D’Orio and Arbesu persevere to win Glades tournament

Joe D’Orio and Ricardo Arbesu persevered despite the heat, high water and slow fishing Sunday to win the Glades Masters EastWest Shootout out of the MiamiCanal rest area onAlligator Alley.

Fishing in the canals to the west of the rest area, D’Orio, of Pembroke Pines, and Arbesu, of Fort Lauderdale, caught a five-fish limit weighing 25.2 pounds and D’Orio had the tournament’s biggest bass at 6.13.

John Lippincott and Tim Cox were second at 20.41, followed by Skip Reed and Gary Dew at 16.78, Jason Bailey at 14.85 and Bruce Austin and Mike Lendl at 14.15.

D’Orio said high water in the canals has made for challenging fishing, especially around Everglades Holiday Park, because bass have easy access to the marshy interior of the ’Glades known as the flats. Thosefish that remainin the canals are widely scattered.

“The beauty of the west side of the Alley is the fish don’t go into the flats as quickly as they do on the Holiday Park side,” he said.

While pre-fishing those western canals, D’Orio said he located a lot of fish under lily pads and they were biting jigs.

He said the water level had come up by Sunday, and the jig bitewas non-existent. So D’Orio and Arbesu, who caught only 10 bass all day, threw Zoom Horny Toads andsoft-plastic snakes in the pads.

By 1:30 p.m., D’Orio said they had a limit weighing 15 or 16 pounds. That’s when perseverance, and a switch to bigger lures, paid off.

“All of a sudden, 1:45 hit. I was throwing a really long snake and I got the 6.13 and a 5-and-a-half on back-toback casts,” D’Orio said.“We had made two passes before that in the exact same location and never got those fish to bite.

“It was a last-minute thing to pull out bigger equipment and longer snakes. Prior tothat, youhad to go a little bit smaller.

“You can’t give up. It’s just amazing.”

D’Orio added that before the anglers left the boat ramp that morning, Reed had suggested changing the weigh-in time from3 p.m. to 1 p.m., ostensibly because of the high temperatures forecast for Sunday.

“[Tournament director] Terry McCartha said he couldn’t do it after the fact,” D’Orio said. “Ifwe had to be back by 1, we would’ve finished in the middle of the pack.

“After the weigh-in, I had to thank Skip and rub it in.”