TODD PIERCE (left) and STEVEN PHILLIPS (center) needed help with their 31.52-pound winning stringer at Saturday’s Fishers of Men tournament on Lake Palestine. (Courtesy photo)

You might say that Todd Pierce and Steven Phillips are honed in on Lake Palestine this winter.

The fishing duo has competed in three tournaments on the lake since January, finishing first in two and a close second in the other. Their latest win came in the brutal cold Saturday when they weighed 31.52 pounds to win the Fishers of Men tournament by more than 15 pounds.

With air temperatures hovering in the 30s all day and water temps having dipped back into the lower- to mid-40s Pierce and Phillips surprisingly didn’t have trouble finding fish, and big fish. Their two best for the day were a 9.6 and an 8.7, which together would have been enough for the win minus their other three. Billy Ferguson and Sonny Booth were second with three fish weighing 16.11. Thirteen teams in the field of 45 zeroed.

“We have been following the same pack of fish for the last month,” Pierce said of the team’s success. “We have just been reading the lake. Four weeks ago we got on a school of fish. We had a warm-up and that pushed them into a staging area, but then it turned cold and they pulled off of that and went into deeper water.”

Pierce, who pre-fished the lake a week before the tournament, said the bass had been moving in and out of deeper water, but with last week’s cold weather he knew they would be deep again last weekend.

Pierce and Phillips started catching fish suspended 8- to 10-feet deep, but later switched to catching them off the bottom.

“We used balls of shad as an indicator. When you would find balls of shad on the edge of a drop-off there would be a fish nearby,” Pierce said.

Even with the cold that most would expect to give the bass a case of lockjaw, they found the fish biting.

“We started with two short fish pretty quick. Then Steven got a 6 not long after that. We checked another area and there was not any baitfish, so we went back and I caught a 4. We checked some other areas, and then went to another spot where we saw some balls of shad and I caught an 8. We went back to our primary area and I caught a 7, but it went in and out of the net. I won’t go into that,” Pierce said with a laugh.

They finished the day with Phillips boating the 9.6 that wasn’t the tournament’s big fish. That honor went to a 10.02 caught by Coy Spencer.

It was announced from the podium at the end of the tournament that their fish had come off a Carolina rig, something Pierce said was done by the tournament announcer, but that he wasn’t quick to correct. The truth was all their fish were caught on deep-running crank baits and jigs.

Had they boated the 7-pounder and brought it to the weigh-in instead of a 2-pound kicker fish, Pierce and Phillips may have set an all-time stringer weight for a Fishers of Men tournament, which are held in 21 states. As it was, they caught more than half of their total weight that they had in all of the FOM tournaments in East Texas last year.

The two are known for their skill of fishing the south end of Palestine. With the water temperature dropping almost 10 degrees in a week in the deeper water, Pierce said he knew going in that they wouldn’t have as good of chance finding the big fish up north.

“They are setting up in the staging areas. My whole deal going in was that the full moon was coming up this week and I knew with the north end getting colder and the water temperature dropping more than it would in the south end that it wouldn’t be right,” he explained.

Pierce said other than some community holes that would draw a crowd, he really did not have enough spots fitting the criteria for Saturday’s conditions to go north. He said he and Phillips also had that gut feeling the south was the place to be.

“Whatever we are feeling is what we are going to do. I have been fishing that lake a long time and I know when I am going to get beat by the north end, and when the south end is better,” Pierce said.

Surprisingly, Pierce said the weather wasn’t really that noticeable, especially compared to the years he had sat on Palestine and other lakes in his younger days as a duck hunter.

While the title and points earned were nice, the $3,000-plus in winnings was also a nice present for Pierce, who celebrated his birthday last Friday, and Phillips, who celebrated his on Saturday.

And after their early season success, the two don’t mind making a move before their luck runs out. Their next tournament comes on the friendly confines of Lake Tyler.

 

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