REDDING, Calif. –Northern California anglers Aaron Agner, of Redding and Josh Palmer, of Cottonwood claimed victory at the Lake Shasta Wild West Bass Trail NorCal Teams Tournament of Champions presented by BassCat Boats and Mercury Marine with a two-day total of 22.39, anchored by a 10.44 largemouth that earned Toad of the Tournament.
The team’s rare double-digit catch rocketed their Day One five-fish limit to 16.45, pushing their lead to nearly five-pounds beyond their nearest competitors. Although their follow-up weight on Day Two slid to only 5.94, it was enough to hold the lead and walk away with the grand prize package of a BassCat Bobcat rigged with a Mercury 150 ProXS and $1,255 in cash, including contingency dollars of $500 Garmin Tournament Rewards, $250 from P-Line and a $505 Big Bass payout.
In practice, the anglers located the area in which their game changing 10-plus was found.
“We ran banks in the Pit arm, recording bites with our trebles down that we were going to go back to in the tournament,” he explained. “We had some nice shallow fish waypointed and were ready to go.”
Their tournament day plan kicked off with topwater in the mornings which translated into an early limit on the first day of competition.
“We ran right up the Arm to our spots,” said Agner. “By 8:30 am we hooked the big one – the 10-pounder. It was on a nice point/flat in about 25-feet of water.”
Their big bass fell to a River2Sea Whopper Plopper 130 that Agner described as shad-patterned.
“It felt big; but it didn’t seem like it was a spawning fish – just an old fish at the end of its life,” added Agner. “It didn’t look healthy. It had discoloration in the scales and its tail was chewed up. It came in with its mouth open, which created a lot of drag on top of 10-pounds of body weight. So, it felt really heavy, but there was no fight left in it at all.”
A repeat of their surface baits in the same areas on Day Two yielded no results.
“We just got zero blowups,” Agner said. “The bite was dying off quick due to the conditions we were having. There was an extreme amount of fishing pressure and heat. We lost all the wind, and it was just flat clam. All of that pushed the fish out deep and our shallow water pattern pretty much dried up.”
Two hours in, without a fish in the box, the partners decided to scrap their plan and went in search of other fish.
“We went up the McCloud and struck out, we went to the main body and struck out and we went to the back and struck out there too,” recalled Agner. “It seemed too late in the game to locate good fish. They had all suspended and moved offshore and I didn’t have any offshore fish going.”
The team hypothesized an eight-pound sack on Day Two would be needed to lock down the win; but weren’t able to reach that goal.
“I wouldn’t have thought getting eight-pounds on Shasta was a difficult thing to do; but it turned out it was,” Anger added. “The fish were in such a negative mood. You could watch ‘em on LiveScope swim up to your lure and then watch ‘em swim away.”
They spent the duration of their fishing time running spots, searching for their 2nd day’s limit.
“There was so much fishing pressure; there was a boat on anything that looked good,” continued Agner. “The fish were suspended or stuck on the bottom. Most of them were in the 35-foot to 60-foot range. It was hard to see ‘em on the bottom; so, we would just cast out and watch something come up on the LiveScope. It is not typically how I like to fish Shasta. I like to power fish shallow, so it was kind of an adjustment.”
The bulk of the remainder of Agner and Palmer’s weigh fish ate a Yamamoto Hula Grub or a War Eagle Spoon.
“The Hula Grub was a brown color and rigged weightless on a ¾-ounce football head,” said Agner. “The jigging spoon was silver with a dimpled finish and a built-in swivel, but I would say the balance of the fish weren’t really worth mentioning. They were ‘not good fish’, and I could have caught ‘not good fish’ on a plethora of things. The non-conventional weather pattern made the fish in a funk, and it was much more of a challenge than I would’ve thought it would be.”
Agner credited Palmer for all his practice time on the fishery.
“We mostly fished Josh’s water, and he had located a lot of fish,” said Agner. “Our big one came from one of his spots and that was a key to the win.”
The best of the rest:
2nd 21.82 Price/Spohn $8,005
3rd 21.34 Henderson/Klein $3,000
4th 21.30 Portch/Portch $2,000
5th 20.42 Smith/Ostrander $1,600
$505 in Big Bass cash went to:
2nd 6.18 Price/Spohn
3rd 4.94 Mcintosh/Caporale
4th 3.63 Friend/Carr
5th 3.58 Evans/Sperbeck
Advertising