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Joe Uribe Jr. Wins Clear Lake Rayovac

Joe Uribe Jr. Wins Clear Lake Rayovac

Joe Uribe Jr. figured he'd catch a lot of fish at the Clear Lake Western Rayovac Series last week. It's a good time of year and Clear Lake always seems to produce. Whether he'd catch the type of fish needed to contend for a win in a big tournament was another matter. More than anything, though, the Arizona pro, who'd won the Lake Havasu Rayovac Series and finished 6th at the California Delta event earlier this year, wanted to catch enough to secure the division's Angler of the Year title, an accomplishment that had eluded him in the past. By the end of day 2, he'd achieved his goal and wrapped up the AOY title, but he also found himself leading the tournament as well. Behind a better-than-expected 22-02 stringer on the final day, he vaulted past Jody Jordan, who caught 24-plus pounds on days 2 and 3, to capture his second win of the season with a 3-day total of 66-10, good enough for a 1-ounce victory. "When (Jody) weighed 24, I was like, 'Okay, he won,'" Uribe said. "I was shocked that I had 22-02 and to beat him by 1 ounce, I hated that because I've been on the other end twice myself. It made me sick to my stomach. It was hard to celebrate up there because I felt for him. Jody is a great guy, a good friend and a great fisherman." Uribe's final-day surge was helped by a fish he guessed was in the 6-pound range, but was actually closer to 8 pounds. "I underestimated that big one," he said. "She wasn't solid like that 6 I'd caught earlier." Uribe joins Ray Hanselman as anglers to win multiple Rayovac Series events this year. Hanselman swept the Texas Division earlier this season. "I've been pre-fishing well and things have been coming together real well," Uribe said. "Fishing Clear Lake is fun for me. I don't put pressure on myself. Even though I had a lot riding on it, I went out and did what I do."

Uribe and his sister, Rachel, who competed as a co-angler, helped each other practice and while Joe wanted to stick with a shallow cranking, Rachel developed a consistent pattern with a Texas-rigged creature bait dead-sticked around dock shadows. "There was a big tournament the weekend before ours and there were 30-pound bags caught on day 1, but then some fell off to 12 pounds on day 2," Uribe said. "That told me guys had found good stretches, but the fish weren't schooled up. It also told me you couldn't fish areas over and over. You have to keep finding new areas." He said the weather was abnormally warm for the time of year. The water temperature was still in the mid-70s - it's typically in the low to mid 60s in October. "It was off due to the weather," he said. "The fish wanted to go into their fall pattern, but they didn't know what to do."

Competition:

Uribe went into the tournament with his shallow square-bill crankbait and lipless crankbait game plan as his primary option and the Texas-rigged creature bait as Plan B. He cranked 20 pounds early on day 1, making parallel casts along "nothing banks" with hard bottom. "The smaller fish were up shallow so I backed out into 5 to 6 feet and kept grinding it into the rocks," he said. "The better fish had backed off into a little deeper water." He finished the day with 23-11, his best effort of the tournament, and found himself in 3rd place. "I was excited to go back to that place on day 2," he said. "I figured it would keep reloading." Early on, it produced a 4-pounder and a 12-incher before he moved around to different spots. He picked up another 4-pounder off a dock, then went back to where he started and caught a 3-pounder to give him four fish. "I made another cast down the bank with my crankbait and I ran it into some rocks and it got hung and my line broke," he said. "A couple seconds later, I see my bait float to the surface. I didn't want to troll up to it and get it because I would've ruined the spot so I picked up my lipless crank and fired out there and a 4-pounder slammed it." That gave him a limit, but he still wanted to cull out the 12-inch squeaker he had. He made a move into Soda Bay and cranked a rocky shoal and caught several fish in the 3 1/2-pound range to give him the upgrades he was looking for. "It was a grind," he said. "We picked it apart, but it wasn't easy." His 20-13 bag gave him the lead entering the final day, but it wasn't by much. He led by 6 ounces over Mark Crutcher, who'd caught 29-09 on day 1. "I wasn't feeling great about anything (entering the final day), but I felt good about the weather," Uribe said. "It had gotten colder and with some clouds, I figured maybe some more fish would move up shallow." He opened the final day on the shoal where he finished day 2, but it didn't pan out.

