Ron Howe and Bob Miller of RB Bass manage over 21lbs a day to win the BBT Championship by a 3lb margin.
Mixing it up each day with top water, punching, Senkos and cranking Ron and Bob followed the tide to stay intact with the quality fish.
The first day of practice consisted of cranking with Ima Square Bills in red and punching matted grass and cheese mats with Berkley PowerBait Thief in watermelon red. The day ended up with 15 or 16lbs, good but not enough to win so they switched to west delta and caught fish up to 7lbs punching, buzzbaits, spooks, frogs managing about 22lbs.
Hoping the pre fish pattern would hold up they started day one by throwing topwater then switched to punching hard grass and mixed hyacinth mats with 5-8 foot of water. Bob caught the first three fish, then Ron Boated two keepers for a small limit, and then “Boom” Ron caught an 8.55 kicker fish punching. Bouncing around to other similar mat similar they culled twice.
Once the tide topped out they chased the high switch where had a crazy 20 minutes of fishing, five quality frog bites for Ron in the hippy grass in Franks Tract.
The frog bites were all culls, then Bob punched a 4 and Ron sight fished a 4.5lb roamer with a Senko finishing the limit with 21.80 lbs sitting in second place out of 206 boats.
Day two started off with throwing frogs and punching in Franks, but they had zero bites and now need to move.
They went back to their Friday practice area where the low tide exposed a hard grass line, Ron made the switch to early punching and quickly boats a 4 and a 6lber! We missed a few more and then the bite stopped.
Moving again to a rock wall with mixed grass – one we found in practice fishing topwater. Zero fish on the rock wall. Ron then stopped and checked his tide charts realizing the tide was close to when he punched a 7 on Friday in hard grass. They then ran back punching the same grass mat where Ron cracks a 5.75.
Thinking this is working Ron decided to punch the same area we started yesterday where he was rewarded with another 5lber – it was a memorable bite. As soon as the bait hit the grass this fish exploded on the bait and swam away with it! Feeling better with four solid fish live well and five hours left to fish. But… they then struggled to even get a bite for the next two hours. After a couple hours of incoming tide the mats had enough water to punch again where they landed number five.
They then culled two more times ending up with 21.28 for our final day.
Everyone was buzzing about three teams very close to the same weight where the team of Troy Flemming and Casey Rymes the Delta Wine Anglers brought in a 24lb plus bag closing in on 40 lbs.
Ron Howe was using
- Abu Garcia Reels
- Abu Garcia 7-11 heavy Villain Rod for punching
- Abu Garcia 7-3 Heavy Vendettas for Frog fishing
- 65 lb Spider wire with 1oz River2Sea trash bombs 3/0 hooks and various Craw Flip baits. Darker colors worked early and green pumpkin red later in the day.
- The frog fish were caught on a green frog.
Bob Miller caught all fishing punching
- 7-11 Heavy Veritas rod spooled with 65lb Spider wire and various Craw baits.
Prior to the event Ron Howe placed 5th in the Sang Proof Open 4th in Tracy Bass and 11th in the River2Sea Open Ron and Bob finished the 2016 Season 3rd in the AOY Race. It was their 4th year in a row the Top 5 in the AOY race , in 2013 they were AOY in the Northern Region of the BBT.