High heat hampers fishing conditions at annual Lure Safe Bass Tournament

BREWSTER – Sportfishermen were caught between the pincers of high heat and low water at the Okanogan Valley Bass Club’s (OVBC) second annual Lure Safe Open Bass Tournament June 26 but made the best of the unfavorable conditions with their angling skills to catch winning spiny rays.
Tournament sponsor Mike Mauk, owner of Mauk Fishing Stuff/Lure Safe said the tournament goal was to attract enough entries to break the previous year’s 25-boat record. However, the triple-digit heat put a damper on a larger turnout leaving the field to the 15 boats that did show up.
The boats blasted off from the Brewster boat launch at 5:30 a.m. and had water from Wells Dam to Chief Joseph Dam to find trophy bass. According to tournament officials some of the best results came around the confluence of the Okanogan and Columbia rivers. Competitors weighed their catches at 3 p.m.
“The catch was pretty consistent with what we had last year,” said club president Craig Randall. “We had a lot of new guys who had not fished that area before so when you put new guys on a body of water the catch weight tends to go down a bit. The average weight of the fish was 2.55 pounds.”
See this story on qcherald.com for more tourney results.
The next event for the OVBC is a members only night tournament at Spectacle Lake on July 24.
For more information catch the OVBC website at okanoganvalleybassclub.com