Fishing

The Starting Spot: Fitzpatrick Wins Grand, AR Trophy Bass Program, and Unorthodox Crankbaits for Bass

The Starting Spot Daily Bass Fishing Headlines are the perfect way to start your day with some of the top bass fishing articles on the internet. It’s the quick, informative, how, where, and who you need to know. So, rub the sleep from your eyes, pour that first cup of the day, and head to your Starting Spot.
Kurt Mazurek|
Today on The Starting Spot: Fitzpatrick Wins Grand, AR Trophy Bass Program, and Unorthodox Crankbaits for Bass
Today on The Starting Spot: Fitzpatrick Wins Grand, AR Trophy Bass Program, and Unorthodox Crankbaits for Bass | Photo by Kurt Mazurek

In this edition of The Starting Spot:

-I covered the international co-angler champion from the Toyota Series Championship, but the pro angler Champion is a great story too. Roger Fitzpatrick is 61-years old and bested a super stacked championship field with a good ol’ spinnerbait. Cool story!

-Arkansas is getting serious about their trophy bass program. It’s great to see and hope their success inspires some other states to up their game.

-Crankbaits catch bass, but unusual crankbaits catch finicky bass. Check out three great examples of crankbaits nobody is throwing but a handful of the most savvy anglers on the planet.

Fitzpatrick takes Toyota Series Championship by tiebreaker on Grand Lake

by Jody White

From a story on MajorLeagueFishing.com: The final day of the Toyota Series Championship Presented by Phoenix Boats on Grand Lake will go down as one of the tightest of all time. Entering Championship Saturday, four Ozark stalwarts were ounces apart – in theory shooting it out with jigs and spinnerbaits for the win. Then, the power fishing bite crumbled, and Drew Gill, Tucker Smith and Riley Harris blitzed up the leaderboard, picking off fish after fish with forward-facing sonar.


At weigh-in, Smith and Gill both weighed over 14 pounds, by far the biggest bags of the day. But, with 11 pounds, 7 ounces, Roger Fitzpatrick had just enough to hang on, moving up from second to first with 41-1 and beating Gill for the win via tiebreak, which is previous day’s standing first and then heaviest single-day catch, both of which favored the veteran angler…MORE.

New Era of Trophy Bass: Optimizing Florida Bass Broodstock for Superior Fingerlings

by Bass Resource

From an article on BassResource.com: The Arkansas Game and Fish Division has been diligently working behind the scenes to ensure they stock superior Florida Bass.
 

This year, they teamed up with Red Hills Fishery of Georgia to carry out a comprehensive genetic and physical evaluation of hatchery broodstock. This initiative involved gathering information from over 1,000 Florida Bass at the Andrew H. Hulsey and Joe Hogan State Fish Hatcheries.

These broodstock are used to produce over a million Florida Bass fingerlings, which are stocked annually in public waters…MORE.

Unorthodox Crankbaits: The Ultimate Trophy Bass Trickery

by Jonathan LePara

From a story on Wired2Fish.com: Bass gorge on bait to prepare for and recover from the spawn, and at just about every possible opportunity. Brandon Palaniuk and Kevin VanDam employ crash-and-bang cranking to flip their switch while Todd Castledine’s preferred bait deflects instead of digs. Triggering trophy bites is crucial — on that, they totally agree.…MORE.

Thanks for starting your day with Fishing On SI. Lines in!

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Kurt Mazurek
KURT MAZUREK

Kurt Mazurek writes about all things fishing and the outdoor lifestyle for Fishing On SI -a division of Sports Illustrated. Before writing On SI he enjoyed a successful career in the fishing industry, developing marketing campaigns and creative content for many of the sport’s most recognizable brands. He is a dedicated husband and father, an enthusiastic bass tournament competitor, YouTuber, photographer, musician, and author of the novel "Personal Best: fishing and life”.

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