Shock and awe
Klinger drops 32-pound bomb, secures National Guard sweep at Clear Lake
KELSEYVILLE, Calif. – The National Guard couldn’t have written a better final act for its inaugural season as the title sponsor of the Wal-Mart FLW Series Western Division. Not only did Justin Lucas win his second Co-angler Division title in a row, his fellow Team National Guard member Tim Klinger staged an amazing comeback with the heaviest final-round catch ever to cash in on the $125,000 top prize in the Pro Division at Clear Lake.
Apparently, Clear Lake decided that it wasn’t quite finished with the FLW Outdoors record books Saturday morning. Klinger caught an amazing five-bass limit weighing 32 pounds, 8 ounces, clinching the record for heaviest final-round catch of all time. He beat a record set right here at Clear Lake in Stren Series action last April, Michael Tuck’s 30-15, as well as Tim Carroll’s 30-15 set at the Lake Murray FLW Tour in 2006. Not only that, Klinger’s catch ranks 14th on the all-time heaviest list of all tournament days fished.
Records are nice, but tournament titles and winnings are the point of it all. To that end, Klinger’s rise to the top this week seemed as unlikely as rain in California.
The pro out of Boulder City, Nev., caught just 11 pounds of fish Wednesday and finished day one in 164th place. That’s not a typo: 164th place. At a fishery as superb as Clear Lake, 11 pounds just doesn’t cut it. After all, the day-one leader caught over 27 1/2 pounds.
Might as well pack it in, right?
Wrong. Klinger managed to increase his limits by about 8 pounds twice over the next two days, catching 19 pounds even Thursday and really popping one at 27-4 Friday. His climb into history was on: He rose to 67th place on day two and all the way up to sixth – and into the finals – on day three.
A 27-pound sack is pretty good. It’s tough to top that, even at Clear Lake. Besides, he was sitting almost 12 pounds behind the leader – who had been hammering them consistently all week – coming into the finals. Might as well go out, catch a nice limit, have some fun fishing Saturday and cash a decent top-10 check.
Guess again. Yesterday, Klinger said, despite his big sack Friday, he could have caught even more. He had been missing fish all week. Big fish.
“After yesterday, I thought I might have a shot if I could keep catching these big ones,” he said. “It’s all about swimbaits; that’s how you catch the big ones here. The problem is keeping them hooked up. I haven’t quite figured that part out yet.”
He figured it out enough Saturday that he caught three fish that any tournament pro would drool over in the final round. Fishing at midlake, Klinger mainly relied on two swimbaits – a shad-colored Osprey and a shad-and-chartreuse Baitsmith that he bought just a couple days ago – to work the shallows, points and rock piles all around Rattlesnake Island. He first caught a 6-pounder, a good start. As it goes with swimbaits, then there was a dry spell for about an hour. Then he caught an 8-pounder. Another break. Then a 3-pounder. And then … bam.
“I think it weighed around 11 or 12 pounds,” Klinger said about his monster kicker. “It’s the biggest one I’ve ever caught. What was crazy was trying to net all these big fish by myself today (since there are no co-anglers or partners in the boat during the pro final round).”
Unfortunately, no one weighed Klinger’s kicker bass by itself Saturday, so his estimate of its weight will have to stand. But if it did weigh 12 pounds, it would rank right up there in the top 15 heaviest bass caught in competition. It certainly stood its ground against the 13-2 caught by Andrew Sanchez and the 11-8 caught by Kelly Kellogg earlier this week.
But the math and the photos seem to bear out those single-fish weight estimates. The scary part is that Klinger said he could have brought in even more weight Saturday, not to mention the previous days.
“I probably could have had 3 more pounds today, but I lost another good one,” he said. “I had one spot where I could see them: 5-pounders, 10-pounders. This spot had a lot of really big fish just swimming up and down the bank. It actually kind of looked like they were trying to spawn.”
And like another kind of spawning fish, a salmon, Klinger made the most out of his struggle upstream this week by coming all the way back from 164th place to win the 2007 FLW Series National Guard Western Division finale at Clear Lake. His winning four-day weight: 89 pounds, 12 ounces.
