John Murray – All In: FLW Rosie

I just got finished fishing the FLW Everstart tournament on Lake Roosevelt, and after winning the WON Bass tournament there the week prior I had high hopes of closing out another win.

The bite this week was totally different than last, last week I caught most of my fish deep and this week it was just the opposite. I was only able to catch one deep fish before I had to go shallow and I spent the rest of the tournament there.

I had saved a spot from the Won Bass and it quite a bit of effort to get to that. So much effort that my boat is having the wrap majorly repaired after that tournament. I fought my way through a bunch of brush to get there and when I did I saw an aluminum boat back there that turned out to be Ken Howden; the winner of the tournament. It feels really good to have found the winning fish two weeks in a row but it would have felt even better to actually been able to fish them.

I still did okay, I made the top ten cut in ninth place after two days and was able to move up to fourth overall; which is pretty good.

My approach had to change every day because the fish changed so frequently; I caught them on different things every day. The first day I caught them on a jig, the next day I caught them flipping a Texas rigged soft plastic crawdad and the third day I caught them on a River2Sea Crystal Spin spinnerbait.

What changed on the third day was that we got some cloud cover and instead of being able to flip them in the cover I think they loosened up in the open spaces between the cover. I threw the 5/8th crystal spin in chartreuse shad on my Powell Endurance 764 with an Ardent XS 1000 reel and 20-pound-test fluorocarbon.

The Crystal Spin really made a big difference because the water is so clear at Roosevelt. The Crystal Spin had a translucent body molded around a bismuth-tin insert that really gives a lifelike appearance in the clear water. My co-angler that day was using a regular spinnerbait and by the time I had caught 10 bass and he had only caught his first one he started asking what I was doing different, and I believe it just came down to the lure.

I had my best weight of the tournament on day three and it moved me up in the standings. It was good to finish high again, I feel like I’m fishing pretty well and I can’t wait to get started again.

Amy is packing up the motor-home for the year then I’m going to be working the ISE show in Phoenix this weekend, where I’ll be doing seminars every day. Then after that we’ll get ourselves on down to Florida will the season is about to kick off.

Talk to you next week.