AUSTIN, Texas – Lake Travis was a new beginning for the FLW Tour in 2007. For the last eight years, FLW Outdoors has opened its Tour season in January at Lake Okeechobee in Florida but this year, they headed deep into the heart of Texas to Lake Travis near Austin.

In many ways, Lake Travis was a mystery to a majority of the FLW Tour field. The lake has very little documented bass tournament history and many pros who live in Texas had never fished there simply because Texas has so many more productive lakes for bass.

Unlike fabled Texas grass lakes like Rayburn or Fork, Travis is a highland impoundment with steep rocky banks and water visibility of about 5 feet.

Adding even more to the Lake Travis puzzle was the fact that the lake was some 35 feet below normal pool, making this rather compact 19,000-acre lake even smaller. Once a full field of 200 pros began eagerly thrashing its waters to see what Travis was made of, fishing pressure quickly became an issue.

Throw in a February cold front, bringing the coldest air of the year to Austin, and the FLW Tour opener turned into quite a challenging event. Plenty of fish were caught, with limits in the 7- to 8-pound range being common, but finding quality bass to get over the 10-pound hump was difficult.

The 2006 FLW Tour Rookie of the year, Gabe Bolivar, looked like he was going to be Team Lucky Craft’s shining star at Travis when he sacked 11-04 on day one to start the event in 8th place.

But three fish weighing 4-04 on day two dropped him to 40th place overall.

“I had never been to Travis before, but upon seeing the lake, I felt pretty comfortable with it because it looked so similar to western lakes like Mead or Havasu,” Bolivar explained. “In practice, I found a place that fit the exact kind of thing I look for out west this time of year: a vertical face that dropped from 8 to 15 feet, located in the middle of a good creek and it was offshore so not many people found it – a perfect staging spot.”

The small vertical drop treated him right on the first day, but on day two it had played out.

“I think I just wore the place out on day one,” Bolivar reflected. “Given the kind of place it was, I just figured it would replenish with more staging fish during day two, but it didn’t. And my mistake was that I got too locked in on that one spot and I died there.”

Bolivar sported Lucky Craft’s 7-foot medium- and heavy-action spinning rods for the event. His key baits were a drop-shot rigged with a Canyon Plastics Skin and Bones nose-hooked on a 2/0 Owner hook and a 1/8-ounce Reaction Innovations jighead team with a Zoom finesse worm. Both rigs were fished on 6-pound test Maxima fluorocarbon.

Reigning FLW Tour Champion Brent Ehrler finished 56th with a two-day total of 14-09.

Ehrler noted that he was a little blind-sided by the amount of fishing pressure Travis underwent during the event.

“Some of that was my fault,” Ehrler said. “I didn’t thoroughly research Travis like I normally do with new lakes. Its small size combined with the water being so low really piled anglers on top of each other and that caught me off guard.”

Ehrler started practice with a Lucky Craft GDS DR crankbait.

G.D.S. SSR Length: 2" Weight: 3/8oz	G.D.S. DR Length: 2" Weight: 3/8oz

“Travis reminded me a lot of Beaver Lake in Arkansas,” he described. “But once I saw the pressure of 200 boats on the lake for 8 days of practice mounting up, I knew it was going to be a shaky-head, drop-shot type of tournament.”

Once Ehrler factored in the pressure, he began looking for “nonchalant water” or “bad-looking water.”

“Anything that looked half-way decent had a boat – or three – on it,” he laughed. “So I started metering (with a depth finder) in bays and coves that didn’t look very appealing.”

Ehrler eventually settled on fishing hidden offshore vertical breaks that dropped from about 8 to 15 feet of water with a shaky-head.

“One set-up was a Tru-Tungsten 1/8-ounce Shakedown jig head with a Net Bait T-Mac worm (the same one he used to win the FLW Tour Championship) tied to 7-pound test Sunline fluorocarbon,” he said. “The other was the same head with a 5-inch Yamamoto grub tied to 8-pound Sunline fluorocarbon. And I fished both of them on Lucky Craft’s 7-foot heavy-action spinning rod with a fast taper and Daiwa Sol spinning reels.”

He struggled just to catch five keepers on day one weighing 6-14. His bite improved on day two, garnering 8 keepers with the best five weighing 7-11.

The 2006 FLW Tour Angler of the Year, Anthony Gagliardi, finished the Travis event in 82nd place with a two-day total of 12-09.

Gagliardi spent his practice experimenting with a lot different techniques including dragging deep jigs, jerkbaits, crankbaits and lipless crankbaits.

“I normally pride myself on my versatility,” Gagliardi said. “But I think it hurt me at Travis because I never got committed to anything. I’d try something for a couple hours, get a few bites on it, then try to refine it and nothing would pan out. I never really got comfortable with any one technique.

“Every time I caught a better-than-average fish in practice, I could not duplicate the pattern to make it work elsewhere.”

By tournament time, Gagliardi resolved himself to a shaky-head (1/8-ounce Spot Remover teamed with a Zoom trick worm) on a deep hump that topped out in about 25 feet of water. One side of the hump featured a fast drop from 25 to 40 feet of water, which is where he caught a limit to get things started on day one.

“Then I moved to the back of a creek to try and locate bigger fish with crankbaits and jerkbaits,” he continued. “I culled most of the little fish I caught off the hump with fish I caught back in the creek, but I never got a kicker.”

The next day, Gagliardi spent most of his time in the creek, trying to get a 3-plus kicker, but ended up with just four keepers.

“Given my poor practice and that I really never got on anything I felt comfortable with, I caught just about what I thought I would in the tournament and ended up in the middle of the pack,” Gagliardi concluded.

Fort Loudon/Telico Lakes in Knoxville, Tenn. will host the next FLW Tournament March 29 – April 1.