ON TOUR
BFL REGIONALS
DEtAILS
oct. 27-29, 2016
presented by Ranger boats
hosted by Russellville Advertising and promotions
Divisions: Cowboy, mississippi, okie and ozark
COLLINGS AVOIDS CROWDS, WINS AT DARDANELLE
TAILWATER WING DAMS KEY TO 18-YEAR-OLD’S VICTORY
By Bryan Hendricks
CO-ANGLER CHAMP
Name: Michael Montgomery
hometown: Cuba, Mo.
total Weight: 25-00 (14 fish)
Winning program: The first day, in Piney Creek, Montgomery
dragged a green pumpkin Zoom Trick Worm through rocks.
He fished the second day far upriver in a section of Spadra
Creek using a 1 1/2-ounce white/chartreuse Strike King spin-
nerbait with a willow-leaf blade and a River2Sea Biggie
square-bill crankbait. Montgomery fished with boater champ
Sheldon Collings on the third day and caught his fish with a
chartreuse/blue River2Sea square-bill.
t
70
o win the T-H Marine Bass Fishing League Regional Oct.
27-29 at Lake Dardanelle, Sheldon Collings fished where
nobody had ever won a major tournament.
Traditionally the best bass fishery in Arkansas, Lake
Dardanelle is a vast impoundment and part of the McClellan-
Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System. It is famous for hot
spots such as the Strip Pits, Piney Bay, Illinois Bayou,
Delaware Bay and Spadra Creek, just to name a few. These
areas are full of bass-rich cover and structure, including grass
mats, lily pads, stump fields, ledges, main-lake points and
shallow secondary points.
Collings ignored all of those renowned areas. In fact, he for-
sook Lake Dardanelle altogether and fished water that is uni-
versally unloved and disrespected. He went to the Arkansas
River tailwater below Dardanelle Lock & Dam.
To the casual observer, there’s nothing below the dam but
mud, sand and brown water. An astute observer might notice
other things however. There are rock wing dams, and there’s vir-
tually no fishing pressure. At times, there’s also lots of current.
“I wanted to find something out of the way where other
people weren’t fishing,” Collings says. “Everybody was running
to clear water in creeks. I didn’t want to do that.”
Collings combined the three tailwater elements into his first
victory. He weighed in a three-day total of 47 pounds, 4
ounces. His reward was a $20,000 check, a fully rigged Ranger
boat and a coveted berth in the BFL All-American.
Collings laid the groundwork for his phenomenal weekend
by befriending the lockmaster at Dardanelle Lock & Dam.
Collings asked him about the fishing in the tailwater.
“He said that everyone called it a ‘dead sea,’” Collings says. “I
knew from that point that’s what I was going to do. It was more
of a go-down-there-and-see kind of thing. I’d never been down
there before, but I fished down there for one hour in practice
and found that one spot, and I went down there every day and
just whacked them.”
Fortunately for Collings, the tournament coincided with a
draining period that flowed a lot of water through the dam.
Heavy, continuous current concentrated baitfish and bass
around the wing dams, which exist to direct current to the cen-
ter of the navigation channel.
Collings used a chartreuse/black Strike King KVD 2.5 series
square-bill crankbait for most of the tournament. It was a good
choice, he says, because it produces an amplified vibration that
bass can isolate for reaction strikes in murky water.
“Because of the dirty water, you can’t see 2 inches down,”
Collings says. “When you bring a bait by them, largemouth bass
can feel it from 20 feet away.”
Collings, 18, lives in Grove, Okla. He says the pattern was sim-
ilar to certain days on Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees, his home
lake. And it fit a scenario with which Collings is very familiar.
2017 All-American Qualifiers
boaters:
justin atkins, Florence, Ala.
sHeldon collings, Grove, Okla.
melvin dunn, Orange, Texas
roger FitZPatrick, Eldon, Mo.
lane mcgaHa, Dubach, La.
jeFFrey smitH, Knob Noster, Mo.
Co-anglers:
damon duncan, Kansas, Okla.
david lansFord, Muskogee, Okla.
dennis meyer, Ballwin, Mo.
micHael montgomery, Cuba, Mo.
justin newell, Muskogee, Okla.
ronald smitH jr., Kansas City, Kan.
FlwFisHing.com i january 2017