Comment from: djkimmel
Don Watts and Jeff Denny win Lake Drive Championship on Burt and Mullett Lakes
By editor on Sep 24, 2011 | In Bass Tournaments
Don Watts and Jeff Denny won the 2011 Lake Drive Marine championship on Burt and Mullett Lakes with nine smallmouth bass weighing 44.69 pounds. Photo Credit: Don Watts
The team of Don Watts and Jeff Denny won the September 23-24, 2011 Lake Drive Marine championship on Burt and Mullett Lakes with 9 bass weighing 44.69 pounds to take the top prize of a new boat. A 6.27 pounds kicker smallmouth bass today sealed the victory caught on a Poor Boy's Dixie Darter. Watts reports that most of their smallmouth bass were caught on the larger Dixie Darter.
There was a definite difference in the catch rate using the large Dixie Darter versus the smaller Erie Darter. The team fished the Indian River to catch their winning bass starting out day one in 2nd place with 5 bass weighing 24 and a half pounds caught by 9am Friday morning. Watts says the decision to head towards Burt Lake was a last minute, split-second decision the team made solely based on seeing only 4 boats ahead of them head towards Burt with the majority turning towards Mullett Lake.
Jeff Denny and Don Watts with their Skeeter bass boat first prize for winning the 2011 Lake Drive Marine championship on Burt and Mullett Lakes. Photo Credit: Don Watts
Watts and Denny returned to the Indian River on day two deciding to go for the win by staying with the bigger fish all day. They caught 3 bass early including a 5 pounder but the bite died at 9am. Winners know when to stick with their game plan when they've made the best choice available, and that's what Watts and Denny did. They stuck with the Indian River and toughed it out even though they did not get another bite until 1pm.
Don felt they needed one more big bass to have a shot at winning and at about 10 minutes past 1pm he hooked a big smallie pushing 5 pounds. After a short fight, the big bass got off. That may have been the only time the team started to question their plan, but 10 minutes later Don hooked and landed a huge 6.27 pounds toad smallie! That was enough to give them the championship!
As big as that smallmouth bass was, it was only the 3rd largest bass weighed in during this slugfest. A monster 7.27 pounds smallmouth bass took big bass during the Lake Drive Marine championship. More details to follow if we get them.
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2011 Lake Drive champion Don Watts tells the detailed and complete story about their tournament win on the GreatLakesBass.com forum here - http://www.greatlakesbass.com/forum/index.php?topic=10908.0