Lake Washington ABA Results - HUGE BAGS!

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Permalink Reply by Ryan Higgins on March 30, 2015 at 11:39am

Nice showing!!!!  Way to kill it guys.  That one smallie you're holding is an absolute football!

Permalink Reply by Chad Eidson on March 30, 2015 at 11:48am

That was an absolute beat down...hats off to Dustin and Austin. Back to back 27 lb bags is insane

Permalink Reply by Jake Anderson on March 30, 2015 at 12:45pm

thats a pretty impressive weekend all the way around. Lake washington has the laziest looking bass i've seen. I bet you guys rubbed potatoe chips and couch pleather on your baits the night before.

Permalink Reply by Zach Chandler on March 30, 2015 at 12:47pm

Pretty impressive all together.  Would love to hear how the winners got so dialed in, freaking awesome

Permalink Reply by Sparkles on March 30, 2015 at 1:45pm

Good job Dustin!

Permalink Reply by Jordan Doucet on March 31, 2015 at 4:48pm

Has anyone ever seen or heard of a bag that big coming out of Lake Washington at a tournament? Not to mention on back to back days. My goodness, I was just glad to be there to see it and get my ass kicked by that much despite weighing a good bag ourselves. Those guys were in their own world - congrats fellas. 

Permalink Reply by Chad Simon on March 31, 2015 at 5:32pm

Never heard of a bag over 24lbs in a tournament out there. I'm still a little shocked by this. How many fish did they boat each day? It was definantly the perfect storm for the big largemouth to be active, but that's just crazy!

Permalink Reply by P.J. Koshi on March 31, 2015 at 8:52pm

That's a showing to remember!

Permalink Reply by Dustin Chaplin on March 31, 2015 at 9:04pm

Thanks for the kind words everyone. It was a hell of a way to start our first ABA season. On saturday we caught 5 by noon and stopped not knowing how sunday would fish. We figured we had around 24lb. Those fish are deceivingly thick. Sunday was a completely different bite and we ended up with 7 fish, culling once.  I'll give Austin credit for sunday as he landed the 5 we weighed in. Overall we only had about 15 bites for both days. I think saturday was the day for the bigger bag if we had kept fishing. 

Permalink Reply by Doug Jorgensen on March 31, 2015 at 10:19pm

Dennis Brush and Greg Petroskie weighed in a 26 pound bag of smallmouth at the Hawg Hunter Mary Bridge tournament years ago. Nothing over that until now.

Permalink Reply by Austin Heyer on March 31, 2015 at 11:04pm

Like Dustin said thanks for the kind words from everyone! I'd like to recognize Chad and Jordan as well for catching two great bags back to back days as well with a freak of nature smallmouth on sunday! That fish was massive! To add onto what Dustin said him and I have been working out there for a few years now on trying to pattern and dial in the largemouth. There are so many great smallmouth sticks on Washington that we knew the only chance we had to potentially win was to fish largemouth! Like dustin was saying we only got 5 bites on Saturday on 3 different baits stopping once we got that fish 5th in case sunday was to be tougher. They just happened to be the right 5 bites that we needed to weigh that big bag. Sunday started kinda the same way Saturday did with the big fish being the first fish of the morning. The pattern was different on sunday though with a completely different bait that day. I had put 3 in the boat before 830 that morning and then we worked for the 4th and the 5th eventually culling out a 4# largemouth to reach our final bag. Overall the tournament and the bite setup like we had hoped and we were blessed to weigh what we did. We fished clean not losing one fish which also helped us but I think the bigger factor was the confidence we had in our spots based on the past 3 years of practice and work into trying to dial in the bite. We never prefished our largemouth spots going into the tournament in fear of stinging good fish. Once again id like to thank ABA for such a well ran tournament and all the other guys that weighed great bags this past weekend!