"I ran down south, but it started blowing too hard in the narrows to fish effectively there," he said. He went back to his starting area from day 1 and picked off a 3 1/2-pounder. Shortly after, the wind tailed off and the sun broke through. He decided to slow down and went to Plan B. "I picked up that Texas-rigged beaver and started pitching to shallow sparse grass," he said. "The first fish I caught that way was a 6-pounder. I kept at it and caught a lot of little fish, but I knew I needed 4- and 5-pounders because I knew the other guys (near me in the standings) were going to catch them." He went back to the crankbait and lost a 4-pounder off some isolated pilings, then decided to go back to the soft plastics. "I figured the big bites would come on a jig or Texas-rigged plastics," he said. "I fired a long cast to the mouth of a little slough and I barely lifted my rod and felt something there. I reeled down and set the hook and it was a good one." The fish did a complete cartwheel in mid-air, he said, before coming to the boat. He figured it was a 6 1/2- or 7-pounder. Later on, he had a few good fish come off while skipping the beaver under docks. "When I came in, in the back of my mind, I was thinking you can't have hiccups like that, knowing those fish I lost," he said. "I figured those were going to hurt me, especially with the two little ones I had. I heard Jody had a good day so I figured it was over."

Winning Gear:

Square-bill crankbait gear: 7'4" medium-action Performance Tackle graphite casting rod, Daiwa Tatula 100H casting reel (6.3:1 gear ratio), 30-pound Daiwa J-Braid braided line (main), 12-pound Sunline Super FC Sniper fluorocarbon line (leader), Lucky Craft 1.5 square-bill crankbait (ghost minnow).

Lipless crankbait gear: 7'4" medium-action Performance Tackle fiberglass casting rod, same reel, same main line, 16-pound Sunline Super FC Sniper fluorocarbon line (leader), Lucky Craft LV-500 (ghost minnow).

Beaver gear: 7'2" heavy-action Daiwa Tatula casting rod, same reel, same main line, same leader line as lipless, 3/8-oz. unnamed tungsten worm weight, 4/0 Reaction Innovations BMF hook, 4.2" Reaction Innovations Sweet Beaver (big Texan).

Main factor: "Making a lot of casts. I'd make multiple, precise coasts to areas where I thought the fish would be positioned. When they're acting how they were, making them bite was. You could made the same cast a few times and catch 10-inchers, but if you kept making the same cast, you'd catch a 4-pounder. There were just a lot of small fish around."

Performance edge: "My Lowrance electronics. They're the key to telling me what's down there. I was able to see the bait there and keep the boat positioned where I needed it."

Clear Lake Winning Pattern BassFan 10/20/15 (Todd Ceisner)

Jody Jordan's Pattern, Baits & Gear

Jordan has been on the good size of narrow victories before, but it still didn't blunt the sting of a 1-ounce loss to Uribe at his favorite lake on the planet. Despite weighing two 24-plus pound bags on each of the final 2 days, Jordan was crestfallen when Uribe's final-day stringer wound up being enough to swing the outcome in his favor. "I don't think I'll ever get over losing by as small a margin as I did," Jordan said. "That will stick with me forever. The positive was I won by 2 ounces 2 years ago over Jason Borofka for my first big win. I was so on cloud 9 that I wasn't able to empathize as much. Now, I look back and know how he feels. "It was hard to take. I'd been thinking about this tournament for months and I wanted to win it. I love this time of year and I had played it out in my head don't know how many times. The tournament, obviously, didn't fish how I played it out in my head. I have stuff that if they start to eat on some deep cranking spots, you have a shot at 35 to 40 pounds. It was a grinder." Had Uribe and Jordan finished tied for first, Jordan would've won by virtue of having caught a bigger stringer. Jordan said it was one of the most physically demanding tournaments he's ever fished, simply because he threw a Strike King 10XD about 75 percent of the time, during the tournament and his weekly trips to the lake in the months leading up the event. "Physically, it was not an enjoyable tournament to fish," he said. "It was hard. I'm worn out."

