Nick Prvonozac Wins Grand Lake Costa Series

The Grand Lake that Nick Prvonozac saw last week was nothing like the one he remembered from two years ago when he finished 15th in a Central FLW Series tournament there in mid-April. Prvonozac, in fact, will never forget the most recent iteration of the sprawling Oklahoma reservoir. While it wasn't the all-out spawning bonanza he recalled from 2015, it still played to his strengths despite challenging and changing conditions. The Ohio angler, who was an FLW Tour pro from 2014-16 before opting to spend more time with his growing family, caught a stout 19-12 on day 1, then backed it up with 16-10 on the final day to win the second Southwestern FLW Series stop of the season. The event had to be shortened by a day due to violent storms last Friday. "It's an awesome feeling to finally have everything go your way and come out with a win," said Prvonozac, who pocketed $42,200 plus a new boat for winning. It's the 17th boat he's won during his career. "When I first got there, it was hard to say what was going on," he added. "As the week went on, I got a better idea. Two years ago, there were beds everywhere. You could blind cast and hit a bed. This year was totally different. You could go into a spot and see a couple and then go into another cove and not see any." It wasn't easy, either, considering all the shifting variables he had to contend with between rain and wind and rising and falling water along with changing water clarity. "With all those fronts and up and down water, the fish weren't eating well," he said. "They were moving up and down and you had to know how to force feed them. That's something I'm good at."

Singular Focus:

For Prvonozac, the open-ended practice session that's afforded to FLW Series competitors was a key contributor to his success at Grand. Despite competing there two years ago, he still considers himself a Grand Lake newbie and having a couple extra days to identify areas where pre-spawners were headed and where spawners were locked down was crucial. "Back home, I do well, but I know the lakes," he said. "Fishing tournaments around the country, I don't know them as well. That extra time is important. I usually leave the house on Thursday (for an FLW Series event) and that gives me Saturday through Wednesday on the water. On the Tour, three days is not enough for me when I've never been to a lake. You just can't learn a lake in three days. These lakes are too big. It's like trying to find a quarter on a football field in an hour." At Grand, he concentrated on the lower section of the lake and practiced with one mindset - finding as many fish shallow, whether visible or not, as he could. Unlike 2015 when so many beds were visible, he relied on his instincts to lead him to certain areas. "You'd get in an area where you feel they should be and you think, 'If they're doing this, there has to be one here,'" he said. "I just knew by looking. That was the whole key." On Tuesday and Wednesday during practice, the weather was mild and sunny and that pull prompted a number of fish to move up near or onto beds. "I designated my whole practice to doing that and it worked out. I didn't try to catch fish doing anything else. That helped me because I spent the whole time trying to find key fish. I was able to find several, but not a ton. I had enough to be like, 'Everything has to go right for me to do well.' It wasn't like 2 years ago when I had so many 4s marked I didn't know where to go. This year, it was tough to find any quality."

Kept Going Back The way the first day of the tournament started for Prvonozac, it would've been easy for him to fold his hand and try something different. Instead, he persisted and stuck to his game plan and it eventually paid off. As boat number 137, he didn't have an ideal draw for getting to the bedding fish he wanted to check first. Sure enough, the first spot he went to already had a boat on it with it shallow-water anchors deployed. He tried to get in close, but the other competitor was committed to the spot. Instead, Prvonozac fished around and caught a small keeper off a nearby dock. He visited an adjacent cove and fished there for 30 to 40 minutes before returning to the first spot only to find the other boat still locked down. He then moved on to a third spot, which included long idle zone to get toward the back of the creek. As he was idling, another competitor came out of a nearby cut and got in front of him and wound up idling right to the spot Prvonozac wanted to fish. "It was like the worst start ever," he said. He fished in the area for a little while and caught a 14 1/4-incher with a tube off a bed to give himself two small keepers so far. He then returned to his first area, but the other boat was still there. He went back to the adjacent cove and caught two non-keepers. His frustration was building. "It was like the whole morning was a waste of time," he said. Then the rain started to fall off and on, which compounded matters since Prvonozac wanted to do as much sight-fishing as possible. As he put on his rainsuit, he glanced over to the cove he'd been wanting to fish and noticed the boat that had been there was gone. He raced in there and couldn't get a bite. He figured both fish he'd marked in practiced had either swam off or had been caught.

He stuck around and caught another small keeper before going back to check once again on the spot he started on. "Both of them were still there and I caught them both - each was a 4-pounder," he said. The first one fell for a Texas-rigged tube while the second ate a jerkbait. After that, he ran back to the creek with the long idle zone and found the other boat had also vacated the area. Prvonozac then caught the fish he'd hoped was still there. "The fish didn't want to eat," he said. "If those other guys couldn't catch them, they didn't want to eat. I went behind those guys and caught 'em. That's how it works. Some days, you catch 50 and others you catch eight. They just bite better certain days. "I could've easily been like, 'This sucks,' and not went back," he added. "I kept my cool and prayed a lot. Something told me to go back that second time. My day could've been way different. Those fish could've been gone." He upgraded a couple more times up the lake and eventually got his weight up to 19-12. He also did some additional scouting to find new areas he could visit later in the tournament.

Keep the Faith:

After a line of violent storms canceled day 2 of competition, the entire field was back on the water Saturday and Prvonozac wasn't sure what to expect. He had an earlier boat number and he was able to get to his preferred spots before others did. A tube produced his first three keepers out of a creek toward the dam where he had saved a stretch from practice. Those fish came off secondary points. "If I could get a couple 2 1/2s and a couple 3s, that'd be a good start," he said. The water had risen nearly a foot and it made visibility tough. He made adjustments like backing off a bit and flipping his tube and jig where he figured the fish would've pulled back to or where they might still be. "They were still in the same areas," he said. After boxing two 3-pounders, he finished his limit in a nearby cove and upgraded twice later in the day to get up to 16-10 - once with a jig that pulled a keeper out of bush and the final upgrade came off a jerkbait near some flooded bushes.

Winning Pattern:

Prvonozac said all of his keepers came out of 4 feet of water or less. "All those areas had deep water close by," he said. "Most times, I'd be sitting 12 to 15 feet of water."

Winning Gear:

Tube (visible) gear: 7'2" medium-action Enigma Fishing Phenom spinning rod, Quantum Smoke Speed Freak spinning reel, 10-pound Tuf-Line Domin8 braided line, 10-pound Silver Thread fluorocarbon line (leader), 4/0 unnamed EWG worm hook, 3/16- and 1/4-oz. unnamed tungsten worm weight, 4.25" YUM Vibra King tube (green-pumpkin).

Jig gear: 7'3" medium-heavy Enigma Fishing Phenom casting rod, Quantum Smoke casting reel (7:1 ratio), 17-pound Silver Thread fluorocarbon line, 1/2-oz. Booyah Bankroll jig (green-pumpkin), YUM chunk trailer (green-pumpkin). He also weighed in one fish each day caught on a Smithwick Floating Rattlin' Rogue (bream), which he worked like a floating worm.

Main factor in his success: "It came down to my pattern and my strength fishing around the spawn. My two strengths are spawn fishing and flipping. Those are my two wheelhouses."

Performance edge: "The new Sunrise Silver lenses from Costa are great. When it got overcast and dark or when those clouds would open up, those lenses are great for those conditions with variable light. Also, my Power-Poles were key. I couldn't do what I did without those. I have switches at my console so I can deploy them individually. I was able to stagger their depth so when I went under dock cables, it made it more efficient."

Grand Lake Winning Profile BassFan 4/15/17 (Todd Ceisner)