JASPER, Texas – Kris Wilson of Montgomery, Texas, weighed a five-bass limit totaling 19 pounds, 4 ounces Saturday to win the FLW EverStart Series Texas Division event presented by Evinrude on Sam Rayburn Reservoir with a two-day total of 10 bass weighing 34 pounds, 9 ounces. For his victory, Wilson earned $29,409 and a 198VX Ranger boat with a 200-horsepower Evinrude or Mercury outboard motor.
Thursday’s opening day of competition was cancelled due to unsafe weather conditions. The event was reformatted to two days of competition where the full fields of both pros and co-anglers fished both Friday and Saturday. The winners of each field were decided by two-day cumulative weights.
“This feels awesome,” Wilson said. “I was hoping for a top 10 or something like that. I thought I’d need three days to catch (enough).”
Wilson said he managed to catch around 20 fish Saturday on a Carolina rig tipped with a soft-plastic creature bait fished on the outside edge of the grass in 8 feet of water.
“I ran around a whole lot,” Wilson said. “I’ve got a lot of spots here and I’ve fished a lot of local team tournaments, so I just ran around a whole lot and fished about 20 spots a day.
“The weather was kind of tough yesterday and I only caught seven,” Wilson added. “But today was the third day after the front and it’s been a warming trend and I think that really helped me because they were moving up in the grass.”
Rounding out the top 10 pros were:
2nd: Stephen Johnston, Hemphill, Texas, 10 bass, 32-8, $10,083
3rd: Joe Erwin, Claremore, Texas, 10 bass, 31-11, $8,403
4th: Charles Bebber, Willis, Texas, 10 bass, 30-10, $7,562
5th: Ronnie Eschete Jr., Thibodaux, La., 10 bass, 30-9, $6,722
6th: Bert Thompson, Benton, La., six bass, 29-14, $5,882
7th: Russell Cecil, Willis, Texas, eight bass, 29-12, $5,042
8th: Claude Rabb, Vidalia, Texas, nine bass, 29-2, $4,201
9th: Michael Yoder, Texarkana, Texas, 10 bass, 29-0, $3,361
10th: Kevin Lasyone, Dry Prong, La., nine bass, 26-5, $2,521
Thompson caught the biggest bass of the tournament in the Pro Division Friday – a 9-pound, 3-ounce bass – that earned him the day’s Big Bass award of $230.
Brett Rachal of Monroe, La., won the Co-angler Division and a Ranger boat with an Evinrude or Mercury outboard motor with a two-day total of 10 bass weighing 29 pounds, 13 ounces.
Rounding out the top 10 co-anglers were:
2nd: Stephen Francis, Brookeland, Texas, nine bass, 27-10, $3,933
3rd: Hubert Davis, Kirbyville, Texas, seven bass, 21-10, $3,496
4th: Kerry Barnett, Waldron, Ark., seven bass, 20-9, $3,059
5th: Dan Wilson, Pilot Point, Texas, seven bass, 20-2, $2,622
6th: Keith Honeycutt, Temple, Texas, eight bass, 19-8, $2,185
7th: Danny Cherry, Kountze, Texas, five bass, 18-6, $1,748
8th: Eric Richey, Paradise, Texas, seven bass, 18-1, $1,311
9th: Rusty Harvey, Nederland, Texas, seven bass, 18-0, $874
10th: Ronald Milton, Maurepas, La., five bass, 17-15, $699
Johhny Carr of Loxley, Ala., caught the biggest bass of the tournament in the Co-angler Division Friday – a 9-pound, 5-ounce bass – that earned him the day’s Big Bass award of $153.
The EverStart Series consists of five divisions – Central, Northern, Southeast, Texas and Western. Each division consists of four tournaments and competitors will be vying for valuable points in each division that could earn them the Angler of the Year title along with $5,000 for the pro and $2,000 for the co-angler. The top 40 pros and co-anglers from each respective division will qualify for the EverStart Series Championship that will be held on Kentucky Lake in Buchanan, Tenn., Oct. 27-30.
The next EverStart Series Texas Division tournament will be March 17-19 at Toledo Bend in Hemphill, Texas.