ON TOUR
COSTA FLW SERIES
detAiLs
LAKE HAVASU
LAKE HAVASU CITY, ARIZ.
Feb. 9–11, 2017
presented by Ranger boats
hosted by Lake havasu City Convention & Visitors bureau
Costa FLw series division: western
By David A. Brown
photos by jody white
Winning Angler
Joe Uribe Jr., Surprise, Ariz.
Winning Weight: 51 pounds, 13 ounces (15 fish)
Stat Line: Uribe has notched 10 top-10 finishes in FLW compe-
tition. He has previous victories at the 2015 Costa FLW Series
events on Lake Havasu and Clear Lake. Those wins propelled
him to the 2015 Western Division Angler of the Year title.
Winning Baits
80
Uribe did most of his work
with a custom 7-inch paddle-
tail swimbait that he and his
father, Joe Sr., designed.
Uribe was thin on details, but
explained that his swimbait
had a 1/2-ounce lead head
and a skirt, and was rigged
for weedless fishing.
“That bait comes through
the tules and the grass really
nice,” he says.
The Arizona pro used a
variety of swimbait colors
based on conditions. With
more sunlight on day one
and parts of day two, he
found the more translucent
baits worked best, while
chartreuse shad produced
better during the dimmer
conditions that followed on
day three.
Each day, the mornings
produced the best action, but
Uribe also coaxed a couple of
reaction bites in the afternoon
of day two, thanks to windy
conditions. When the swim-
bait bite dwindled, he picked
up a Ned rig with a 4-inch
green pumpkin laminate
Yamamoto Senko trimmed to
about 3 inches.
“I caught a few the first
and second days on the
swimbait, but I also caught a
few on the Ned rig. Those
were key fish that got me
here [to the top-10 cut],”
Uribe said after the final day.
“On day three, it was all
about the swimbait.”
Target Areas
Uribe spent all his tourna-
ment time in the Windsor
Basin, a large, open expanse
in the northern half of the
reservoir. In the mornings,
he started at the Chalk Cliffs
on the California side and
then hopped around to sev-
eral of his favorite points and
pockets.
With smallmouths transi-
tioning from their winter pat-
terns to prespawn staging
areas, Uribe primarily target-
ed shallow tule banks where
the bronzebacks are known
to frequent in the mornings.
“I was just casting through
In the end, Uribe's commitment to fishing slowly along the bank and
offshore made all the difference.
the lanes and being really pre-
cise,” he says. “I caught most
of my fish in 5 feet of water.”
Watching the progression
in the days leading up to the
tournament, Uribe was fairly
certain of the prespawn tran-
sition to the shallows on the
first two days of competition.
When more limits and more
big fish showed up during
the day-two weigh-in, he
knew it was show time.
“I caught most of the
bucks on day one and day
two, but after seeing those
big fish weighed on day two, I
knew that those females
were moving up,” Uribe says.
“They were backed off in
about 10 to 15 feet of water,
but with today’s [day three]
cloud cover, the rainy condi-
tions and that temperature
change, those fish moved
right to the bank.”
Presentation Keys
Uribe opted for a sizable
bait in hopes of appealing to
the larger smallmouths that
were moving up with the
warming weather. In this
time of transition, bites were
few and far between, so cap-
italizing on each opportunity
proved critical.
The Arizona angler made
sure he was well-equipped
for this task by arming him-
self with the right rod. His
choice of swimbait launchers
FLWFISHING.COM I APRIL 2017