn't, somebody else would fish it. I ended up catching another 5-pounder and a couple more keepers."
Runner-up Todd Auten (right) shakes Christie's hand after Christie's final bag registered 18.35 pounds.
He began day 3 on the laydown that produced the giant the day before and quickly boated a 5-pounder. He finished off his limit by catching four keepers out of the hydrilla on a Yum Money Minnow.
One last pass through the grass produced another 5, then he made the bumpy run toward the dam across rollers that were approaching 5 feet. It took about 45 minutes to traverse the 10 miles, but all the jostling paid off as he was able to cull his three smallest fish for a trio that each weighed between 2 1/2 and 3 1/4 pounds.
He then took it real easy on the way back to the launch.
"I was making sure I didn't kill my fish. Dead-fish penalties (a quarter-pound each) would've killed me."
Winning Gear Notes
> Flipping gear: 7'3" medium-heavy Falcon swimbait rod, Quantum Smoke casting reel (7.3:1 ratio), 20-pound Silver Thread fluorocarbon line, 1/2-ounce Booyah jig (green-pumpkin), Yum F2 Money Craw trailer (green-pumpkin).
> Swimbait gear: Same rod, reel and line, Yum Money Minnow (green-pumpkin).
> He fished the Money Minnow on the 6/0, center-weighted hook that was designed for the bait.
The Bottom Line
Main factor in his success – "I was limited to two areas and I knew that from the beginning of the tournament, so I just put my head down in those two places and fished."
Performance edge – "The wind blew extremely hard for 3 days and my Ranger/Mercury got me there and back no matter how rough it got. Also, I probably put my Power-Poles down and pulled them back up 500 times."
