Vatalaro victorious at Dardanelle

Ohio pro puts one through the uprights in largemouth country for first FLW Series win

RUSSELLVILLE, Ark. – Iams pro Vic Vatalaro is from Kent, Ohio, near the Great Lakes. As a result, his top-10 accolades in FLW Outdoors competition are blanketed with smallmouth catches, including three Stren Series wins on Lake Erie.

But when it comes to catching largemouths on Southeastern impoundments, Vatalaro’s resume has been less than stellar.

That changed today as the Iams pro rose to the occasion on a brutally tough Lake Dardanelle in the middle of August to win the Walmart FLW Series tournament with green fish.

In the four days of the BP Eastern Division event, Vatalaro amassed a total of 39 pounds, 4 ounces for the win and pocketed $119,000 in cash.

“This is nice, to finally get over the hump with largemouths and win a Series event – I’ve been after this for a long, long time,” Vatalaro said. “My luck in the South with green fish has not been good, so to get this win gives me a lot of confidence.”

One of Vatalaro’s favorite baits for smallmouth is a tube, but he used a completely different kind of tube to win this event: great big drainage tubes, as in giant submerged culverts that drained a backwater pond.

The huge culverts – estimated at some 6 feet in diameter – were not visible. They were completely underwater. And the most interesting thing is how the Ohio pro found them.

“One of the culverts was obvious because it boiled water out into the river,” Vatalaro said. “On the surface you could see the water roiling up like it was coming up out of a huge spring vent. So I cranked up my Humminbird side-imaging machine to get a look at where the water was coming from. As I idled down the bank, it drew a perfect image of a giant culvert pipe with cement footers – it looked like a Polaroid picture.”

Since everyone knew about that particular flowage, because of the obvious boil, Vatalaro decided to keep side-scanning down the bank to see if he could find more culverts, and bingo: His Humminbird drew another one – and then another one.

In all, Vatalaro uncovered four of the giant fish tubes, three of which did not have an obvious surface boil to give the place away. And quite simply, that’s where he did his damage all week.



His two key lures were a Berkley Power Finesse Worm that he Texas-rigged with an 1/8-ounce tungsten weight and a 1/2-ounce War Eagle finesse jig trailed with a Berkley Chigger Craw.

He fished the finesse worm on 8-pound Trilene 100% fluorocarbon and the jig on 14-pound 100% fluorocarbon.

Vatalaro noted that most of his fish came on the worm, and he chose to fish it on a Texas rig as opposed to a shaky-head rig because he wanted it to be more snag-proof and have more of a gliding action.

“There was a lot of rock and brush around the places I was fishing, and a Texas rig is a lot more slim-line in terms of getting through that stuff without hanging up,” Vatalaro said. “Plus a Texas rig glides more instead of spiraling down – I think that gliding action is better in the current and brush.”

Vatalaro added that when the current was running, the fish seemed to all position out in front of the tubes, but when the current stopped, the fish actually moved into the tubes, and the only way he could get a bite was to cast right on the culvert entrances.

“It’s a unique way to bass fish, but I’ve done that before on the Ohio River,” he said. “I won a BFL years ago on the Ohio by fishing big culverts like that – they were visible though. And when the current would stop running, I would have to physically go fish in the culvert to catch them. So, in a way, I felt at home here on Dardanelle catching these culvert bass.”

Wellman second

After zeroing the first day of the event, Nate Wellman of Jenison, Mich., returned fire the next three days to blast his way into second place with a four-day total of 32 pounds, 14 ounces worth $47,331.

Wellman worked the Spadra Creek area over with a pair of jigs and a Lucky Craft RC 1.5 crankbait.

His jigs were All-Terrain heads tied with black-and-blue skirts and trimmed with Baby Paca craws and chunks. One jig was a 3/8-ounce tied to 20-pound-test Trilene 100% fluorocarbon, and the other was a ¼-ounce tied to 15-pound-test 100% fluorocarbon.

“The biggest key back in that creek was lay-downs and shade pockets formed by overhanging trees,” Wellman said. “Sometimes I could actually see the fish suspended under a lay-down or in the dark shade, and I would simply pitch to it and it would eat.”

