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My partner Bob Miller and I along with two other RBBASSFISHING.NET staffers had the pleasure of fishing the Future Pro Tour Northern season opener at Lake Berryessa on March 17th, 2012. The event was hosted out of Pleasure Cove Marina that is located in the back of Wragg Canyon Road. This marked the 10 year anniversary of the Future Pro Tour here in California which continues to draw large fields, offers very good competition and has been the breeding grounds for those looking to go to the next level of bass fishing. Vince Harris is the owner and director of the FPT and does a great job with all the contestants, puts on a good show and has obtained some great sponsors for the tour.
The FPT offers two divisions, a large boat and small boat division. Although the forecast was for stormy weather, this event still was able to draw 107 big boats and 7 small boats with teams eager to attend and start off the 2012 season to make their mark and push for a berth at the 2012 FPT Classic.
The rain and winds gave some additional color to the water from the weeks past which helped some teams catch fish shallow, although the weather conditions fooled some teams in thinking that the fish would have backed off into a little deeper water due to the storm, shallow fish were the ticket for this event.
My partner and I along with several other teams fished the main body looking for fish that were staging to move up to spawn. We moved around from 10 to 35 feet and were able to catch fish, but not the quality of fish that was needed to win the event. We ended our day in 29th place with 11.52 lbs, which came from fishing jigs in brown and green colors. Reports from other teams had fish being caught on crank baits, umbrella rigs, jigs, plastics and rip baits, so a wide variety of lures and techniques were being used by the field which is normal for this time of year and weather conditions.
The winning weight for this event was 19.6 lbs and a very close 19.43 lbs for second place. You can see the full results and story along with all the information that you need to know about the Future Pro Tour by simply going to www.futureprotour.net
If you’re looking to get into the sport of competitive bass fishing and still want to have fun doing it, you need to check out the Future Pro Tour.
Good Fishing ~
