Patrick Touey of Santa Maria, California, caught a five-bass limit weighing 18 pounds, 8 ounces Saturday to win the Western Toyota Series event at Lake Havasu in Arizona. Touey’s three-day total of 15 bass weighing 66-07 earned him the win by a wide 18 1/2-pound margin over second-place pro Kyle Grover of Rancho Santa Margarita, California, and garnered Touey the top payout of $29,218.
“This feels amazing. I’ve been fishing for quite a long time and I’ve been close, but I’ve never been in the situation to finish the job,” said Touey. “Today was just a special day. I was looking for three bites. I got my third bite and was like ‘let’s get another one.’ Got my fourth … then we ended up with five, so it was a blast. Just crazy man … crazy.”
The victory is redemption for a previous trip to Havasu, where a costly misstep taught him a valuable lesson – a lesson that paid dividends this week.
“What’s really funny is, two years ago in an MLF Toyota Series event I made a bad decision on Day 1 and kind of tanked. So, on Day 2, I just threw everything out the window and went for broke. I was throwing the same bait, same technique, same areas almost. I ended up weighing almost 20 pounds. So, when I got here this week in practice that’s kind of what my game plan was,” he said.
Touey approached his areas with a mid-sized swimbait geared for the forage.
“They like gizzard shad here. People forget that with it being such a clear lake,” said Touey. “Everybody wants to finesse. These big fish here, they eat gizzard shads all year long. If you can commit to big bait-style fishing, it obviously can pay off sometimes.”
In addition to utilizing the right swimbait, proper adjustments to the constantly changing weather and conditions throughout the event were essential to staying on the bite. He utilized areas with different characteristics to keep on the changing fish.
“I had two sections of the lake, and they were both completely opposite from each other. On Day 1 I caught them all on the steeper stuff. Steep, red rock wall pockets. Just little pockets, and there would be shade lines in those. The fish seemed to be schooled up. Once that shade was just on one side of the cove, it seemed like every fish in the cove was sitting on that side of the cove.
“Day 2, I went filtering through there and just wasn’t seeing what I wanted to see. Not many followers, not many biters. So, I kind of made a little adjustment to fish some more 45-degree banks, areas with a lot of overhang and wood, with cages down in the middle to stage on.”
After two days of lights-out fishing, Touey was confident he knew what he needed to do shut the door on the final day and take claim the victory.
“I didn’t have any decisions to make. I was like ‘I’m throwing this all day, if I get five bites, they’re going to be big,’” said Touey. “I went to my 45-degree bank area and just ground it out for five bites… and it happened.”
Here are the final totals for the Top 10:
1. Patrick Touey: 66-07
2. Kyle Grover: 48-15
3. Patrick Whitaker: 48-10
4. Mark Williams: 47-11
5. Mike Williams: 47-00
6. Tim Rath: 46-11
7. Justin Kerr: 45-07
8. Jason Akins: 45-04
9. Nate Caldwell: 44-15
10. David Valdivia: 44-14
