Gambler Lures contributes to top finishes in early 2011 tournaments

Gambler Lures once again demonstrated their bass-catching effectiveness in B.A.S.S. Open, FLW Tour and EverStart circuit competitions. Several anglers, both pros and co-anglers, enjoyed heavy hauls in Florida waters to start their 2011 season off right. The following are the accounts.

Brandon McMillan
Champion, FLW Tour Open, Lake Okeechobee, FL. 2/3 – 2/6. Winning weight: 106 lbs, 10 oz (FLW Record).
2nd Place, EverStart Series, Lake Okeechobee, FL. 1/6 – 1/8. Weight: 58 lbs, 1 oz.

Gambler Pro-Staffer Brandon McMillan might as well adopt "Okeechobee" as his middle name because he nearly swept two national tournaments on the same venue in less than one month. While the competition was stiff, McMillan’s approach was simple. He found and exploited a healthy population of behemoth bass that were vulnerable to a flipping presentation on the north end of the lake. Meanwhile, the majority of his fellow competitors focused on bedding fish.

McMillan recounts, "I fished the same area in both tournaments – in and around Monkey Box. The area really didn’t have much pressure. In fact, it was just me and one other guy fishing the area in the FLW Tour. I figured I was going to have a bunch of boats around me after the EverStart, but I did not."

One positive attribute of McMillan’s area was that it repopulated in between tournaments, and by the time the FLW Series was set to begin, those fish were ready to spawn.

"I believe it was a single wave of fish. On the first two days, I caught prespawn or spawning fish. On the third and fourth days, some of the fish I caught seemed spawned-out. Five pounders could have easily been over six two days earlier."

The presentation he relied on in both the FLW Tour Open and the EverStart consisted of pitching and flipping a Gambler BB Cricket in Bowen’s Silver Shadow color with one-ounce-plus weights. He targeted a self-described "junk mat" of eel grass and other vegetation that had collected in and around the windward face of reed and cattail points. There, he pitched the Cricket on 25lb-test fluorocarbon line with a heavy action flipping stick.

McMillan believes the design of the BB Cricket allowed him to effectively harvest fish from the area.

"I really like the Cricket when I am flipping thick mats because it gets through when other baits cannot. Some guys will have to pitch a bait way up in the air to punch through, and I believe that you spook most fish when doing that. They got it right when they designed that bait because it is slender and compact, yet it still holds a big ol’ hook."

McMillan’s "big ol’ hook" is conventionally called the Gambler KO Hook. He likes three distinct features of the hook in particular.

"It is strong, it does not open up, and it has a big barb. You can’t ask for anything else, really. When using 80lb braid and yanking on a fish, a lot of things can go wrong. The KO Hook eliminates most of those things. I struggled over the last couple years when trying different hooks until I found the KO Hook."

Despite milking a single area day-after-day, McMillan was consistent throughout the tournament, and he capped his FLW Tour performance with a 25 pound limit on the final day.

"I tried a couple other baits, but I caught the majority of my big fish on the BB Cricket. After fishing four days in the same spot, I was getting kind of worried that they would get accustomed to seeing the same old thing, but they did not. The big fish still bit the Cricket."

While McMillan believes that nerves factored into his final day slide into the runner-up position in the EverStart, he feels that the experienced gained in that bitter-sweet performance proved instrumental in his come-from-behind finish in the FLW Tour.

"I wasn’t really nervous going into the last day of the FLW Tour Open. In the EverStart, I was really jacked-up and didn’t get much sleep at all. I lost that tournament even before we launched on the final day. I learned that over-thinking things would not help me catch more fish. I am really excited how it all turned out!"

Trevor Fitzgerald
3rd Place, B.A.S.S. Southern Open, Kissimmee Chain, FL. 1/20-1/22. Weight: 67lbs, 14 oz.
12th Place, FLW Tour Open, Lake Okeechobee, FL. 2/3 – 2/6. Weight: 67lbs, 3 oz.

Just two weeks before McMillan’s triumph, another Gambler Lures fanatic, Trevor Fitzgerald, was heaving heavy bass after heavy bass onto tournament scales from a different set of Florida waters.

Trevor Fitzgerald knew he was destined to have a good tournament in the B.A.S.S. Southern Open on the Kissimmee Chain when he started by landing a nine-pound largemouth in the opening minutes on a lipless rattle bait. At the time, he was waiting to lock through to Lake Kissimmee where he had located several spawning beds, laden with heavy-weight bass. His first fish on Lake Toho was an unexpected bonus.

He recalls, "Once the locks cleared out, I went straight to the spawning fish. When I pulled into my spot, I couldn’t believe that no one else was in there. It is a popular community hole, and there were big females everywhere. The first day there were 6-, 8- and 9-pounders on beds."