Jordan fished the lake once a week for 6 weeks leading up to the tournament in addition to 3 days prior to competition. He endured several lost fish on the crankbait during the event, but also had areas where he caught fish punching and on a jig. "Pretty much every ledge on the lake is holding fish," he said. "I picked areas that are community holes and everybody knows about, but nobody was on them. If you threw a jig on the ledges, you couldn't get bit. It seemed the only way to get bit was to force-feed them the cranks. There were areas where a jig worked and I caught some that way, but there's a reason why they're community holes, because the big ones live there year in, year out." Jordan pointed to day 1 as the day he'd like to have back. "My timing was off on my flipping fish," he said. "I went to them too soon and then didn't go back. I didn't hit all of the mats I had GPS'd - I only hit three, then left them. If I'd have kept at it, I think I could've punched a good one. I wound up weighing a 12-incher." After losing a 6-pound caliber fish on his second cast with the crankbait, he was determined to make the deep-diving plugs work. It was hardly a cast-after-cast catch fest. He had to make repetitive casts, sometimes dozens, to the same spot in order to trigger reaction bites. "They weren't in their feeding mode," he said. "You had to make them react to it." He said red-hued cranks are usually the go-to baits this time of year, but he found a shad pattern to be most productive. He wound up with 17-14 on day 1 and that had him thinking he'd need 22-plus on day 2 in order to snag a paycheck. Day 2 was a mixed bag as far as how he caught his fish, but there was no shortage of quality. He hit one ledge with a crankbait under what he called "the worst possible cranking conditions," but making the same cast more than two dozen times, he finally coaxed a 6-pounder to eat. That gave him three fish for 12 pounds. Shortly after, a random cloud got in front of the sun and within 10 minutes, he caught two more 3-pounders to finish off an 18-pound limit. "At that point, I was feeling good about getting a check," he added.

He was tempted at that point to go back to his key cranking area and target bigger fish, but he opted to check some grass since the area he was in was flat calm. He punched a 4 3/4-pounder and was able to cull before another competitor in the area voluntarily left the nearby grass bed he'd been fishing after briefly chatting with Jordan. "Where he was fishing was the next weed bed I was going to fish and I wound up flipping a 7-pounder out of there," he said. "It was one of those little things that happened that made things work. That fish took me to 24 pounds." He wound up weighing in two fish caught flipping, two on a crankbait and one jig fish on day 2 as he came in with 24-06. The final day brought with it some dark and cloudy weather and a northwest wind. "I didn't know where to start," Jordan said. "The wind was blowing perfectly into Henderson where I'd caught them on a crankbait, but the fish hadn't had wave action and a front like this in a month and I figured they'd be snapping, but I never got bit there on a crankbait." He moved to a main-lake point with some current coming across it and made repeated casts into the wind, but lost the only fish he connected with there. He moved to another ledge and cranked up a 6-pounder for his first fish. He ran back to the point and lost another good one. After making a boat positioning adjustment, he put a 5-pounder and a 3 3/4 in the boat before losing several more fish. "I went back to some rock piles and hit three or four good ones, but didn't catch anything," he said. "I went back to the point. Nothing. I went back to the ledge and caught a couple good ones. "Running in, I stopped on one of the biggest community holes on the lake and pitched a jig to the side of a point and caught a 5 to get rid of a 12-incher. The last day was all about fishing the conditions and the wind and current. I'd been waiting for that all tournament, thinking the crank bite would've been so much better, especially for deep cranking."

Crankbait gear: 7'11" medium-heavy Phenix Recon 2 casting rod, Shimano Curado casting reel (5.4:1 gear ratio), Abu Garcia Revo Winch casting reel, 12- or 15-pound Seaguar Tatsu fluorocarbon line, Strike King 10XD (gizzard shad). Jordan said he used a stop-and-go retrieve with his 10XD, especially on spots that he has fished numerous times before. "I like to grind it down and then walk it," he said. "I've fished these areas so long, I know every little corner where you can't throw it."

Punch gear: 7'11" heavy-moderate action Kistler Helium 3 casting rod, same reel (Curado), 50-pound unnamed braided line, 1-oz. unnamed tungsten punch weight, unnamed punch skirt (sprayed grass), 4/0 unnamed flipping hook, Reaction Innovations Sweet Beaver (sprayed grass). Jordan pitched a 1/2- and 3/4-oz. jig (peanut butter and jelly) on 20-pound Seaguar Tatsu with a Berkley HAVOC Pit Boss trailer (electric blue).

