photo by ChARLES WALdoRF
BOULDIN BANKS $ 50,000 CO-ANGLER TITLE
At the final-day weigh-in of the 2018 Cross Lake All-American, Matthew Bouldin of Smithville, Tenn., experienced shell shock.
As the pros weighed in, Bouldin, a co-angler, tried to find words to explain what had just happened.
“ I haven’ t even started to process this yet,” Bouldin said.“ I’ m still thinking about what happened on day one when I struggled, so it’ s going to be a while before what just happened today really sinks in.”
Just moments earlier during the co-angler weigh-in, Bouldin amazed the crowd – and himself, to a large degree – by toting 18 pounds, 4 ounces to the scale to jump from third place into the coangler winner’ s circle. In doing so, he nipped runner-up Jesse Parks of Avondale, Ariz., by just 4 ounces. Parks had led the coanglers for two days and seemed to have a lock on the crown with a solid three-fish catch of 12-13, but it was not enough to hold off Bouldin’ s final charge.
On the final day, Bouldin dialed in an exact shaky head / worm combo that made his fishing efforts more efficient.
All week, Bouldin had been swapping between a couple of shaky head combinations: a 5 / 16-ounce Buckeye Lures Spot Remover head with a Zoom Mag Finesse Worm on casting tackle for flipping and a 1 / 8-ounce head with a Zoom Trick Worm on spinning tackle for skipping.
“ Most of the time my partners had me around either trees or docks,” Bouldin says.“ If it was windy with surface chop, I flipped the bigger 5 / 16-ounce head. But if it got calm and slick, I went with the Trick Worm on the 1 / 8-ounce head.”
Bouldin kept swapping rods as the conditions suggested until the last day, when he discovered that teaming a 3 / 16-ounce head with the Zoom Mag Finesse Worm on casting gear was the ticket. He had the best of both worlds with one setup.
“ That combination with the Mag Finesse Worm was just heavy enough to pitch with and yet still light enough to skip with,” he adds.“ Once I got comfortable with just that combination I could really focus more on hitting targets without switching rods as much.”
Wagner started the event fishing a shaky head and Zoom Trick Worm on cypress trees, weighing in 22-12 on day one. By the third day he had switched to a swim jig to provoke more of a reaction bite.
A topwater walking bait fished around bank trees and flipping a Texas-rigged Yamamoto Senko under docks landed Roger Fitzpatrick of Eldon, Mo., in fourth.
Finally, topwater frogs were big scorers for fifth-place finisher Tyler Morgan of Columbus, Ga., and John Duvall of Madison, Ga., who finished sixth.
The rest of the top 10, including Rob Jordan, Marty Sisk, Heath Pack and Ben Blaschke, fished a similar mix of moving baits( vibrating jigs, spinnerbaits, swim jigs), topwater and soft plastics.
Roger Fitzpatrick
Tyler Morgan
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