Jean “J.J.” Ducharme is having a good couple of weeks on Lake Amistad.
The angler from Brackettville won the EverStart Series Texas Division tournament on Lake Amistad several weeks ago, and followed that victory with the Bass Champs South Region win Feb. 11 on the same lake, this time with partner Gary Carr of San Angelo.
“We’ve been on some good fish for about a month now,” Carr said in Bass Champs news release. “This is a tough group to fish against. There are a lot of top-notch anglers. We just cranked ‘em all day. (The fish) had moved up a bit since practice. We had been catching them in about 25 feet (of water), but we found them today in 15 to 16 feet.”
Hitting multiple areas throughout the day, the pair boated a few fish early, then several more mid-day, and finally they were able to cull the rest of the afternoon.
“We really had a great day and didn’t lose any,” Carr added.
Their five fish totaled 30.54 pounds, winning the tournament by almost 3 pounds.
The pair bested 227 other teams to win $20,000.
Second place went to a team from Arizona — Steve Czerniski and Jeff Guerrett — who boated five fish weighing 27.61 pounds.
Third place went to David Ridley and well-known professional angler Alton Jones. The team fished a combination of shallow flats near deep water, ditches and a few grass flats.
“We had one of the toughest practice days I can remember,” Jones said. “We were just hoping to scratch a check. We started out using a square-billed X-Caliber crank bait and caught a lot of fish early.
“Later in the day, we switched to hard- and soft-bodied swim baits, and also an Alabama rig.”
Big bass honors for the event went to Tim and Judy Reneau with a 10.46-pound toad.
The next South Region tournament will be held on Falcon Reservoir March 10. In the meantime, Bass Champs staff and crew are headed to Lake Sam Rayburn for the East Region #2 Feb. 18.
