On day 1 Paul Elias was in 20th place at the Atchafalaya FLW. After two days, he was in 8th and made the cut. His spots were good, but as he said, he thought he'd maxed out his canals.
"I gave it a lot of thought that night, and decided to run to the shallow area," he said. Again, that was an area in which he'd never made a cast in practice. "I thought, If I don't make it and get stuck, I finish 10th. And if I got there and they didn't bite, I'd only lose about 90 minutes and everything would be okay.
"I'd never made a cast in it -- I knew I was taking a risk. But I know enough about bass fishing on this kind of water that I knew fish don't mind being in 1 1/2 feet of water -- but when it drops down to like 10 inches on those flats, they all pull out to where they have at least a foot or foot and a half of water somewhere.
"This 200-yard stretch had about 2 feet of water and everything else was shallower. This section of this ditch was the deepest water for that 8 miles."
Not only had Elias never fished the spot before, it wasn't exactly a walk in the park to get there. "All it was was a ditch," he said. "It was a really narrow, shallow ditch that fed back into a main bayou. You had to run about 8 miles of really shallow water to get there -- so shallow that if you set down, you were done.
"And for about 2 miles of it you had to cross your fingers that a boat wasn't coming the other way. If someone was coming you'd just have to play chicken, and whoever turned off was done."
Day 3: Another Risk
> Day 3 -- 5, 17-05
> Day 4 -- 5, 16-13
> Total = 10, 34-02
On day 3 Elias whipped down the ditch to the spot, dropped the trolling motor in the water and "started catching fish. They were as thick as could be."
It was the first cloudy and windy day of the event, and his fish "were hammering a spinnerbait. I caught about 40 fish, probably 3 limits of keepers. I caught every fish I weighed-in on a spinnerbait," he added. "I tried a buzzbait because I thought they should be crunching a buzzbait, but they weren't."
At 11:30 on a fairly long day 3, Elias then took another risk: he decided to leave his fish while they were biting. Even though he knew he had a big bag, it was a risk because storms were supposed to move in on Saturday, and because this year on the FLW Tour day 3 weights are carried over.
"I decided to go flip a jig to try to catch a big fish, and I never helped myself," he said.
Day 4 Change
On day 4 the conditions changed, but not in the way expected. A little on-and-off rain showed up and the wind laid down a little, but the biggest change was that the water level had risen. In Elias' area "the water had come up about 3-4 inches and had gotten murky," he said.
"What had been matted grass now was about 2 inches underwater. I started going through there, thinking about how this would affect the fish, and thought it would make it easier to fish a spinnerbait. They'd probably hammer it."
Not so. "I went about 50 yards without a fish, and the day before I caught 10 fish and 2 keepers in that stretch. I thought, Boy, what's going on here. Maybe I fished it out."
On the next stretch he caught two 2-pounders and 3-4 shorts -- better, but on the same stretch the previous day he had 15-20 fish. At that point "I thought for sure I really hurt them yesterday," he said. "But in the back of my mind I thought they ought to be biting a buzzbait."
He tried a buzzbait for half a pass and whiffed, then went back to the spinnerbait and started getting bites -- but they were short-striking. He used a Mann's Dragon Tube as a follow-up bait. "Whenever a fish boiled or touched the spinnerbait, I pitched a tube in there. I caught the first 2 that did that. They weren't keepers, but the next one was a 3-pounder."
He caught 5-6 more by doing that, and deduced that the fish wanted the tube. "I made a whole pass with the tube and never caught another keeper," he said.
Buzzbait Decision
"It kept clouding up and raining, and I knew that the fish were setting up to spawn and weren't taking the bait because of that," Elias said. Then he had a realization: "I live in the South and I know how these fish are when they're like that that: they'll bite a buzzbait. So I threw it relentlessly for about 20 minutes, which feels like a long time when they're not biting. Then one hit and it was a keeper.
"That gave me confidence, and the next fish was 5-pounder," he said. "Prior to that I was looking at my watch thinking, I might have to leave here and fish somewhere else. But that 5-pounder locked me in. I decided, I'm going to do it right here.
"A lot of fish were missing the buzzbait, but they wouldn't come back on the tube anymore so I just had to bear down with the buzzbait." He caught another 3-pounder on the buzzbait, tried the tube on a few more boiling fish with no results, then caught a 2 3/4-pounder on the spinnerbait.
"In the last 45 minutes I had 5 real good blowups on the buzzbait," he noted. "I had one 2 1/4-pounder (in the boat) and I knew (all the blowups) were good fish. I had five chances to get rid of it, but I never hooked any of those fish. Almost every one hit it twice and still didn't get the hook (he had a trailer hook on the bait). I thought it could be a crucial thing."
Turned out it wasn't. In fact, he would have won even without his biggest fish, that 5-pounder.
Days 3 and 4 Gear/Notes
> Day 3 spinnerbait -- 7-foot medium-heavy Quantum Tour Edition rod, Quantum PT 400 reel, 20-pound Trilene Iron Silk line, 3/8-ounce Mann's Classic spinnerbait. Elias fished the bait with the standard 4 1/2 willow and No. 3 Indiana blades (both gold), but the skirt was blue/white/chartreuse and the old wider-strand rubber style. "I feel that gives it more action, especially when you're trying to flutter something like I was doing."
> The ditch Elias was fishing was lined with grass on either side. "My day 3 co-angler was a really good angler, but he didn't work his spinnerbait right and only caught 2 keepers while I caught about 3 limits," he said. "He was throwing a 1/2-ounce bait with a little bigger blade that I was throwing. I was throwing that 3/8-ounce with a pretty big chartreuse grub on it to help hold it up. I was throwing it over grass, and every time I came to a hole I'd let it flutter down and shake it. They were small holes -- only 2-3 cranks on the handle and you'd be out. The fish hit that spinnerbait when I would flutter it around and in those holes."
> On day 4 he weighed in two fish caught on the buzzbait, two caught on the Mann's Classic spinnerbait and one caught on the Dragon Tube.
> Buzzbait -- 7-foot heavy-action Quantum PT rod, Quantum 600 PT reel, 20-pound Berkley Iron Silk line, homemade 1/4-ounce single-bladed buzzbait with black/grey skirt and trailer hook. "That buzzbait was made for me by Albert Dobson -- who lives on the Mississippi Gulf Coast -- to take to New Orleans (years ago) because marsh bass love this buzzbait," Elias said. "It really squeaks, and it runs a little to the left which I like because I can walk it over areas I want the bait to come through."
> Tube -- Same rod, reel and line as used for fishing the It, 4-inch Mann's Dragon Tube in green-pumpkin with the tail/tentacles dyed chartreuse.
Other Notes
> On saving an area -- "I'd never done that for an area I'd never made a cast in. But I was confident in knowing that those fish had to pull back somewhere. They wouldn't swim 8 miles to get back to the bayou."
> On the morning of day 4 -- "I was nervous, but I had a sense of confidence that I haven't had in a long time. I knew a lot of fish were there and I left them biting on Friday."
> The last tournament he won was the $100,000 Bass Pro Shops Legends tournament held in March 1998. Before that it was a BASSMASTER Top 100 on Lake Okeechobee in December 1988.
> Elias fished a narrow, shallow area on days 3 and 4. He was nervous about having the camera boat in there, but "the guy who operated the camera boat did an excellent job," he said. "He stayed right where he needed to stay. I only had to ask him a few times to get off the edge of the grass."
- End of part 2 (of 2) -
Here's how he looked at the end of day 4.
