Quick Bites: FLW Kentucky Lake, Day 3
Veteran co-angler Divis tries to school rookie Tosh, Bosley issues challenge to pros, and is there a translator in the house?
Wal-Mart FLW Tour
Kentucky Lake, Benton, Ky.
Pro semifinal round and co-angler final round, Friday
Communication breakdown … Q: How do you keep an “FLW Outdoors” TV host busy and a crowd in stitches for several minutes? A: Try to explain to a Japanese fishing master that he’s free to speak in his native language to his Japanese fans listening to the weigh-in live on the Internet. Talk about a three-ring circus! Host Charlie Evans told top-10 pro Shinichi Fukae of 
Osaka to go ahead and say a few words to his followers via FLWOutdoors.com’s live weigh-in function, FLW Live. When that didn’t work, he asked FLW Outdoors photographer Yasutaka Ogasawara to lend a tongue to the situation. Ogasawara gave it a shot, but something got lost in his lengthy translation. Instead of speaking to the remote audience in Japanese, Fukae simply replied, in English, “Yes.” Next up: Japanese pro and another Kentucky Lake top-10 angler Morizo Shimizu. Shimizu gave a valiant attempt to explain to Fukae what Evans was saying, but this time Fukae’s offering, again in English, was, “Very happy.” Both photographer and angler each gave it one more try, but to no avail. Co-host Carlton Wing said, “This horse isn’t quite dead yet, but we’re beating it thoroughly.” All involved agreed that they would try again Saturday, hopefully with more success.
Bring it on … Second-year FLW Tour pro Brennan Bosley of Benton, Ark., has had a sweet week of A-1 fishing on Kentucky Lake that almost matches his self-confidence. He told Evans – after weighing in a 15-pound, 6-ounce sack good enough for third place heading into Saturday’s finale – that he was “pumped up” about tomorrow’s showdown, which pits some of FLW’s finest against one another. When asked if he was nervous, Bosley replied, “Not at all.” Though he has appeared in four FLW Outdoors top-10s, including one win, they have all been BFL events. No matter. Bosley has got his sights trained on an FLW win at Kentucky Lake, and he’s sure nobody can stop him. When asked if he was at all anxious about the stiff competition, he said, “There ain’t nobody here to intimidate me.”
Clash of the co-anglers … With FLW Tour rookie Stephen Tosh Jr. of Waterford, Calif., standing onstage leading the co-angler finalists, there was only one man left in line to challenge him for the $20,000 win: veteran Frank Divis Sr. of Fayetteville, Ark. Divis strutted toward the scale from backstage armed with a sack of bass and an attitude that suggested he would overpower Tosh. Before weighing his first fish, Divis, with a mischievous smile, told Evans, “I think we need to teach (Tosh) a lesson.” Tosh replied, “It’s going to be a showdown.” After weighing his first fish, a pretty puny one, Divis gestured toward Tosh with body language that said, “You can’t handle what’s coming next.” Tosh wasn’t scared, however, and said, “Bring `em out, big dog.” By the time Divis had weighed his fifth bass – Tosh only had weighed four – it was more than apparent that his braggadocio had merely been posturing, perhaps for the crowd as much as for Tosh. The rookie’s $20,000 sack had outweighed Divis’ by more than 7 pounds.
Quick numbers
5: Number of FLW Tour wins under the belts of the current No. 1 and 2 pro anglers heading into Saturday’s final round on Kentucky Lake, David Fritts and David Dudley. Four belong to Fritts.
3: Number of years it’s been since Fritts won an FLW Tour event.
Sound bites
“I think (FLW tournament director) Bill Taylor cut holes in my rain gear.”
– Kentucky Lake co-angler winner Tosh responding to Castrol representative Tracy Curtis when she said she’d heard he got soaked in Friday’s wet weather.
“If I finish anything below first, I put the L (indicating the popular symbol for `loser’) on my forehead and consider myself lost.”
– Dudley, who enters tomorrow’s finals in second place. Dudley won the 2003 FLW Tour Championship and the lucrative Ranger M1 tourney in 2002.