Main factor: "My intimate knowledge of every spot I fished. I know how they set up. As far as the cranking goes, just the determination to not put it down and having full faith in it. I'd picture the bait down there and go into each cast thinking, 'This is the cast I'm going to get bit.' I never let up even though my shoulders and hands and elbow... everything hurts, but I didn't give up.

Performance edge: "Everything worked great, from my Ranger z521 to my Mercury Pro XS 250. My Lowrance electronics - I have the HDS-9s - I couldn't do it without them. Also, Hi's Tackle Shop made sure I had the color bait I needed. I only had one, but they brought me two more for peace of mind."

Clear Lake 2-3 Patterns BassFan 10/21/15 (Todd Ceisner)

Mark Crutcher's Pattern, Baits & Gear

Mark Crutcher has had some epic days at Clear Lake before and his day-1 stringer last week certainly ranked among them. While it didn"t come close to the 40-pound day he had in a team tournament several years ago, back after the Huddleston swimbait hit the market, the 29-09 he caught to start the tournament last week had him thinking big again. "It was a dream day," he said. "I left them biting with an hour to go." He started the tournament heaving a custom-painted SPRO Little John DD crankbait. "I hadn"t been catching a lot on it in practice, but I caught enough big ones that I felt like if they kept biting, I could blow it out," he said. "I also told some friends I could bomb, too." He caught two good fish to start, then headed north to a spot near a swim beach where he"d caught a mix of big and small fish in practice. "Between 10 and 11:30, I caught two 7s and a 6," he said. "I was like, 'Oh my God. I can"t believe this." I had one other nice one and a 1-pounder to get rid of."

He stuck around the north end and did some punching, but came up empty. He ran around a little bit more before going back to the same stretch near Lucerne to do more punching and came out with another 6-pounder. His smallest at that point was a 4 3/4-pounder. The 29-09 total gave him a comfortable cushion going into day 2. He back to his cranking area down south and caught a 3 1/2-pounder on his second cast, which had him thinking that program was going to work all day. It wound up being his only crankbait fish of the day. "I punched the rest of the day toward north end, but the best I could do was a 14-pound limit fishing that way," he added. " I knew I left the door open for Joe and Jody. I wasn"t mad, but I was not happy about it." His 14-09 bag on day 2 dropped him to 2nd, 6 ounces behind Uribe. Like Jordan, who stayed with Crutcher during the tournament, Crutcher felt that the weather change on day 3 would trigger a better crankbait bite overall. "My money was on Jody that morning because I knew what he was doing," he said. He opted to stay north, but couldn"t generate much with various topwaters and a ChatterBait. "At about 2, I had 9 pounds, but the sun broke through to where I could see the tops of the weeds in 7 to 9 feet of water," he said. "I started punching and flipping the holes and got up to 19 pounds in the last hour."

Cranking gear: 8" medium-action Powell Max 3D crankbait rod, Shimano Curado casting reel (6.1:1 gear ratio), 12-pound Seaguar InvizX fluorocarbon line, SPRO Little John DD (custom red color). Crutcher said the bait was custom-painted by Reckless Baits.

Punching gear: 7"10" medium-heavy Powell Max casting rod, same reel, 65-pound PowerPro braided line, 3/4-oz. unnamed tungsten worm weigh, Reckless Baits punch shirt (green-pumpkin or purple), Reaction Innovations Sweet Beaver (sprayed grass or 420). Crutcher said it was key, when punching, to target the thickest parts and holes in the grass. He focused on 5 1/2 out to 9 feet of water.

Main factor: "Being persistent. I have a lot of years of experience and I knew it would be won by one or the other or a combination of both cranking and punching."

Performance edge: "I have a new Legend boat and absolutely love it. The guys at Nixon Marine in Walla Walla, Wash., did a lot to get the boat out to me for this tournament."

Clear Lake 2-3 Patterns BassFan 10/21/15 (Todd Ceisner)

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