Entry 192-3
Kevin VanDam on Fishing Lake Amistad in March
Part 3: The Second Day of Competition at Amistad
Editor’s Note: This year we’re looking at how some of our top national pros fish in tournaments and the new techniques they develop on the tournament circuit. B.A.S.S. held its first bass tournament of 2007 at Lake Amistad on the Texas/Mexico border. Strike King’s Kevin VanDam of Kalamazoo, Michigan, finished 5th in the tournament. Let’s learn how VanDam fished there.
Question: Kevin, you caught a big limit of bass, 26 pounds, on the first day of competition. Why did you think your bass would hold up if you returned to that same area on the second day of competition?
VanDam: Amistad is such a great fishery that at this time of the year, there’s always more bass moving up to shallow water and getting ready to spawn. I knew that as long as I had the wind blowing on the places I was fishing, I still should be able to catch a good number of big bass. On the first cast of the second day of competition, I had an 8-pound bass on my King Shad, and I lost the fish. Now that’s not the way you want to start your second day of competition.
Shortly thereafter, however, I felt a tremendous strike and hooked what I knew to be a really, really-big bass. As I began to fight the bass to the boat, I looked down in the water and saw that I had two big bass, both hooked to the same King Shad. One of the fish weighed about 5 pounds; the other weighed about 7 pounds.
With that much force put on the hook and the King Shad, the bait came off. I ended up taking the 5 pounder. Even though I had super-strong No. 2 hooks on the King Shad, with a 5-pound largemouth going one way and a 7 pounder going the other way, 
the bait wasn’t designed for two big bass to eat it at the same time. So, finally the 7 pounder straightened out the hook.
I couldn’t believe what had just happened. Although the biggest fish I caught that day weighed 6 pounds, I never really boated any of the really-big bass until the last day, but I couldn’t believe that both those two nice-sized bass were fighting over the same King Shad.
