Okie wins FLW event

From FLW and staff reports
Another Oklahoma pro has won a major bass tournament.
This time it was Jason Christie of Park Hill, who caught a five-bass limit weighing 14 pounds, 13 ounces Sunday to win his first title on the FLW Tour and $125,000.
Christie captured the Walmart FLW Tour on Lake Hartwell, S.C., with a four-day catch of 20 bass weighing 70-11.
“This goes to the people who support me,” an emotional Christie said Sunday. “They’re sitting there watching me right now – my parents, kids, wife and uncles.”
The final day of competition started slowly for Christie. He made a run down the same area in Beaver Creek he had fished the previous days of competition and didn’t have a bite at almost 10 a.m.
Christie stuck with his game plan, however, and relocated to another spot in the same creek.
“I had one stretch that I could catch them in, but I went through the entire stretch and never got a bite,” Christie said. “I moved across to a little half-moon – a little notch in the bank that has a deep cut that runs into it. That’s where I caught my fish.”
Christie said he caught most of his keeper fish in Beaver Creek with four coming during the second day from Shoal Creek.
Christie said he caught one fish by flipping a YUM soft plastic bait the second day of competition, and said 75 percent of the rest came on a BOOYAH spinnerbait and the others on a YUM F2 Mighty Bug.
“The spinnerbait has taken a lot of trial and error with me,” Christie said. “The BOOYAH ½-ounce spinnerbait has a single willow blade on it and the wire is light, so when you throw it, it has the same vibration as a (BOOYAH) Boogie Bait. It has a thumping vibration. And the fish – pre-spawn, spawn and post-spawn fish – they like that vibration.”
Christie opened the tournament on Thursday with five bass weighing 22-4. On Friday he added another five bass weighing 20-4. He then caught five bass weighing 13-6 Saturday to make the crucial top-10 cut in first place.
“People don’t realize how hard it is to win a tournament after four days,” Christie said. “And it’s not done very often out of one area. After the second day I had come in with two big bags and I still had to catch them two more days to win. I know if I had gone scrambling good things wouldn’t have happened.”
Christie’s final day catch gave him the win by a 10-pound margin over National Guard pro Brent Ehrler of Redlands, Calif., who caught a total of 20 bass weighing 60-11 and earned $35,000.
Edwin Evers of Talala earned the most recent win on the B.A.S.S. Elite Series Tour, giving Oklahoma pros the last two victories on the two major professional bass tournament trails.

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