redcrest 2021
A NEUTRAL PLAYING FIELD
Chances are , most of you have no knowledge of Lake Palestine , a 25,000-acre impoundment of the Neches River system that flows north to south for 18 miles through parts of Anderson , Cherokee , Henderson and Smith counties , roughly 110 miles east of Dallas .
And judging by the results of a quick text survey conducted in January , before Palestine went off-limits for pre-practice , the lion ’ s share of the 40-angler REDCREST field didn ’ t know a lick about it , either . Wesley Strader : “ Never even seen or heard of it .” Bryan Thrift : “ Totally new , never even heard of it until it was announced .” Bobby Lane : “ It ’ ll all be brand new to me !” Josh Bertrand : “ I know nothing about ( Palestine ) other than what ’ s available online .”
Edwin Evers : “ I think I was there one time in sixth or seventh grade .” It ’ s just a matter of angler geography that many of the fisheries where REDCREST-level championships have historically been held – Lake Hartwell , Lake Guntersville , Lake Ouachita , Grand Lake , Lake Murray , to name a few – provide some amount of home-lake familiarity for at least one angler in the field ( and sometimes multiple anglers ).
Top-tier tournament venues tend to breed or attract toplevel pros – nine Bass Pro Tour pros live within an hour of Guntersville , six live within 60 miles of Chickamauga , etc . – so truly “ neutral playing fields ” are hard to come by for championships of REDCREST magnitude .
But the 370-mile shift due south from Grand to Palestine not only placed the tournament in a milder east Texas climate zone – temperatures in Flint are roughly 10 degrees higher on average than northeast Oklahoma in mid- February – it shifted the 40-man roster into high gear doing research and pre-practice . Only three anglers in the field of
40 – Texans Jeff Sprague , Alton Jones and Todd Faircloth – have ever fished Lake Palestine and neither Jones nor Faircloth have wet a line there in roughly 20 years .
“ I ’ m actually pretty pumped that hardly anybody in the field really knows ( Lake Palestine ),” Dustin Connell admitted in early January as he was driving to Flint to scout the lake . “ This reminds me a little of those lakes in North Carolina that we fished ( Bass Pro Tour Stage Three in 2019 , in Raleigh ). We didn ’ t know much about those lakes . We all just went out there and figured it out on the fly , and that ’ s what I expect with ( Palestine ). It reminds me of an MLF Cup event , where we just pull up to the place and fish .”
That won ’ t be entirely accurate by the Feb . 21-25 tournament dates , since a stout percentage of the field scouted Palestine before it went off limits late January – you may have seen photos on social media of Kevin VanDam catching largemouth in an odd Texas snowstorm .
But while the field won ’ t be totally in the dark when it rolls out of the Villages Marina in Flint for the first official day of REDCREST practice , it ’ ll still be a mission of discovery .
And what they discover will probably delight them .
NO “ SLEEPER ” IN THESE PARTS
“ Palestine has bass from end to end ,” Sprague said bluntly . “ It ’ s a phenomenal lake ; there are a lot of quality , big fish in that lake . There are lots of fish in the upper 7s and 8s , and we ’ ll see some double-digit fish caught . I ’ ve heard it referred to as a ‘ sleeper ,’ but it ’ s no sleeper around here . It ’ s an avid tournament lake for local organizations . If you ’ re not catching 28 to 30 pounds ( in a five-fish tournament ), you ’ re not winning ”
Results of local events bear Sprague out . Winning weights in Media Bass five-fish team tournaments held in February on Palestine from 2016 to 2020 range from 25 pounds to just over 32 pounds , with big-fish weights from 8 1 / 2 to 10 3 / 4 pounds .
PHOTO BY GARRICK DIXON