Scheide secures top spot heading into semifinals
Cold front yields fewer limits at Kentucky/Barkley lakes while bevy of past winners make the cut
GILBERTSVILLE, Ky. – It doesn’t take a bass mastermind to notice all the familiar names in the top 20 after the two-day opening round of EverStart Series Central Division competition at Kentucky and Barkley lakes. The pro field slated to fish in Friday’s semifinals is loaded with heavyweights, guys who have been there before – and won.
But it was a relatively unheralded pro, Ray Scheide of Cookson, Okla., who topped them all and took the lead after two days of fishing on Kentucky Lake. Thursday Scheide caught the top stringer of the day, five bass weighing 16 pounds, 10 ounces, and pushed his two-day total to a first-place 30-11.
“It’s incredible,” Scheide said of his opening-round performance. “Especially with the caliber of fishermen in this event.”
What, or rather who, he’s talking about are some of the past champions who’ve managed to make the cut here in Gilbertsville.
In fifth place is Dan Morehead of Paducah, Ky., the day-one leader who won the FLW Tour event right here at Kentucky Lake in 1998.
In seventh place is Wesley Strader of Spring City, Tenn., the perennial EverStart Series contender who won his first FLW Tour event this year at Lake Ouachita, Ark. Strader is making 2002 his year, with a strong top-20 showing at the Ranger M1 and no fewer than four top-20 finishes in FLW and EverStart events already halfway through the season.
Another semifinalist having a solid year is ninth-place Jim Tutt of Longview, Texas. Tutt is ranked first in the Central Division standings, having won at Sam Rayburn Reservoir, Texas, in February and with a combined four top-20 finishes in FLW and EverStart competition this year.
Then there is 10th-place Craig Powers of Rockwood, Tenn., who won the FLW Tour stop at the Red River, La., in 2001. Carl Svebek of Sam Rayburn, Texas, who has won twice down on his home lake in Texas – an EverStart in 1998 and Texas Tournament Trail in 2001 – also managed to sneak into the semis in 19th place.
And let’s not forget 14th-place qualifier Koby Kreiger of Osceola, Ind. He won this EverStart tournament at Kentucky Lake last year and, despite a disappointing four-fish performance on day one this week, has come back strong on day two and is threatening to repeat.
It’s enough to make the guy who beat them Thursday think about stepping it up even harder for Friday’s competition. “I’m just going to fish wide open,” said the 31-year-old Scheide, who has won at the BFL level but no higher. “I’m really running and gunning out there.”
How he did it
Scheide managed to commandeer first place by taking advantage of the cold front that blew through the area today. While he started the day fishing a jig, he switched to a Terminator spinner bait by 10 o’clock. Running it in extremely shallow water on Kentucky Lake, he hooked his limit – all largemouth bass – by 11 o’clock. He said what changed during that hour was the wind.
“It was really windy today,” said Scheide. “I made an adjustment, moved up shallower and the fish were on. Yesterday I fished everything out of the wind.”
What was impressive about Scheide’s 30-pound, 11-ounce leading weight Thursday was that he did it even while incurring a huge 24-ounce penalty for three dead fish. The actual weight of his fish was 18-2. It’s the kind of mistake that will cost him in the next two rounds if it happens again, and one that he’s determined not to repeat.
“All I did was re-circulate my (livewell) water all day,” he explained. “I didn’t run any fresh water and I guess it was the wrong thing to do.”
From shallow to deep
Following Scheide was second-place Gerald Andrews, a local pro out of Benton, Ky. Andrews used a different approach than the leader to catch his two-day total of 10 bass that weighed 30 pounds, 6 ounces. He fished shallow on Wednesday with a bait that he requested not be revealed yet, then moved to deeper water Thursday using a Carolina rig.
“The deeper fish just stayed on the bite,” said Andrews, who finished third as a co-angler earlier this year at Sam Rayburn. “I think the shallow fish are still there, they just quit biting today.”
He, too, has his eye on the likes of Kreiger and Powers as ones to watch out for over the next two days. “I’m just a weekend warrior,” Andrews said. “They fish full-time for a living and they have a handle on how to adapt to these fish as they change a little bit. Plus, they’re both excellent shallow-water fishermen.”
In third place was another local, Jeremiah Kindy, also of Benton. He weighed in 10 bass for 29 pounds, 9 ounces in the opening round.
Rounding out the top five pros in the opening round were Chris McCall (4th place) of Jasper, Texas, with 10 bass weighing 28 pounds, 2 ounces and Morehead (5th) with eight bass weighing 28-1.
Due to the cold front, the pros’ limit numbers were down on day two. They caught just 16 five-fish limits Thursday compared to 29 Wednesday.
The day-two big-bass award and $750 in the Pro Division went to Bobby Kilzer of Trenton, Tenn., for a 7-pound, 5-ounce largemouth.
Turpen turns in top co-angler performance
Twenty-one-year-old William Turpen of Henry, Ill., was shaking visibly following today’s weigh-in. He said it was because of the cooler temperatures and the fact that he was wet from fishing, but even a casual observer could sense that maybe one or two tremors of excitement had to be mixed in there.
Turpen took over the Co-angler Division lead by hauling in the second-heaviest stringer of the day in either division – 16 pounds, 8 ounces. He placed first with a two-day weight of 21-9, overtaking Wednesday’s leader, Tony Cooper of Horn Lake, Miss., by 5 ounces.
“I feel ecstatic,” Turpen said. “I couldn’t believe it. I thought (my fish) were going to weigh about 14 pounds.”
Fishing from the back of 16th-place pro Jeff Evans’ boat, Turpen hauled in one of only two full five-bass stringers on the co-angler side – consisting of one smallmouth and four largemouth – mainly using a chartreuse Norman crankbait with a blue back.
“I was done fishing by 9:30,” he said. “So I sat down and tried to keep warm. I guess today was just my lucky day.”
Following Turpen in the opening round was Cooper, who notched a two-day total of seven bass weighing 21 pounds, 4 ounces. Chuck Rounds of Benton, Ky., held onto the third-place spot with nine bass weighing 21-2.
Rounding out the top five co-anglers were Robert Bogard (4th place) of Conway, Ark., with six bass weighing 15-0 and Rick Rickman (5th) of Martindale, Texas, who had the other five-bass stringer, with a two-day total of five bass weighing 14-11.
The co-angler big-bass award and $250 went to Bill Sims of Paducah, Ky., for a 5-pound, 13-ounce largemouth.
Coming up
Both the Pro and Co-angler divisions were cut down to the top 20 anglers apiece following today’s competition. The pro cut weight settled at 23 pounds, 3 ounces and for the co-anglers it was 10-5.
Competition continues Friday when the semifinalists take off at 6 a.m. from Moors Resort in Gilbertsville. All competitors will restart the day with zero weight and fish in a one-day shootout to determine the 10 finalists for each division’s final round Saturday. The pro winner will receive $15,000 and a Ranger boat and the co-angler winner will receive $6,000.
Day-two links: