The Roland Martin Marine Center Series capped off a four event season with a two-day Championship at Roland Martin Marina on Lake Okeechobee last month. The 55 competing teams had 10,000 reasons to give it their all during the two-day event.
Gary Niemi and James Dyer set the tone on day 1, smashing a 27.11-pound bag. Terry Oliver and Ricky Tortana finished the day, close behind, in second place with a 25.87-pound bag. Donny Bass and Mikey Keyso followed closely in third place with an even 25.00 pounds, followed by Tim Celesti and Mike Hendrick in fourth place with 24.08 pounds, and Greg Natiello and Michael Krause, Jr. in fifth with 21.76 pounds.
Day two would prove to be much different for the leaders, as they struggled to bring a fish to the scales, opening the door for the rest of the field to take home the $10,000.00 first place prize. Donny Bass and Mikey Keyso would step through that door en route to becoming the first Roland Martin Marine Center Series Classic Champions. They weighed a 26.72-pound bag on the final day to bring their two-day total to 51.72 pounds.
“We were catching staging fish,” stated Keyso in a post-tournament interview. “The water has come up, and the fish are moving back in. [We] just headed them off before they got to where they were going.”
“I was flipping a Gambler Ugly Otter to anything isolated,” stated Bass in the Gambler Bait’s post-tournament recap video. Bass goes on to state that he also used a Gambler Big EZ in Copperfield color during the morning bite.
Tim Celesti and Mike Hendrick finished the event with a second place finish, weighing 45.52 pounds during the event. Buck Durance and Wade Lightsy followed behind in third place with 41.88 pounds. Cody Davis and Matt Weitch finished in fourth place with 41.51 pounds, followed by Terry Oliver and Ricky Tortana in fifth place with 39.72 pounds.
