Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Staying put pays off for Spring Fling pair
Rodd Sayler and Steven Forssell like to run and gun in bass tournaments, but Sunday they forced themselves to stay put. The strategy resulted in a Spring Fling victory at Everglades Holiday Park.
The Margate residents brought in five fish weighing a total of 26.05 pounds to top the 33-boat fleet, and Forssell had the big bass of 6.7 to win more than $1,100 in the Bass-N-Fools’ 38th annual tournament.
“We found the fish Saturday, in maybe a 2-, 2½-mile stretch and that was it,” Sayler said. “Usually we fish from Tamiami to the Alley to the finger canals. We said, ‘This time we’re going to grind it out in this stretch.’
“We were up and back, up and back all day. That’s what we haven’t been doing. We’d been leaving fish to find fish and coming up short. We decided to stay on our fish and just keep working them, and it paid off.”
Sayler said that the top three teams all fished that stretch in the L-67A Canal. Paul D’arcy and George Williams were second at 24.12. Mark Sommer and his son were third at 19.52.
Joe D’Orio and Chad Langley at 18.02 and Steve and Daniel Papp at 17.36 rounded out the top five.
Sayler, who usually fishes a Zara Spook all day, said there wasn’t much of a topwater bite during their Saturday scouting trip, so he started off with the Spook on Sunday, but only for an hour, then fished a Gambler snake the rest of the day.
Forssell, who excels at pitching a jig, did that all day with a new Gambler model with a Stinger creature bait. Forssell caught his first keeper at 7:30 a.m., which Sayler said is early for a jig. He got his big bass at 11:30, which came unhooked just as Sayler got the landing net under it. That was their last good fish of the day.
“We weren’t able to cull anything after that. It just shut down,” Sayler said. “All we had after that were little fish and trash fish.”
The best fishing was from 9:30-11:30. Sayler caught three of their limit fish on the snake, which he reeled slowly so it swam just under the surface. In addition to his big bass, Forssell had a 5-pounder on the jig.
Fish of the week
Recent rainfall made for higher and moving water in the Everglades and tougher fishing in places such as the canals at Sawgrass Recreation Park. Some of Capt. Alan
Zaremba’s best fishing was in the finger canals along the west side of U.S. Highway 27, where Fred
Williams and Jay Morgan of the Washington, D.C., area caught 60 largemouth bass up to 3.5 pounds, a few peacock bass, chain pickerel, mudfish, oscars, Mayan cichlids, spotted sunfish, warmouths and bluegills.
Bob Bagley of Pompano Beach and his fiancée
Carla, of Doral, and his nephew Ian, 4, caught nine peacocks up to 4 pounds on a morning trip in the Lake Ida chain. Zaremba and
Gary Hamilton of Wilmington, Del., caught 58 largemouths up to 3 pounds at Brown’s Farm and 12 peacocks up to 5 pounds in the C-9 in Miami Gardens.
Mark Purish and Norm Hines of the D.C. area caught 36 peacocks up to 5 pounds in the Lake Ida chain.
How Ya Reelin weighed a total of 175.4 pounds of fish Saturday, including the biggest kingfish at 44 pounds, to win the Fort Lauderdale Meat Mayhem tournament out of Harbour Towne Marina in Dania Beach. O Sea D was second at 159.8, followed by Seapremacy at 146.6, Spiced Rum at 118.6 and The Program at 116.
Old No. 7 caught and released a three-day total of 23 sailfish to win the Final Sail tournament in Key West and $219,675. BAR South was second with 22 releases and won $137,725. Sandman was third with 21 sailfish and won the Quest for the Crest as the top team over the four-tournament series.