Entry 360-1

Professional Bass Fisherman Chad Brauer Fights for $47,000 and Wins on the Red River in 2010

Part 4: Chad Brauer Tells About His Final Run on the Red River

Question: Chad, what were you thinking on the last day of competition being in the lead by 5 pounds?

Brauer: I was really worried. If I committed to making the run up the creek to get into that oxbow, I didn’t have a back-up plan. So, if I got stuck or couldn’t get into the oxbow, my tournament probably would be over.

Question: What was your game plan for the last day of the tournament, knowing that the water was falling out of that creek?

Brauer: When I left the take-off area the third morning, I said to myself, “Chad, you’ve got to go for the oxbow. If you can get into that oxbow one more time, you can win this tournament. If you can’t get into the oxbow because the creek’s so shallow leading into it, you’ll have to do whatever you can to stay in the game.”

Question: What did the creek look like when you reached the mouth of it to head for the oxbow?

Brauer: The creek didn’t look like it had dropped any from the day before. I breathed a sigh of relief. But when I got into the creek, I could tell it had dropped about 4 inches. I knew with only a 4-inch drop, I had a better-than-even chance to fight my way through the creek and get to the Promised Land – the oxbow. There were two or three stretches of the creek that were tough to navigate through, and I had to spend about 15-more minutes than usual fighting through the creek. I wasn’t having any problems going through the logjams; I was just hanging-up on the bottom. I had 12 to 15 inches of water, but the current was pushing against me, and as I tried to idle through the creek, the boat would sink down to the bottom.

The current was so strong that I couldn’t really pull the boat with the trolling motor. We’d go a few inches at a time, and I’d ask my partner to go to the front of the boat and jump up and down to try to get the boat leveled-out to go a few more inches. I took all my fishing gear out the back of the boat and moved it to the front of the boat to better balance the boat and keep the back end from sticking. I tried to make the boat as level as possible.

Question: Okay, when you got into the oxbow, how was the fishing?

Brauer: On the second tree I fished, I caught a 2 pounder and then another 2 pounder about 10- minutes later. So, I had about 4 pounds the first 20 minutes of fishing. The competitor in second place would have to catch at least 10 pounds or more to take the lead. But at least I’d have bass to take to the weigh-in. By 9:00 am, I had a limit of bass that weighed about 10 pounds, so I knew second place had to catch at least 15 pounds to catch up with me.

I was feeling pretty comfortable at that point. I also realized that from the previous two days of fishing, the bass really turned-on from about 9:30 am until I had to return for the weigh-in. At about 9:30 am, I caught a bass that weighed 4 pounds, and between 9:30 am and 11:30 am, I culled my weight up to 21 pounds.

Question: On the last day of a tournament, contestants very rarely catch their biggest string of bass, what were you thinking?

Brauer: The only time I’ve ever caught a bigger bag of bass on the last day of the tournament was in a tournament when we had really-bad weather the first two days, and the conditions improved the last day. But it’s rare fishing when you have stable conditions and every day you catch bigger bags of bass.

Question: Were there any other boats with you in the oxbow on the last day?

Brauer: Yes, I had one boat that followed me in, but it was a spectator boat. He watched me for a couple of hours and then left.

Question: On what were you catching your bass the last day?

Brauer: I caught all the bass, except one, flipping the Strike King Rodent. The one bass I didn’t catch on the Rodent, I caught on a chartreuse with a black back Strike King 4S crankbait.

Question: How did you catch the bass on the Rodent?

Brauer: There were a lot of blown-down trees on the oxbow. With the water dropping, the bass had moved out to the ends of those trees and suspended around the limbs. The ends of the trees was in about 7 or 8 feet of water, and I could pitch the Rodent into the middle of the trees and drag it through the branches, without ever letting the Rodent reach the bottom. When I’d reach the end of the tree, I’d let the Rodent fall about 5 or 6 inches, and the bass would eat it. If I let the Rodent fall all the way to the bottom, I wouldn’t get a bite.

Question: You and your dad, Denny Brauer, generally fish the jig or the tube. Why did you decide on fishing the Rodent?

Brauer: Every time Strike King comes out with a new lure, I try to learn to fish that lure the best I can. Every time I’ve used the Rodent, I’ve had a pretty-good amount of success with it. The week before at Lake Ouachita in Arkansas, I was flipping the Rodent in the flooded buck brush, and I did really well. This year, I’ve learned that the Rodent and the Strike King tube are my two best soft-plastic lures for catching bass, because they look like small baitfish and have erratic actions when they fall. I’ve built a lot of confidence in the Rodent, because it’s a more-bulky bait than most fishing baits. In dirty water, I really have a lot of confidence in it. The Rodent displaces a lot of water, and it’s easier for the bass to find it than other lures.

Question: When did you think you’d won this tournament?

Brauer: When I had 15 pounds of bass in the boat, and I knew second place would have to catch 21 pounds to tie me, I felt like I’d won. The biggest bag in the tournament so far had weighed 19 pounds. This was the third day of the tournament, so I breathed a little easier. Also, I knew the competitors in second place and third place were fishing in areas with a lot of other competitors in them. When you get a lot of fishing pressure, it’s hard to upgrade your daily catch. So, with 15 pounds in the boat, I was in fairly-good shape. I looked at my partner and said, “We’re going to fish a couple of places on the way out of the oxbow and then head to the weigh-in site.”

On the way out of the oxbow, every place I stopped, I’d catch a 4 pounder. There was one willow tree we fished on the way out of the oxbow that I’d caught a 4-pound bass out of every day. So, as we started to that willow tree, I started flipping the Rodent, and on my sixth flip, I caught the biggest bass I’d caught throughout the tournament. After catching that bass and culling-up to over 20 pounds, I told my partner, “Let’s put our rods in the boat. I know it’s only 11:30 am, but I need to head back to the check-in.”

Question: How big was that last bass?

Brauer: It weighed about 5 pounds.

Next: Chad Brauer’s Final Fight on the Red River’s Skinny

Contents:

• Part 1: Chad Brauer's Secret Place on the Red River
• Part 2: The First Day of Chad Brauer's Competition on the Red River - Rodent and the 4S
• Part 3: Chad Brauer's Second Day of Competition on the Red River - the Rage Thumper Worm, the Rodent and the 4S Crankbait
• Part 4: Chad Brauer Tells About His Final Run on the Red River
• Part 5: Chad Brauer's Final Fight on the Red River's Skinny