It wasn’t exactly what you call “jumping in the boat” good, but the 40 pros that fished Lake D’Arbonne in the B&W Trailer Hitches Stage One Major League Fishing event Saturday did pretty good. In fact, there were some social media comments the week or so before the event predicting with this weather, it might be the first MLF tournament where nobody caught one. Or one asking “why are they coming to Lake D’Arbonne anyway?”
Well, here’s why. The bass and the pro anglers in the first half of the MLF field answered that question Saturday. Only three anglers didn’t catch a scoreable bass, which is one that weighs over 1.50 pounds. And the second half of the field fishing Sunday will probably put another ding on the upper lips of some good Farmerville largemouths.
Stephen Browning of Hot Springs, AR grabbed the first day’s best catch weighing 21 pounds, two ounces. Mark Daniels of Tuskegee, AL, led most of the day and finished second with 17-1 and Brian Thrift of Shelby North Carolina was third with 17-1.
Overall, there were 101 scorable bass weighing 269 pounds, 6 ounces caught by 37 pros on Saturday.
As somebody once said about guys like this. Give them a big glass of water and they’ll catch a bass. And as for D’Arbonne. Considering the conditions (post-front 22 degrees at daylight, dropping water temps and a bright bluebird-day sun) it showed out.
Cody Meyer of Star, Idaho landed the biggest bass at seven pounds, eight ounces.
The first four days of the event are at D’Arbonne, then a knockout round at Caney for the top 30 finishers, leaving only 10 remaining to fish at the the championship at Bussey Brake. The winner takes home a check for $100,000. With that in mind, Browning had the quote of the day: “To be honest, I don’t want to go to Caney. I want to go to Bussey Brake!”
If you want to know more about the format and the rest of the week, ending with the $800,000 tournament finals at Bussey Brake Thursday, check previous posts on this website.
And if you want to keep up the action live anytime during the tournament, you can see what’s going on all day long on the Major League Fishing website during fishing hours. It’s a remarkable format with more wall-to-wall coverage than you can possibly absorb. Enjoy.
** Photos courtesy of Major League Fishing
lake darbonne life 
Me too. I just want to clarify one point. The anglers didn’t just choose these lakes. A lot of work went on behind the scenes forming relationships, planning and getting support to get this event — and any like it — here. Every one of these types of things has a lot of suitors and it takes an aggressive approach to doing what I said earlier. They don’t happen by accident. About the only thing that just happens with no effort is grass growing through the cracks in your driveway….
Posted by darbone1 | February 7, 2022, 12:362:41 pmHow great is it that these Anglers chose to fish our lakes. It’s a true Angler that gets up & fights the cold out there! Glad to have all of them & pray they have a safe productive week!!
Posted by Dottie McCain | February 7, 2022, 12:3611:07 am