Siemantel/Tuttle Pulls Off A Nail Biter AOY Win For American Bass SoCal
Siemantel and Tuttle Take Top Honors With A Nail Biter Finish For 2024 SoCal AOY Race
The First Event
What an incredible, but tough year for our team as we fought it out amongst some of SoCal top teams for American Bass. One bad event can make the difference between AOY or fighting it out at the TOC to fish the last day for the BassCat boat.
Bill and Tim Jan 20th 2024
Show Time
Here we are getting ready for the 1st event for the 2024 season, and Pyramid Lake is the starting point and baseline to figure out what needs to be done. The goal for our boat is to fish hard and try to always stay in the top 5 at the end of each event. As you can see below, Tim and I fought hard to do just that and just like in most tournaments, you need a big fish for either a Win, or great placement. We will take the 4th place finish and be happy with that.
ABA Top Finishers
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Round Two
As we get ready for our Feb 17th event crazy heather patterns had both Tim and I scrambling and though we had a solid limit we again missed the big fish honors and with a small 2 pounder in the box at the end of the day, we will settle for a 2nd place finish.
Bill and Tim Feb 17th
ABA Top 10 In Feb.
The One Fish That Made The Difference
Third time’s the charm for event number 3 on March 9th, Tim comes in clutch with the last minute big fish that culled out a 1 pound SMB with a 3.78 LMB and finally got our first 1st place finish for the season. This is going to be a critical move as we finish out the last two event later in the year.
There’s Magic In That Bait
FishLab 2.5” Flutter Nymph Was Key This Entire Season.
ABA Top 10 For March
Rules Of The Game
Now here’s where it all comes into play with qualifying for the ABA TOC and capturing the AOY race. Most circuits fish 6 tournaments during the year as this will give some anglers a chance to throw a bad event placement out and making the best 5 tournaments your overall points and a chance to win the AOY race.
When Murphy Comes Knocking
This year has been a crazy one for work and family and Tim and I had to miss out on the 4h even of the year at Lake Piru. With me going to work the BassMaster Classic and Tim with family obligations we blanked for Piru and that took us out of the AOY race for now.
Last Minute Twist
So here is the crazy thing, ABA did a twist on the final event making it a two day tournament on two different lakes, Castaic and Pyramid. In doing so, all the other teams that had fished all four events up to now will be able to either drop one of their bad finishes.
When it comes to Tim and I, whatever we get for the final results, we have to add them both for our 5 tournament combined tally. We have a 1st, 2nd, and a 4th. If we finish in 10th place, then we would have to add two 10th place finishes for our best 5 events.
Solo Is Tough
Here is where all the drama comes! Not only do we have the pressure of fishing back to back days on two different lakes, my partner Tim had a bad hand dealt to him with everything that could go wrong with family, friends, and work. So I had to go into these event solo to represent both of us and the amount of stress is pretty overwhelming.
Not A Good Time To Have A Bad Day
Saying it was a nail biter is a big understatement. Day one of our two day event pretty much sucked! Anything that could go wrong did with missed fish, timing, wrong moves and never getting one good size keeper. As I weighed in and the scale topped out at 10.89 pounds I was just happy to have come in with a limit. The bad news is we were at the bottom of the field. 16th place and almost 5 pounds behind the leaders and a mountain to climb to get back up to a top five finish, remember that’s our goal is to just always try to do our best for a top five finish.
Day 1 Lake Pyramid Sitting In 16th Place
Embrace the Suck Of Day One And Make The Right Moves
Day two at Castaic Lake started off crazy with rain overnight to a post frontal day with winds to hit 30 mph+ from the NNW. We almost did not get to fish of possible lake closing down for winds and that alone would have killed our dreams of a shot at the AOY race. We need a crazy crazy comeback where we need to win this event to make anything happen. With A few good moves and a little luck, we came in with just over 14 pounds and though we did not win, the 2nd place finish on day two bumped us up from 16th place to 4th overall. Now our 5 top finishes of a 1st, 2nd, and three 4th place finishes with a total of 540 overall points gave us the AOY race by 1 point!!!!!! Say What?
FishLab BBZ 6” and 4.5” Got Our Bigger Fish!