Former FLW Tour pro Tim Klinger of Boulder City, Nev. caught a 15-04 stringer on Saturday to win the Lake Mead Western FLW Series. His three-day total of 34-12 gave him a 4-12 margin over runner-up Lane Olson of Oregon and earned him the $32,778 top prize.
“The key for me this week was my confidence in my flipping,” said Klinger, who pushed his career earnings over the $600,000 mark in FLW competition. “I was born and raised on this lake and I’m very comfortable fishing here.”
Klinger said he spent the first two days of the event flipping bushes in the Overton Arm. He said that he caught four fish on the first day throwing a Beast Coast Tungsten Flipping jig with a Super Pork Bubba Frog trailer. On the second day, he switched to a Texas-rigged 4-inch green-pumpkin-colored craw and added another four keepers. On day 3, the wind kept him closer to the take-off, so he spent the day in Boulder Basin, throwing a white 3/4-ounce War Eagle spinnerbait and caught 11 keepers, and the second-largest limit of the tournament.
“I caught a couple of smallmouth throughout the week, but all 13 of my keepers that made it to the scale were largemouth,” Klinger said. “All week long I was throwing my baits on a 7-foot, 6-inch Taipan Rods flipping stick with 20-pound fluorocarbon or 50-pound-test braided line.”
Klinger spent all three days of competition fishing shallow, and said that every fish he caught came from 2 to 9 feet of water.
Here are the final totals for the top 10:
1. Tim Klinger: 34-12
2. Lane Olson: 30-00
3. Benjamin Byrd: 29-07
4. Roy Hawk: 29-01
5. David Valdivia: 28-13
6. Brett Leber: 28-09
7. Rusty Salewske: 26-11
8. Sean Coffey: 25-01
9. Wade Curtiss: 20-12
10. Tyler Rempe: 19-10