As for his zero the first day, Wellman noted that he had to learn the correct timing of when to set the hook with the jig. The first day he was setting too early and lost every fish that bit. After that he began “feeding them the jig longer and letting them swim with it,” sometimes counting to as long as 7 or 8 seconds before setting the hook.

“Letting them swim with the jig and counting down before setting made all the difference in the world,” he said. “After that, I did not lose near as many fish.”

Prough third



Chad Prough of Chipley, Fla., snuck up through the field to claim the third-place spot with a four-day total of 31 pounds, 14 ounces worth $37,865.

Prough was working the same section of Spadra Creek that Wellman was, but fished a Lucky Craft RC 1.5 most of the time.

“There were a lot of boats fishing in there,” Prough said. “The second day we had as many as eight boats in that little creek. Everyone was pitching jigs to stumps in there, so I decided to give the fish a little different look. Once I figured out that those fish would bite a crankbait on those same stumps that everyone was pitching a jig to, that became my primary game. It did not bother me a bit that those guys were in there fishing, because I really felt like I was on a different program than they were.”

Prough noted that repetitive casts to the stumps were key.

“I’d bang each stump eight or nine times with that crankbait, and sometimes they would not bite until the 10th cast,” he added.

Lefebre fourth



Kellogg’s pro Dave Lefebre of Union City, Pa., also quietly worked his way up through the standings with solid, consistent catches every day. He ended the event in fourth place with a four-day total of 31 pounds, 14 ounces and collected $28,399.

Lefebre spent the first three days of the event fishing close to the takeoff in Illinois Bayou, flipping grass with a 1-ounce jig and a Kinami Nories Bug.

“The Nories Bug has always been a go-to bait for me when things get tough in hot weather,” Lefebre said. “I was using a new version of the Nories Bug; it’s been redesigned a little bit to make it better, and the new ones will be out soon.”

Today, Lefebre abandoned his grass-flipping plan and went to a schooling spot that was loaded with tons of small fish.

“I caught 85 bass today,” Lefebre said. “A lot of them were nonkeepers, of course, but I did get my limit by going through a bunch of fish.”

Lefebre’s schooly spot was a rock hump that came up to 6 feet of water. Even though there was a wad of fish on the place, he said they never actually came up schooling on the surface, so he had to resort to a Zoom Superfluke Jr., rigged on a #1 Sugoi hook and tied to 8-pound-test Trilene 100% fluorocarbon line.

Martin fifth

Tommy Martin of Hemphill, Texas, rounded out the top five at Dardanelle with a four-day total of 29 pounds, 13 ounces worth $18,932.

Martin stuck with an offshore game plan all week, fishing ledges, drops and humps in 8 to 14 feet of water.

“With the water fluctuating so much here recently, I really thought fishing offshore was going to be the way to win this thing,” Martin said. “So I dedicated my time to idling around for hours, studying my Lowrance graph, finding as much submerged cover on those drops as I could. In all I had something like 40 or 50 spots on my GPS. Fishing like that would not be possible without GPS. What Lowrance makes in terms of graphing and GPS in unbelievable. It makes it possible to fish 40 spots in a day offshore without having to fool with landmarks and all that – you just pull up to your waypoint and cast – it makes it so much more efficient.”

Martin targeted his offshore quarry with Zoom Brush Hogs in watermelon color topped with 3/8-ounce weights.

Rest of the best

Rounding out the top 10 pros in the Walmart FLW Series BP Eastern on Lake Dardanelle:

6th: Ray Scheide of Dover, Ark., four-day total of 27-9, $17,986

7th: Kevin Snider of Elizabethtown, Ky., four-day total of 27-3, $17,039

8th: Luke Clausen of Gainesville, Ga., four-day total of 26-13, $16,093

9th: Jimmy Houston of Cookson, Okla., four-day total of 26-8, $15,146

10th: Darrel Robertson of Jay, Okla., four-day total of 26-4, $14,199

Coming up

The fourth and final Walmart FLW Series BP Eastern event of the 2009 season will be held on Clarks Hill Lake in Georgia, Sept. 16-19.