Arkansas anglers performed well last week at the Bassmaster Elite Series tournament on the Delaware River as Kevin Short of Mayflower and Scott Rook of Little Rock finished fourth and ninth, respectively.
Short won $15,000 for his efforts, finishing 8 pounds, 14 ounces behind Mike Iaconelli, who won the event and $100,000. Rook won $12,000 despite a collapse on the final day that cost him a shot at winning.
"It was a tough deal," Rook said. "We had these tidal swings that raised the water as much as 7 feet. It was all about the low tide. We had about an hour and a half to catch them. If you didn't catch them in that window, you were pretty much done."
Rook made a strong move in the third round by catching 11 keepers that weighed 8-14, but his weights over the first three days trended downward gradually. He caught only one keeper in the final round that weighed 2-14.
"Eleven keepers, that's really jacking them there, but I must have burned them all up," Rook said. "The last day I didn't catch but one, and I had the best tide I had all week."
Still, he had a chance, and he said it put him in a strong position to qualify for the Bassmaster Classic.
"It's been a pretty good year so far," Rook said. "I was in 22nd place in [Angler of the Year] points, and that moved me up to 13th. If Dardanelle hadn't been so mean to me, I might have had a chance at Angler of the Year. We have two more points events and I'm 60 out. Anything could happen."
Three fish are the difference between 13th place and much better, Rook said. He said he lost two fish on the second day at Lake Dardanelle that weighed between 4 and 5 pounds each. Those kept him out of the third-round cut, and he finished 79th. Rook said he also lost a big fish at Lake Seminole in Florida that led to a 54th-place finish, his next worst.
"You can't do that," Rook said. "You have to have some skill and knowledge to get around fish and make the right decisions, but you also have to have a little bit of luck to land those fish. That was my downfall. You look at those three fish and you can see why I'm not in the top five in points."
Rook said it takes 552 points to qualify for the Classic. With two events left, he has 503. The last event, a postseason event in Michigan for the top 50 Angler of the Year leaders, virtually guarantees 50 points.
Greg Hackney of Gonzales, La., formerly of Star City, leads the Angler of the Year race after displacing Mark Davis of Mount Ida, who is in seventh place.
COLUMBIA RECOLLECTIONS
The last time an angler won $1 million in a bass tournament was in 2008, when Michael Bennett won the Forrest Wood Cup at Lake Murray in Columbia, S.C.
It was one of the weirdest events I've covered, starting with the local stud who stalked the leaders and tried to outfish them. I saw him cut off Mark Rose in a narrow cove and catch fish in front of him, bragging the whole time about how successful he's been in local tournaments.
Rose gave him a few nasty glares, but he never said a word to the guy. My driver, another local, gave him an earful. I remember their final exchange.
"I've made quite a bit of money on this lake," said the wannabe.
"Yeah, well, you ain't never fished for a million bucks and you never will, so why don't you have a little respect?" my driver said.
The wannabe then asked if anybody knew where Bennett was fishing. He wanted to go show him up, too.
David Fritts cost himself an easy million in that tournament when he was disqualified for checking in with too many fish in his livewell. He lost a commanding lead, and he didn't recover.
Bennett was a brilliant but introverted angler who was uncomfortable in the spotlight. He suffered serious maxillofacial injuries after falling in a bathtub shortly after winning the Cup, and he fished his last FLW tournament in 2010.
Sports on 08/14/2014