Written by Kellen Ellis Wednesday, March 27, 2013 News - Freshwater Fishing News 
Poway's Justin Hanold, a local bass fishing guide scored a big WON Bass Pro/Am tournament win at Lake Havasu on March 16th and 17th. Hanold weighed a two day limit totaling 46.97 pounds, anchored by a huge 5-fish limit on day 1 weighing 26.83 pounds.
Hanold arrived in Lake Havasu City on Tuesday the 12th to begin a few days of pre-fish. With temperatures rising in the desert, new waves of bass were moving up to the shallows to spawn each day. Justin made an unorthodox decision, saying "I made up my mind early that I would not make a single cast during all four days of practice."
After four days of covering shoreline with his eyes fixed in the shallows, Hanold had over 280 "marks" (GPS waypoints) set, all holding the location of solid bedding bass (mostly smallmouth). "With what I was seeing, I had a feeling every competitor would have 15 pounds in the boat in the first hour of the tournament," he said. With as many fish as there were up spawning in the lake, Justin knew he would have to focus his efforts on finding largemouth bass, which are bigger and more plentiful in the Colorado River which feeds Havasu to the north. So Justin set his focus on the river on the last day of practice, and found enough quality fish to know thats where he'd attack during the competition.
On day 1 Justin had caught his big fish of the day, a 7.06 pounder, a 6 pounder, and 3 fish around 4 pounds by 8 AM. Despite having a few more 5 pound quality fish marked in the river that would cull out those 4 pounders, Justin made a wise decision to leave them alone and save them for the second day. So Justin spent the rest of day 1 back in the main lake, hopping around his marks and was able to cull all 3 of the 4 pounders, leading to his first day total of 26.83 pounds.
On the second day of competition Justin ran right back up river to get those 5 pounders he saved the day before. Unfortunately, he arrived to find those fish gone, either caught the day before by other competitors, or just absent for whatever reason. That's not the way you want to start the second day of a tournament you're leading, but Justin kept grinding.
Fortunately for Justin, there were plenty of bass still in the river, and he had lots of marks left to check. He ran around the river catching the rest of the quality marks he had without having to save anything, and by 9 AM had around 17 pounds. At that point, he decided to again hit the main lake and try to continue culling fish. "Finding fish [in the main lake] was hard, but I was able to cull several times by running-and-gunning," he said.
Justin's running-and-gunning efforts yielded a limit on the second day weighing 20.14 pounds, giving him enough to win by a little more than 2.5 pounds over second place angler Clay Lippincott of Goodyear, AZ. All of Justin's fish were caught on white Berkley Jigs with Chigger Craw trailers.
Justin set new WON Bass records for single-day and two-day totals, both being held previously by Hall of Famer Mike Folkestad.
The win was worth $10,360 dollars in total, made up of cash prizes for 1st place, day 1 big stringer, and third biggest fish of the tournament.
The fishing at Havasu was truly spectacular for this tournament, as evidenced by the fact that the last place pro angler, Ed Shaver in 47th place caught a two day limit of 10 bass weighing 27.95 pounds, nearly a 3 pound bass average.
For more information on Justin Hanold, or to book a guide trip, visit his website at socalfishingadventures.com or give him a call at 858.254.9215.
