Photo: GDixon LONGVIEW, Texas – Catching more than twice as much bass as the second-place team, Takahiro Omori, Dean Rojas and Michael Neal of team Knighten Industries made it clear they’re ready for the Bass Pro Shops Team Series Championship. The trio won the Wild Card match of the Builders FirstSource Qualifier Presented by Berkley with 27 bass weighing 46 pounds even to earn the final spot at the Championship.
EUFAULA, Okla. – After a week of erratic weather and fluctuating water levels and clarity, conditions are finally stabilizing on Oklahoma’s Lake Eufaula at MillerTech Stage Four Presented by REDCON1. Judging by the numbers on SCORETRACKER® on Thursday, both the bass and competitors appear to be settling in.
Arizona pro Dean Rojas figured out the rapidly changing puzzle the best in Group A and heads the list of 10 anglers from the group who qualified for Saturday’s Knockout Round. Rojas finished with 16 bass for 44 pounds, 11 ounces over two days of qualifying competition.
The 26-year veteran has shown consistency throughout a week of fishing defined by massive swings on SCORETRACKER® from day to day. Rojas found himself in third place after Day 1 with seven bass for 20-8 and added nine more for 24-3 Thursday to clear second-place finisher Nick LeBrun by more than 5 pounds, eventually spending a good portion of his day on Thursday looking for more areas on Oklahoma’s largest lake.
Although he’s never fished Oklahoma’s Lake Eufaula, Rojas is relying on his years of tournament experience to combat the changing conditions. In short, he’s seen this movie before and knows how it will end.
“It’s my first time (at Lake Eufaula), but I’ve seen this scenario play out so many times,” Rojas said of the quickly changing water levels. “Going into the event, I had a good practice before the rains came and flooded everything out. That bite was done on the last day of practice, and I couldn’t get a bite. I started the tournament where I had the most bites in practice and had to change my approach based on how the fish were positioned with the changing water levels.”
With water levels now stabilizing, Rojas is confident that he knows what to look for when he returns to action two days from now in the Knockout Round.
“When the water first comes up that fast like it did, the fish are in shock. You don’t know where they’re at because they are spread out everywhere,” he said. “I’ve been checking the water every night, and it’s starting to come down a little. You can see gaps between the leaves with water on them on the first day. Now things are beginning to settle, and I feel like I know what’s going on.”
Rojas has been catching fish “doing a little bit of everything” and simply fishing what the lake gives him.
“I’m catching some in a foot of water and some as deep as 6 feet,” he said. “Some are super shallow, and some are out deeper; you just have to fish everything in front of you. As much as I’ve done this, I recognize when I have to ‘do this here’ and ‘do that there’ based on the cover and structure in front of me.”
Rojas is running the same pattern in several areas around the lake, and it appears to work everywhere he goes. Once he felt safe inside the cut on Thursday, he expanded areas and continued to fish.
“I wanted to make sure I had enough (weight) to get inside the Top 10 and then was able to look for more likely areas,” Rojas said. “I would get a bite and then roll out and try to find more stuff. Then I’d catch another and leave. That told me what to do the rest of the tournament.”
Dean Rojas was the top angler in Group B with a two-day total of 28 bass weighing 76 pounds, 1 ounce. Photo by Phoenix Moore. Angler: Dean Rojas.
FEBRUARY 23, 2024 • MITCHELL FORDE • BASS PRO TOUR CLARENDON COUNTY, S.C. — Early on during Group B’s second day on the water at Suzuki Stage Two Presented by Fenwick, Dean Rojas struggled to recapture his Day 1 success. Rojas had stacked 16 bass weighing 48 pounds, 14 ounces on SCORETRACKER® during his first day on the Santee Cooper lakes, but he went more than two hours Friday morning without boating a scorable fish.
Once Rojas relocated a population of bass, though, the action heated up in a hurry. He got on the board with a 5-pounder, then caught another 11 fish, bringing his two-day total to 76-1. He finished atop the leaderboard for Group B, a mere 10 ounces ahead of Brent Ehrler.
Rojas’ day summed up the action across lakes Marion and Moultrie. A morning that started slow ended with two bass over 9 pounds and 20 over 6 hitting the scales. Despite many of the top anglers using the afternoon to scout new water, the field combined to catch 249 scorable bass for 824-14 – easily the biggest totals of any day so far.
Rojas will lead a strong Top 10 from Group B into Saturday’s Knockout Round. The top four finishers all eclipsed 74 pounds across two days, a mark no Group A anglers hit. And that doesn’t include Jacob Wheeler, the six-time BPT winner who practiced all day after stacking up 53-7 (still the best day of the event) on Wednesday. They’ll face off with the Top 10 anglers from Group A on Saturday.
Photo by Phoenix Moore Having put plenty of distance between himself and the cut line on Wednesday, Rojas, too, used his second day of competition to explore new water on the massive 170,000-acre playing field that is Santee Cooper. He never returned to the area where he caught his Day 1 bag, instead scouting a few other spots where he’d gotten bit during practice.
“The stuff I fished today was just secondary stuff that I had,” he said. “It’s not my main stuff. I caught ‘em really good the first day, so there was no sense in working on those fish anymore.”
Rojas is doing something a bit different than the majority of anglers, not spending as much time around the fishery’s many cypress trees. He didn’t want to detail his tactics but said he’s focusing on areas where bass are moving up to stage.
“There’s probably a few that are up there (spawning), and there’s some that are coming,” Rojas said. “It’s still the very first beginnings of it.”
While he found plenty of fish, Rojas didn’t catch the same quality on Friday, boating just one bass bigger than 3 pounds. As a result, he plans to return to his Day 1 area during what figures to be an explosive Knockout Round.
Still, he sees the day as a success, having eliminated some water and added more to his arsenal should he have to veer from Plan A.
“I have lots of options,” he said. “I feel very comfortable. The stuff that I fished today I can fish again tomorrow, and the stuff that I didn’t fish today, I can still go back again tomorrow.”
As for what it will take to make the Championship Round, Rojas speculated that the cut will fall around 45 pounds – although he admitted that could be way off. Santee Cooper has proven fickle this week, with lots of anglers putting together impressive bags but few doing so on consecutive days. The only safe bet seems to be that whoever does unlock the bite will have a chance to land some big ones.
“I have no idea,” Rojas said. “I’m going to try and catch every single bass I can tomorrow.”
