Top 5 Patterns from Toho Day 3
Current and cold weather mix up the standings
When the Walmart FLW Tour event started at Lake Toho on Thursday, the story lines were all about spawning fish and catching bedding bass by working soft-plastic baits around isolated pad clumps. Today, the buzzwords changed to current, shell beds and reaction baits such as spinnerbaits and lipless rattlers.
The change in vernacular is associated primarily with the weather. While a warm, balmy day one allowed leading pros to score big by blind bed-fishing, today’s lower temperatures, nippy northeast winds and dull gray skies caused a significant shift in productive tactics that led to a shakeup on the leaderboard.
As already revealed, leader JT Kenney had to resort to a spinnerbait to adapt. Others in the top 10 have found consistency in the currents of the Kissimmee River or have adapted with new baits.
Read about Kenney’s changeup here. What follows is the rest of the top five pros’ patterns.
2nd Place – Wesley Strader – 54 pounds, 4 ounces
Wesley Strader was on his way to Lake Kissimmee this morning when, on a whim, he stopped to try a history spot from years past.
“There’s a shell bed in there that’s always got some fish on it when the current is running,” Strader says. “I decided to give it a few throws to see if anyone was home; they were home alright. There was a whole house party going on in there.”
Strader commenced to put a beatdown on the fish on that shell bed with a rattling lipless crankbait, resulting in the biggest limit of day three – 21 pounds, 5 ounces – to rocket him to second place.
“I bet I caught 30 fish off that spot,” he says. “It was crazy. Several of them had big shad tails down their throats. It was a feeding frenzy.”
Previously this week Strader had been sight-fishing and using a PH Customs prop bait in Kissimmee to make the top-20 cut in 10th place.
3rd Place – Scott Canterbury – 53 pounds, 11 ounces
Quaker State pro Scott Canterbury grabbed the catbird seat at the current pull in front of the Toho lock this morning and got his day started with two solid keepers. After running all the way to Kissimmee and catching just one bass down there, he decided he better get back to the Toho lock if he wanted a shot at fishing on the final day. After he returned, he caught two more to finish his limit, giving him 14 pounds, 13 ounces for the day.
“I’ve only weighed one fish from current all week until today,” Canterbury says. “Today, four of my five keepers came from that lock. Current just became a survival deal for me. I know I can’t win it there, but it certainly allowed me to make the cut.”
4th Place – Stacey King – 50 pounds
Stacey King also played his third day a bit more conservatively, opting to stay in Toho instead of fighting the weather to make the long journey to the mid-section of Kissimmee where he had been fishing earlier this week. The result was a 10-pound, 3-ounce catch for the day. He slipped two spots in the standings.
“I still fished the same techniques up here [Toho], throwing a Bass Pro Shops Stick-O and Zoom Mag Speed worm in scattered pads,” he says. “I just did it in a different lake. I really don’t know if I could have done any better down there [Kissimmee], and I just didn’t want to fight it to find out. I might go back to Kissimmee tomorrow, especially if the weather is a little better.”
5th Place – Stetson Blaylock – 49 pounds, 15 ounces
Livingston pro Stetson Blaylock should get the unofficial award for consistency this week. Consider these weights from the first three days: 16-3, 16-14 and 16-14. The total has been enough to give Blaylock his first peek inside the top five.
“I’ve been fishing a shell bed in Toho and then locking down and fishing current the rest of the day,” Blaylock says. “Today my shell bed had 2-footers rolling across it, so I had to go straight to the current in the river.”
Blaylock says he was targeting small eddies and pockets along the river with a Livingston square-bill crankbait and a BOSS wobble-head jig.