GROVE, Okla. — Chad Kallina, who took an Elite Series co-angler title last year at Sam Rayburn, took an early perch on the hot seat and endured a final charge by second day runner-up Dave Stewart to win another fully rigged Triton bass boat package.The San Marcos, Texas, resident weighed 38 pounds, 3 ounces for the three days of competition, besting Stewart by a scant eight ounces.”Is this really happening? I had a dream about this last night. It’s incredible,” said Kallina, a south Texas hunting guide. “I came straight from Red River (Central Open) and had a big day yesterday and just had some things go right today.”Throwing a Strike Pro crankbait and “a whole variety of spinnerbaits,” he slow rolled on his preferred main lake points that got him there on Day Two (17-5), but getting enough on Day Three took several different techniques and perhaps a little divine intervention.
We (Day Three partner Todd Faircloth) started out on a point and I got a nice one right off the bat,” Kallina said. “He got off of that point and didn’t come back to it for a long while. When we did I got two fish, boom, boom. Each about two and a half pounds.”By this time it was around 1:30 and Kallina was sweating it with only three fish in the livewell. Faircloth moved to work a final set of boat docks before calling it a day.
“I told myself that I couldn’t stress and got a good solid two-and-a-half pounder off of the first dock, so that made me feel good,” Kallina said. “When we were moving to another dock, I decided to pick up another rod and throw a ‘Hail Mary’ cast to the bank, about 50 yards with a Chatterbait. I cranked it about three times and he nailed it.”
Runner-up Dave Stewart added a second-place finish to his dossier to go with twin fifth-place finishes at Lake Amistad the past couple of years while Bryan Talmadge, who stood solidly in third place on Day Two, dropped like a stone to 16th.”Russ (Lane) just wasn’t on any fish,” said Talmadge, who weighed one 2-13 fish today. “It’s one of those things. He warned me last night that he wasn’t on much.”
Editor’s note: This week, ESPNOutdoors.com invited the University of Oklahoma bass fishing team to join coverage of the Sooner Run presented by Longhorn Tobacco. The collegiate anglers will post a regular blog on this site and appear on Hooked Up, the live Internet shows that air at 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. ET on Sunday in advance of the live weigh-in. Daily live weigh-ins and a realtime leaderboard will be at 4 p.m. ET. Please feel free to post comments to this blog via the ESPN Conversation feature at the bottom of this and every news page on this site.