Texas pro Todd Castledine of Nacogdoches weighed a 27-pound sack on Saturday to vault from 9th place to the victory podium at the Sam Rayburn Southwestern FLW Series. His 3-day total of 66-11 garnered him a check for $50,500.
“I spent the first 2 days of the event sight-fishing, and all of the fish that I weighed, I was looking at,” said Castledine, who pushed his career earnings to more than $230,000 in FLW competition. “Today I was out of sight-fish and just went fishing. I had a good day and had 16 or 17 pounds early, and I caught around 11 keepers.
“I was running all over the lake, and I stopped on this deep spot with 20 minutes to go in the day and made one cast,” he continued. “It didn’t feel good, so I reeled up and told my co-angler that we were moving. I decided to graph the area before I left, and it looked like there was a big fish down there. I left anyways, and after running a bit down the lake, an intuition told me to turn around and go back. So, I made a U-turn and went back to that spot – it was mid-lake, about 18 feet and around stumps. On my first cast there I hooked into a 9-pounder.”
Castledine said that he caught the big fish on a 10-inch Strike King Rage Tail Anaconda.
“Twelve of the fish that I weighed in, including another 9-pounder that won me the Big Bass Award on day 2, came sight-fishing with a Strike King Rage Bug. I also was catching fish on a swimjig and a Strike King 2.5 square-bill, but the big one today came on the Anaconda.
“In these big multi-day events, you can’t win in one day – you have to survive. I was hanging around – 10th place after day 1, and 9th place after day 2 – and just trying to keep myself in position to possibly win. I believe the intuition to turn around today was from the Good Lord above. I’m so happy that I listened to Him.”
More details of his victory will be published this week.
Here are the final totals for the Top 10:
1. Todd Castledine: 66-11
2. Jason Bonds: 63-00
3. Ray Hanselman: 60-10
4. Casey Sobczak: 58-15
5. Kris Wilson: 56-13
6. Ken Smith: 56-01
7. Jeff Reynolds: 52-12
8. Andrew Upshaw: 52-03
9. Billy Billeaud: 51-12
10. Tommy Martin: 50-15
