Sallis Wins Amateur Division Title

Story by John Neporadny - Photo by CE Hanes L.L.C.

Osage Beach, MO: Despite having two fish break his line and another pull off, Jerry Weisinger rebounded from adversity to win the Pro Division title of the Fall Pro-Am Spectacular today at the Lake of the Ozarks. The Wyandotte, OK, angler went wire-to-wire to win his second Pro Division title and collect $7,250.

"I was hitting a lot of rocky points and stuff," he said. "When the wind would blow I would run into the backs of the pockets with shad in them and catch some. Sometimes the fish would be suspended up by the dock and when I would flip up there they would eat it, but sometimes I would hav to crank around the big rocks and once it would bounce off the right rock they would eat it." 

The first day he caught some of his biggest fish on the spinnerbait in brush piles near the docks, but Weisinger noticed that the fish must have moved away from the brush and closer to the docks. Both days Weisinger started fishing near the Grand Glaize bridge and eventually worked his way up the Osage to about the 80-mile mark. 

"I just hit all kinds of little pockets on the points and in the back ends. The farther I got up the river then I went into more of the creek-type pockets with running water. Those are the ones that had the shad in the back of them. The higher the sun got and the shad got to flickering in the pockets, the better the fish bit."