“Random” seems to be the word of the week at Lake Texoma. Even the most successful anglers over the past two days have claimed they haven’t figured out a pattern. The bites have apparently come in random fashion.
But random isn’t a word in Rick Clunn’s vocabulary. He’s going to figure out a pattern where others don’t. Combine that with the fact that Lake Texoma’s normal patterns for this time of year were obliterated by floodwaters, and you have a formula for Clunn’s success.
“You know me, when we get conditions that turn a lake upside down, that’s when I do best relative to the rest of the field,” Clunn said Thursday. “I’ve been fishing Toledo Bend, Rayburn and lakes with a lot of bushes in the water for a long, long time. A lot of these guys, when they look at so many bushes in the water, it kind of confuses them.
“There’s a pattern within the bushes. That’s what you’ve got to figure out, and I figured it out about halfway through practice. I thought I could catch 15 to 17 pounds a day. I should have had 17 (on Day 1). I pretty well caught what I had today.”
Clunn was in 20th place with 14-0 on Day 1, when he lost “a four- or five-pounder” that would have put him close to 17 pounds. He moved up to seventh with 15-6 on Day 2, giving him a total of 29-6. At 10:30 a.m. today, BASSTrakk has him in fourth place with a limit weighing 10-14.
“I know what I’m doing is right, so I’m just going to stick with it,” Clunn said yesterday. “Most of my bites have been from 9:30 on. It’s a pretty easy pattern once you get on it.”
Clunn would love to win this event and avenge a mistake he made in 1993 at Texoma that haunts him to this day. On the second day of the three-day Bassmaster Oklahoma Invitational, Clunn had 16-13 when he paused near the weigh-in area to allow his co-angler to try and fill his limit. He’d forgotten his check-in time and came in 15 minutes late, reducing his bag to 1-13.
Clunn ended up in 48th place with 15-15, a tournament George Cochran won with 25-9. Obviously, Clunn would have won by over five pounds without the 15-pound late check-in penalty.