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Results
TEAM TOURNAMENT
Date: May 2, 2015
Region: 2015 North Region
Tournament: Cedar Creek
Tournament Trail: 2015 Bass Champs Tournament Trail
StatsResultsBig BassStoryPhotosPoints
Sean Goodson and Bill Sweeten top 248 teams, take home over $20,000 on Cedar Creek
By: Conor Harrison

The competition was fierce Saturday on Cedar Creek Reservoir, but Sean Goodson and Bill Sweeten outfished 247 other teams at the third Bass Champs North Region tournament to win more than $20,000.

The pair, who calls the area around Lake Fork their home, caught two big fish late in the day to bring 24.36 pounds to the scales. It was a dominant win for the team, beating the second place team of Colan and Eddie Gonzales by more than 6 pounds to claim their part of the $72,330 payback from Bass Champs.

“We really enjoyed it,” Goodson said. “It was a lot of fun today.”
The pair drove to Cedar Creek on Friday night to attempt to draw an early start time. But it didn’t go exactly as planned.

“We drew 181,” Goodson said. “That was not worth the trip.”

But it did force the anglers to adjust their gameplan to accommodate the late start. Still, they thought they might be in for a long day when they got to their first spot.

“There were a bunch of boats already in our area,” Goodson said. “After the sixth boat left, we finally got into the spot we wanted. We were throwing soft plastic jerkbaits in shallow grass. We caught them on spinner baits in practice and nothing on a plastics, but today was a total opposite — we caught them on weightless jerkbaits and none on a spinner bait.”

At their first spot, the pair boated a 5 ½, 2 ½, another 5 ½ and a 4-pounder in an hour.

Then they tried flipping bushes with a creature bait and culled a 3-pounder with that technique.

“Then we went back to jerkbaits,” Goodson said. “We culled another fish with about 10 minutes left in the day, then on literally the last cast of the day, we caught a 6-pounder and culled a 3. We thought for sure we had it after that last 6-pounder. There was some high-fiving going on in the boat.”

The trick, according to the pair, was really slowing down with the jerkbaits.

“We were covering water, but it was main lake-type stuff,” Goodson said. “We weren’t way back in the back of coves. These were postspawn females in about 1 to 3 feet of water. There was lots of stuff flooded. People around us were fishing fast, and the key for us was to slow way down.”

It was the first win for the team who have fished Bass Champs for three years.
“We don’t have any sponsors — we just fish on our own, but we have a really good time doing it,” Goodson added.

The second place, father son team of Colan and Eddie Gonzales brought 18.27 pounds to the scales to cash a check for $6,500, which included the big bass of the tournament, an 8.19-pound kicker.

“We drew number 136, so with the late start, we threw spinner baits paralleling banks,” Colan Gonzales said. “We targeted the dead shad along shorelines from the shad spawn. Our fish came after 1:30 (in the afternoon).”
Their big bass came at 2:40 p.m.

“We were sitting on a drop off when the big bass hit,” the angler from Jewett said. “Another big fish came soon after that one on the same drop off.”
The pair fishes Cedar Creek at least once a week, so they were familiar with where the big bass might be located. And fishing with your dad is always a bonus.
“I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” Colan said.

Unlike the second place team, the third place finishers had almost zero experience on Cedar Creek.

“This was my first time to fish on Cedar Creek,” said Tatum angler William Miller. “I’ve catfished the lake a bunch, but we were laughing about that coming in.”
Miller, along with his partner, Chandler angler James Williams, caught five fish for 17.11 pounds, good enough for a $4,200 check.

“We had an early draw, 38, and we had our first two keepers in the boat early,” Miller said. ‘We fished shallow all day flipping and throwing a frog. When it got cloudy later, the big fish (6.59 pounds) hit on the frog.”
This was only the third Bass Champs tournament ever for the team, who said they would like to thank Rudd Plumbing.

“This was our highest finish ever, and we plan on fishing Bass Champs again,” Miller added.
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