Bass tournaments on the St. Johns are almost always about the big fish.
Classic champ Edwin Evers was laughing about his lunker on Day 1 of the Bassmaster Elite at St. Johns River presented by Dick Cepek Tires & Wheels.
“I had a 9-13,” he told fans in a Facebook video. “That thing helps a bunch when you don’t have much else to go with it. But I’ll take it. It was an exciting bite, exciting fish to finally get in the boat.”
Evers, who 10 days ago brought in 29 pounds, 3 ounces to win the Grand Lake Classic, hasn’t let off the gas. He started the Elite season with a bag of 20-5, good for 12th place and is just 3-8 back of leader Brandon Lester. Like Elite mate Jason Christie said last week, somebody might have awoke the sleeping grizzly in Evers.
While Evers said he lost a few good fish on Thursday, he was upbeat because he knows where to go try to get them Friday. And it was pretty neat he still gets so ramped up after catching a 10-pound class bass — it was only 3 ounces short.
“It was a fun fish,” he said. “It’s big.”
Admittedly, Evers’ other four fish weren’t anything to write home about — he won’t have to as wife, Tuesday, and son, Kade, were doing Disney and will join him shortly. He’ll tell them all about it.
The dynamics of kicker fish on St. Johns is approached in Steve Wright’s article “Four rats and a fatty.” While Evers is inside both cuts with that, Aaron Martens’ smaller rats and fatty has him 60th, outside cashing here.
The forecast of more rain will make sight fishing even more difficult, said Evers, who won the 2011 Elite event here with 77-1. Alton Jones won the next year with 75-9, and in 2014 Chris Lane, behind a huge 37-9 Day 2 bag, ran away with 90-13.
EVERS PLAYED BOND IN EARLY OPEN
Evers was just making the best out of a difficult situation when he went all James Bond years and years ago.
“I’m in the Opens and I’m in the Top 5. It was the final event of the year, and it’s real dark and wavy,” Evers said as he set the scene on Sam Rayburn some 15 years ago. It was still pretty dark the morning he headed with a co-angler to the launch site.
He described the clay hump sticking out of the lake a couple of feet high and maybe 30 feet across — “there’s a thousand people hit it,” he said.
He was next.
“Luckily the wind was really blowing,” said Evers, but that’s in part why he couldn’t see until it was too close to avoid. “I’m in big wave and there it is, so I just hammer down. We had to get. We got on the downhill side.”
Before his boat grinded to a halt on the hump.
“Had to get out and push the rest of the way,” he said. “I made the Top 10. I made the Classic.”
LISTEN, DON’T LEARN HARD WAY
The above photo was sent in from reader Tim Steiner of Evansville, Ind. He’s sharing his fishing tale of woe.
He was fishing with his buddy Keith on Lake Barkley, using a Texas rigged lizard with a 1/8 ounce bullet weight and 3/0 worm hook.
“I was casting as close as possible up to the edge of a rocky bank,” Steiner wrote. “While trying to slide the lizard into the water, I snagged the line on some rocks on the bank. The bullet weight got lodged in between two rocks and would not come loose.”
Since it was shallow, they didn’t want to get the boat close to the bank, so Steiner said he tried pulling straight back from 40 feet away and break the line.
“The 14-pound mono line stretched pretty good, but would not break,” he wrote. “Finally the weight, hook and all slipped through the rocks and came back at me like a sling shot … they do not call it a bullet weight for nothing. It hit me in the right side just above my belt and only took seconds to start bleeding and create a big bruise.”
We feel your pain, Tim. That’s pretty bad and many of us can relate. And that scenario has been worse. In 2008, an angler on Long Island actually killed himself in this manner.
Steiner just wanted to warn anyone who wasn’t privy to the potential danger, and that he said he’ll now just get as close as possible and cut the line. Sound thinking. And fish safe, all of you.
BRAINARD MEETS NIGHT OWL MARTENS
Jay Brainard, the Elite Series rookie from Enid, Okla., received an eye-opening introduction to reigning Toyota Bassmaster Angler of the Year Aaron Martens.
On the eve of his first Elite event, Brainard reported he was checking on his battery charger every five minutes or so because the breaker kept blowing. Then he decided to go plug in at the bathhouse and ran into Martens on the way.
“I thought I was the only one who worked on tackle at 1 a.m. the night before a derby,” he said.
Naw, Aaron is known for late nights, and he just so happened to stop and check up on Brainard — Martens even hooked him up with an adapter. Brainard thought that was so cool, but there are so many stories of the brotherhood of anglers helping out another in need.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Let’s stick with this shot of Brainard (above) for our Photo of the Day. Steve Bowman welcomed him to the Elites by photographing one of his first catches, and it’s a nice one. Brainard stands in 30th place with 18-0, a good chunk of it with this fish. Check out all the photo galleries.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Sight-fishing isn’t sight-fishing when you can’t see them.” — Alton Jones