“This feels unbelievable,” he said. “I’m so stoked.”
” border=”1″ align=”right” />Moore catches more, stymied by fellow Wal-Mart Open winner
This wasn’t Klinger’s first big win. In 2004, he won the FLW Tour’s Wal-Mart Open on Beaver Lake.
A fellow Wal-Mart Open winner, two-time pro champion Andre Moore of Alabaster, Ala., climbed into a $48,841 second-place finish at Clear Lake by also raising his catch weights each day.
Moore caught a hefty 25-pound, 7-ounce limit Saturday and finished with a four-day total of 86-13.
“I thought I had the biggest bag today. I thought if (opening-round leader Chris) Zaldain stumbled, I might have a shot to win,” Moore said. ” But I never would have dreamed anyone would have 32 pounds.”
At times fishing the same area as Klinger on Saturday, Moore caught his big limit by dragging crankbaits through rocks.
“I was fishing old-school,” he said. “I had an excellent tournament. I can’t complain about anything. But when you have the kind of bag that Tim had, what can you say? My only problem is that I didn’t throw that stupid plastic fish around (like Klinger).”
Zaldain falls to third
Even though he dominated the last two days of the opening round and took a 7-pound lead into Saturday, Chris Zaldain of San Jose, Calif., came up short in the finals with a limit weighing 16 pounds, 4 ounces. He finished with a four-day total of 85-4, finished third in the Pro Division and took home $39,073.
“The thing about the swimbait is that it can be your best friend or your worst enemy,” he said. “My bite was usually better in the early mornings and late afternoons. Today, I only caught one nice one.”
Newby fourth
Pro Jason Newby of Bakersfield, Calif., finished fourth with a four-day total of 79 pounds, 10 ounces and earned $29,305. He caught a nice limit weighing 19-1 Saturday.
“I caught them all on crankbaits (a Norman DD-22) except for two on a swimbait,” he said. “I had an awesome tournament; it’s the best tournament I’ve ever had.”
McAbees line up fifth, sixth; Jr. wins AOY
Randy McAbee Jr. and Randy McAbee Sr. rounded out the top six pro finishers. After four long days of Clear Lake bass fishing, the father-son tandem out of Bakersfield finished within just 2 ounces of each other.
McAbee Jr. finished fifth and earned $19,536 with a four-day weight of 75 pounds, 15 ounces, while McAbee Sr. finished sixth and earned $18,560 with 75-13.
Senior beat Junior for the day, however, catching 19 pounds, 12 ounces to his son’s 18-12.
On the other hand, McAbee Jr. officially won the FLW Series Western Division Angler of the Year title at the conclusion of the event. He had 763 points. (See Quick Bites for further details.)
Rest of the best
Rounding out the top 10 pro finishers at Clear Lake:
7th: Jeff Billings of Clearlake, Calif., 73-15, $17,583
8th: Brett Hite of Phoenix, 73-3, $16,606
9th: Joe Uribe Jr. of Lake Forest, Calif., 72-4, $15,629
10th: Jay Yelas of Corvallis, Ore., 71-2, $14,652
Next up: East-West Fish-Off
The details for the Wal-Mart FLW Series East-West Fish-Off were released as well Saturday. The location will be Lake Amistad in Del Rio, Texas, and it will be held Feb. 7-9, 2008.
The top 30 pros and top 30 co-anglers from each 2007 FLW Series Division are invited to the Fish-Off, where the pros will compete head-to-head for three days to determine who will advance to the 2008 Forrest Wood Cup for a shot at winning the sport’s biggest award – $1 million. The No. 1 BP Eastern Division pro will face the No. 30 National Guard Western Division pro and the No. 1 Western Division pro will face the No. 30 Eastern Division pro, etc. The top 30 co-anglers based on accumulated weight at the Fish-Off and the winners of the head-to-head match-ups will proceed to the Forrest Wood Cup. The pro with the heaviest overall weight will also earn $25,000, and the co-angler with the heaviest overall weight will earn $5,000.