Before earning a berth on the Elite Series three years ago, Adrian Avena was a regular on the FLW tour, which used to stop on northwest Arkansas’ Beaver Lake every season. Avena said he’s on a “Beaver Lake pattern” this week at Lake Martin.
“Lake Martin reminds me of Beaver Lake,” Avena said. “I’ve won a lot of money at Beaver Lake, and it’s always been with a couple of key largemouth.”
The “pattern” is to catch a limit of spotted bass early, then concentrate on upgrading with a bigger largemouth or two. Yesterday he made the upgrade of the day — a 6 1/2-pound largemouth, which helped vault him in the standings from 62nd place on Day 1 to 6th place after Day 2.
Avena got his limit of spots earlier this morning and now he’s working on the largemouth bite. He just put a 3-pounder in the boat, which bumped him up to 11-12 on the day and moved him into third place in the BASSTrakk standings.
“These conditions are in favor of the largemouth guys,” Avena said. “I half-tempted to throw a buzzbait around a little.”