One thing is for certain, somebody is always going to win. Today at the Southwest Divisional 
Championship at Clear Lake, CA someone did just that. Seth Rowe of Chowchilla, CA was steady at the helm for three straight days. Weighing in 22.04 on Wednesday, he then followed it up with 25.15 on Thursday and finally today sacked another 23.02 to seal the win with 71.05 pounds.
That gave him the cumulative three day total victory, but more importantly, it guaranteed him a spot in the upcoming 2016 TBF Federation National Championship. Making a strong push to the finish line was Inder Lopez,of Spriong Valley, CA who came up just 14 ounces short of the win. Inder started fairly strong with 21.03 but managed to catch just 4 keeper fish on day two for 16.10. But he finished strong with the largest limit of the event with 32.10 pounds to finish in second place. His consolation prize was that he was the second highest finisher in his state, so he still qualified to fish in the Federation National Championship.
When asked how they were catching their fish, just about every contestant said pretty much the same thing. They were sight fishing or bed fishing. Numerous anglers talked of how they spend 20 minutes or more trying to catch each bedding fish. As the tournament progressed, the time it took to catch each fish got longer as more and more anglers were fishing for the same bedding fish. White flukes, white jigs, tubes brush hogs and wacky worms were just a few of the preferred baits used by the winning anglers. Most anglers said their fish were in two feet of water or less. There were a couple of anglers who managed to catch fish on a buzzbait, a Pop-R, a frog or a reaction bait, but by far the event was dominated by sight fishing. Today had several 20 pound plus bags weighed in, but not the size we had see in the previous two days. However the big fish were biting today. There were a couple of seven
pounders and three over 8 weighed in today. The biggest turned out to be a 8.11 lunker by Trevor Lincoln of Santee, CA. His big bass earned him an extra $290 today.
The final piece of the puzzle, was who were the top two anglers from each state that would be moving on to the Federation National Championship next spring. Here is how they finished:
CALIFORNIA
Seth Rowe 71-05
Inder Lopez 70-07
ARIZONA
Jon Griffith 56.10
Jesse Parks 55.05
UTAH
Cory Jones 52.04
Joe Johnson 51.05
COLORADO
Sam Heckman 55.10
Brandon White 48.11
NEVADA
Shane Moline 63.06
Victor Cole 48.06
This was the first of seven divisional qualifiers for the TBF this year. The next one is this coming week in the North West Division at Noxon Reservoir in Trout Creek, Montana.
