ABA TOC 2023 / BassCat Shootout Siemantel and Tuttle Recap

ABA TOC 2023 / BassCat Shootout Siemantel and Tuttle Recap

Siemantel/Tuttle Take AOY For SoCal Region

Now that was a week of very hard work! Tim and I fished hard in 2023 to take the AOY honors for the Socal region for ABA and in doing so we get to fish the BassCat Shootout this last Sunday at Lake Mohave.

I want to take the time right off the bat to thank some special sponsors that I have been with for years. I have been honored to be apart of the BassCat family for over 23 years, Mercury Motors, MotorGuide, Lowrance, FishLab, Okuma, SoftSteel, Team Davies, Bzen Organics, Lithium Pros, Power Pole, and Team BBZ. Without great sponsors life is just not the same.

Tim and I left last Sunday to do a little prefish for the ABA TOC at Lake Havasu and both Sunday when we got there and Monday was blown out with winds from 20 to 50 mph… Yikes. Tuesday was the first time we got to get a good look at the lake and to say I was in shock would be an understatement! This is not the same lake I fished 8 years ago (boy time flies). Instead of crystal clear water and finding wolf packs of monster SMB the lake was stained with maybe 4’ visibility is some areas. Yes the big winds played havoc on the lake but this was a different animal than I remembered.

We tried to run as much stuff I remembered in years pass but the outside points and cuts with topwater baits did not play apart for this event for us. The few days we had we started over fishing more of a stain water reaction bite and the new FishLab Bio Spinnerbait did awesome. The only bad this is that with the size of this lake, it was just too hard to cover enough water to find a good milk run that would last for two days.

Tim Tuttle with a solid 5 pounder on a FishLab Blade

Tim with another solid SMB on the Fishab Bio Spinnerbait.

We covered miles of shoreline to look for key areas and Tim did get things started with solid fish each day of prefish. We did not have numbers, but when we hit the right places you could hook into a nice fish. I tried a ton of other topwater baits, crankbaits, jigs and finally tied on a spinnerbait and caught a toad SMB pushing 5+. Our game plan for both days was to try and fish as much water as possible to get a limit and then keep looking for new water. That never happened, LOL. The bite was hard for us and even cover miles of water, bites did not come as fast as we wanted and the size was not there as we seen during prefish. It happens and this is why I love and hate fishing all in one breath.

Siemantel With His Biggest SMB On A FishLab Bio Spinnerbait To Date

The Struggle Begins

Are game plan after a hard prefish was to make sure we get 5 keepers in the boat. Some of you may think that would be easy, but this is Havasu and all lake can get tough when the tournament starts. We only found 4 areas we thought we could do well and both days we fished them hard and lucky caught 5 each day. These were not big fish and smaller than anything we caught during prefish, but we will take them. Day 1 we sat in I think 36 place out of 75 teams and with another small limit on day 2 we jumped to 21st spot. To think only 2 pounds would have cut us a check.

MotorGuide Doing It’s Thing As We Wait For Our Number To Be Called

Good To Have AOY Title

Well I think Tim and I would have still made it to the BassCat Shootout over at Lake Mohave but it’s nice to have the ace up your sleeve with the AOY. Being the AOY of our regain, we get an automatic berth into that fishoff as long as we fish the first two day of the TOC.

So now to Lake Mohave and a place that I have never fished before. I know, Say What? never fished, yep. Remember I was a fireman for over 34 years and though I got a lot of time off, I had to pick and choose places that kept me from fishing a lot of different waters. Basically it’s part of the job.

As Tim and I woke up early to leave Havasu for the 1.5 hr ride to Mohave we tried to figure out a good game plan to break down a like we have never seen with a TON of places to fish. Basically we went as far up the lake as we could to factor in the possibility to NOT have to stop for fuel. We dropped the MotorGuide and placed it on 7 and started fishing back towards the launch. Man time flies when you do not know a lake. Saw some cool stuff but right about 15 minutes before we had to leave, I saw the right stuff. A little limit of about 10 pounds in the boat and them the big girls started to show themselves. Even the big stripers started to play but time just ran out. As the BassCat Shootout is a winner take all and knowing we did not have anything to play, we dropped our fish, cleaned the boat and headed home.

Big Thank You to the ABA staff and crew for a well run event and the logistics to fish two different lake was well done, and a BIG CONGRATS to the winners of both events for a job well done.