ON TOUR
COSTA FLW SERIES
COSTA FLW SERIES | TABLE ROCK LAKE
BRANSON, MO.
By David A. Brown
PHOTOS BY MATT PACE
WINNING ANGLER
hensley powell
Whitwell, Tenn.
Winning Weight:
40-12 (15 fish)
details:
April 19-21, 2018
Hosted by
ExploreBranson.com
Central Divison
t
chad allison
Carl Junction, Mo.
Powell made a few casts
with a Strike King KVD
Jerkbait, but mainly he
relied on a YUM YUMbrella
Flash Mob Jr. with Zoom
Swimmin’ Super Flukes in
the white-ice color. Powell
fished his umbrella rig on
20-pound-test fluorocar-
bon, which provided abra-
sion resistance around
standing timber. His fish
were striking aggressively,
but they often required
patience and persistence.
“I’d slow-roll that rig in 8
to 12 feet of water, and I
would probably get five
bites and then catch one,”
Powell says. “They would
knock the fire out of it, and
I could throw right back in
there and they’d hit it
again. I would literally make
six or seven casts to the
same spot before I caught
one. I’d move up, do it
again; move up, do it
again.”
On day one, Powell
started lower in the White
River and worked
upstream, but a few stops
on his way back down
toward weigh-in clued him
in that the afternoon bite
was actually better in the
lower end of the river. The
next two days saw him
shift his timing by starting
upriver and working his
way back.
“As I was working my
way down the river on the
first day, I actually culled
three fish while I was com-
ing down,” Powell says. “I
tried to hit the same key
areas at different times.”
The flip-flop worked out,
and Powell was able to run
the winning program the
next two rounds. He spent
days one and two in sec-
ond place but took over
the lead on the final day
with one of only three limit
catches.
Winning Weight:
39-10 (14 fish)
Winning program:
Chad Allison complet-
ed a wire-to-wire win by
keeping an umbrella rig
in play. Allison targeted
pea gravel banks any
time he had the oppor-
tunity because he knew
they were popular
spawning spots. Often
casting around flooded
cedars, Allison found
that letting his rig
descend and tick along
the bottom was the key
to triggering bites.
fLWfIshIng.com I juLy 2018
106
aking his cue from
Table Rock’s pres-
pawn migration,
Hensley Powell maximized
his time by targeting a very
specific type of area: mixed
gravel banks in the last 50
yards of spawning pockets.
“They were in the 12-
foot range. As soon as it
got less than 12 feet, that
was too far,” Powell says of
his measured approach. “I
ran as many pockets as I
could in a day and only
fished the sections that the
fish were in.
“I ran way up the White
River and tried to stay in
dirtier water. I think maybe
the fish couldn’t see the
bait as good, so they were
reacting to it. I couldn’t run
this pattern in [the clearer
waters of] the James River
or on the lower end of the
White until the afternoon. I
stayed within a six-mile
section of the river.”
WINNING CO-ANGLER
Presented by Lowrance