May 17, 2009
Lake Travis – Austin, TX

Anglers of the ATX Bassmasters voted to bring this month’s tournament home to good old familiar Lake Travis. However, with the lake beginning to reach close to 30 feet low from full pool and water temperatures in the upper 70s, most of the anglers found the bass on their home lake to be rather tight lipped. However, as almost always, there were a few anglers who were able to get dialed in on some patterns that helped them bring in some respectable Lake Travis bass. Hot off his win from last month on Stillhouse, Stephen was able to make a repeat performance and rise to the top to take the win on Travis this month.

After winning the last tournament on Stillhouse by throwing jigs to fish up shallow, Malina has proven his versatility by weighing in 14.77 pounds of Travis bass by using a finesse presentation. As the tournament began that morning, he found baitfish busting in what he called “drains” with chunk rock as they were being chased by bass in the lower portion of the lake. His first few fish of the day hit his shakey head on the fall in the drains, including his big fish of the day which was close to 6 pounds. Once the baitfish action in the drains tapered off toward mid-morning, Stephen moved out to points with chunk rock and caught fish from 12-20 feet of water. When he didn’t get picked up on the initial drop, he would work his Zoom finesse worm on the shakey head nice and slow through the rocks. Once he had his limit by catching fish on this finesse presentation, Malina switched to throwing a jig in hopes of catching some bigger fish. Targeting the same areas, he continued to catch keeper bass on the jig, but he was only able to cull once. Congrats on your back to back wins, Stephen! Time to see if he can go for the three-peat on Choke!

Proving how tight lipped the bass on Travis were for this tournament, our second place finisher, Garland Abernathy, only weighed in two bass! If you’re only going to weigh in two bass though, these were definitely the ones. Garland caught the big fish of the tournament weighing 6.54 pounds. Combined with his other fish, Garland’s total weight was 11.12 pounds! His first fish was the big one and he had it in the livewell before 6:30 AM. As Garland pitched his white / chartreuse spinnerbait to the back of a dock in 50 feet of water, the big one hit almost immediately when he started turning the reel. After not being able to get any more keepers in that area, Garland headed up lake hitting various spots with no success. When he reached the Briarcliff area around 10:00 AM, he found some stick-ups in about 4 feet of water and began working a pop-r through them. That’s when his second fish hit and after taking air a couple of times, was in the boat. After that the only other real excitement of the day didn’t come until around 2:15 when he hooked a bass in 20ft of water that he said fought harder than his previous two fish that morning. After a tremendous battle getting the bass unwrapped from the dock supports, the bass got tangled back in the supports and broke free.

Rounding off the top three was Ed Mathews who you can always depend on being a threat in our events. Ed pulled in a five fish limit tipping the scales to 10.41 pounds. All five of his limit fish were caught on his trusty green pumpkin colored Jewel finesse jig. The first keeper of the day came fishing the jig on some rip rap, but as the day wore on Ed began to find the fish around the docks. At weigh-in Ed mentioned about how his primary method was swimming his jig around the support systems of the docks. It seemed as though the bass were suspended around the dock supports. “Rocks and docks on Travis…what a surprise!” Ed commented.

Our next tournament is scheduled for June 28th on Choke Canyon Reservoir at the South Shore launch ramp. There will be an official pre-fish day allowed on the 27th, but all participants must be off the water by dark. Those interested in club events are encouraged to come to our club meetings the first Tuesday of every month at Threadgill’s on Riverside at 7 PM.

Full Results Here