2014 FLW Tour Day 1: Disaster with Dave LeFebre on Lake Okeechobee


Fishing blog for

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Posted By: Chris

Location: Lake Okeechobee

Species: Bass

Total fish caught: 6

 
Main Image

Pic 1 of 4
 
  • Thumbs up from Dave!
  • The ride back
  • Fog delay
  • Almost ready
(Double tap for fullscreen)
Posted on 4/7/2023 11:21:07 AM

Much like my 2007 season in the BFL, I decided on a whim to fish another tournament trail: The 2014 FLW Tour. This was a big-time pro-level tournament trail that I truly had no business joining, but I did so just because the opportunity was there. I'm not a serious tournament fisherman but I thought it would be cool to see how the pros fish and I didn't go with a lot of expectations, I just wanted to learn what I could.

For the first tournament of the season we headed down to Clewiston, Florida to fish Lake Okeechobee. If you don't know, Okeechobee is that big dot you see in South Florida looking at a map. It's a renowned bass fishery and needless to say, I was excited to be there. I did my research and I was ready to go.

We have our meeting the day before the tournament and I see a ton of the big names in bass fishing sitting in the same room. I'm looking around and I see Roland and Scott Martin of course, we were fishing at their place, and also out there are guys like Jimmy Houston, Larry Nixon, and Gary Yamamoto just to name a few. I've seen some of these guys on TV for years and sitting in the same room with them was pretty surreal to say the least.

And then I get paired with my Day 1 partner: Dave LeFebre. Dave was one of the biggest names on tour and also from my home state of Pennsylvania so I was looking forward to the day. It was a nice day weather-wise and we were able to hop around to a few spots Dave had scouted out beforehand. Unfortunately neither of us caught any giants but by the end of the day I had 4 fish in the boat for maybe 7 lbs, and Dave had 5 fish that would have gone about 9 lbs. Not the best, but not the worst outing for my first big-time tournament day, right?

We cranked up the boat to head back to weigh-in and that's when disaster struck. We were in Dave's brand-spanking new boat and unfortunately there was a bad (or missing) clamp on a fuel line and we were dead in the water. The motor couldn't get fuel and we couldn't fix it to get back to weigh-in on time. Ouch. An even bigger ouch for Dave because the entry fee was $4,000 on the pro side if I remember correctly. We released our fish back into Lake Okeechobee and got a tow back to a ramp to load up our broken boat/dreams.

As you can see from the pics, Dave was super stoked! Hah. That's a bad way for the first tournament day of the year to go. On Day 2 all I caught was a couple of dinks and barely made a showing in my first big-time tournament, but I didn't really expect to. I don't think Dave fared much better either. At that point I was just hoping the rest of the season might be a little more fun than this debacle. It was time to switch gears for Hartwell.

Catch Details
#1 - Largemouth Bass - 2lbs 8ozs
Depth Caught: 0.1ft
Bait: white horny toad
#2 - Largemouth Bass - 1lbs 0ozs
Depth Caught: 1ft
Bait: watermelon red trick worm
Fishing Conditions

Sky Conditions:   Partly CloudyPartly Cloudy

Air Temp:  62-82 ℉


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