Fitzgerald immediately exploited the pot-bellied bass population with a Gambler Mega Daddy in June Bug / Green Pumpkin color.

"Whenever I am bed fishing, I like to use the Mega Daddy. And, that tournament was no different. It seems to get the big females to bite before the males. I believe the reason they do that is because they see it as an intruding Blue Gill trying to eat eggs, instead of a crawdad. It seems to change the females’ mindsets. I believe they think, ‘I’m not going to let my little male handle that. It’s too big!’"

Fitzgerald rigged the Mega Daddy on 20lb fluorocarbon line, and pegged a 3/8-ounce tungsten weight on top. The rod he utilized was a 7-foot, 6-inch, heavy-power Fitzgerald Rods flipping stick. For a hook, he relied upon a 5/0 Gambler KO Hook.

"For the Mega Daddy, the KO Hook works perfect".

When traveling between beds, Fitzgerald enticed cruising fish with a secondary presentation: a June Bug – colored Gambler Flapp’n Shad. On the Flapp’n Shad, he affixed a 1/16-ounce Gambler Florida Rig weight to improve the lure’s effectiveness when casting both in windy conditions and over thicker surface cover. He used 50lb braided line for the set-up.

The one-two punch of the Mega Daddy and Flapp’n Shad led Fitzgerald to an amazing 29-15 limit on Day One. Not surprisingly, his haul included three fish over eight pounds: a 9-15, 8-8, and 8-6.

"And I lost a 9-6, too! I know it was that much because I caught her on my first pitch the next day. I had a good boat draw and went straight to her in the morning. I couldn’t even see the bed. I pitched the Mega Daddy in there, felt the ‘thunk!’, and saw my line swimming sideways."

With a full moon in phase the night prior to the tournament, bed fishing was at its peak during the opening rounds and weights were up. On the last day, when a cold front arrived and the unrelenting tournament pressure started to take a toll on the fish, the bite turned sour. Fitzgerald persevered, however, by moving outside of his primary area and was rewarded with another 9-pounder. The Flapp’n Shad rounded out his final day catch and secured a Top-3 finish.

Trevor also utilized a similar approach in a 12th Place finish in the Okeechobee FLW Tour Open two weeks later.

"I did the same thing there. I used the Mega Daddy for bed fish and the Flapp’n Shad for everything else in between. I was easily catching thirty to forty keepers each day on the Flapp’n Shad. And that is not fishing it the whole time – just in between beds. A lot of them were quality bites, too."

When asked why he believes Gambler Lures are so effective, Fitzgerald quickly cited design.

"They are just so well designed. Although they are built with Florida in mind, they work everywhere. But, you can’t beat them in Florida at all really."

Rodney Treadaway
Co-Angler Champion, EverStart Series, Lake Okeechobee, FL. 1/6 – 1/8. Winning weight: 37lbs, 12 oz.

While many pros are enjoying early season success using Gambler products, several co-anglers are turning heads with the same set of lures. Among those is Alabama back-boat big-stick, Rodney Treadaway. Prepared with an arsenal almost exclusively consisting of Gambler products, Treadaway bested the co-angler field on Lake Okeechobee in January using a Gambler ribbon tail worm, Big EZ, BB Cricket, and Flapp’n Shad.

"My primary lure for the tournament was the Gambler 7-inch worm in June Bug and watermelon / red colors. What I was actually doing was swimming it just over the top of the grass. It is a technique that has worked well for me in the past on Guntersville and other grassy lakes. The Gambler worm gives off a vibration with its ribbon tail that will cause bass to come up and eat even if they are not chasing other topwaters. It also comes through the vegetation real easy."

Treadaway Florida-rigged the worm with a 3/16-ounce Gambler screw-in weight to assure a subsurface retrieve. The weight also allowed him to quickly pitch the worm into pockets when his boater fished close to reed lines. The presentation yielded two nice fish for Treadaway during the tournament: a 6-1 and 5-8 bass. June Bug and watermelon / red were his two primary colors in overcast and sunny conditions, respectively.

Although he believes the fish that he and his boater caught were in various stages of the spawn, he notes that they were not specifically sight fishing for them.

In order to present a different look to the fish, Treadaway also substituted the Big EZ for swimming the worm on several occasions in order to catch a couple additional fish.

On Day Three, when the temperature fell and skies clouded over, Treadaway switched to his go-to, heavy-cover flipping lure: a Gambler BB Cricket. As fate would have it, he drew none other than Gambler pro Brandon McMillan for the day.

"We were punching Hyacinths, eel grass, and Kissimmee grass mats, where it had clumped together. I used a 1-1/2 ounce weight and BB Cricket in June Bug color to catch all of my fish that last day."