Beaver Lake

I'm gonna pick the, I'm gonna pick the most obvious one.

That was the 1967 event held at, beginning of June at Beaver Lake by the All American Tournament Organization, uh, which was the beginning of BASS.

So-

Yeah, this is June 5th through 7th, 1967 on Beaver Lake, Arkansas, as Terry says.

This is before BASS existed.

Um, this is after Ray gets a, uh, a lightning bolt of an idea in a Mississippi motel room to, uh, have a bass tournament, and he goes to Beaver, Terry, because it's a hot-

'Cause now we're gonna, now we're gonna v- I want everybody's pick for the most important tournament in bass fishing history.

Who wants to go first?

So in the summer times, I'd go stay with my mom in Arkansas.

She lived on Beaver Lake and she was kind of a single mom, I would say.

So there's many times where she had to go to work in order to put food on the table.

I ran those hollers.

You know, obviously, if you're at Lake of the Ozarks, you can get bait with glide.

If you're at Beaver Lake, you're probably not going to throw glide back on them.

You know, the chances of that fish being over three pounds is pretty slim, where at Lake of the Ozarks, there's more of a chance he's over three pounds and under, you know.

So, it just kind of depends.

I'm going to throw it on big line.

You know, it's still going to be a power fishing deal.

you know at the end of the day you only got to catch five you know when we fished the bass pro tour i tried to finesse a lot more of that stuff because the numbers played the game and and i caught some but it really wasn't very exciting to me you know when you start trying to think well i need to catch four or five more two pounders you know i i'm kind of like the mentality but i'd like to catch one more five pounder and we'll raise these boys's eyebrows so um i don't really finesse around a lot of unless i'm just forced to you know in some of those kind of situations but you know uh right now in the ozarks you would have to go today and and finesse around some to get some bites you know uh more of a uh smaller worm or or possibly a smaller square bill crankbait you know whatever it might be but it's it's gonna have to just tell you what's conditions are and let your gut kind of feel it out and what lake you're on with what what numbers of fish and what size of fish and what the lake has to offer i mean if you're finessing around you know on what gunnersville right now you're probably going to be hurting when you get the way in so you really can't but you know if you're going to go to beaver lake right now you probably better finesse around throw a shaky head and catch you about 10 or 11 pounds and you might be pretty solid if you can run up the river then and catch one big one on top water square bill you might get 15 you

And it seems like sometimes,

Yeah.

OK, let's talk about you went on a vacation, I'm assuming, to Beaver Lake, Beaver Lake,

Arkansas.

Shout out.

Used to go to a barbecue joint there, but then it shut down because they're dealing meth out of it.

Wait, why are you guys going there? Why is Beaver Lake a thing for your family or whatever? Is that like a known thing in the area? It's

not a known thing.

It was just a nice area that I think my mom and dad had gone to years ago that they wanted to bring us back to years later.

It showed where Sylvia's body was, included a diagram.

So they searched Whitney Mountain Lodge, which is on Beaver Lake in Benton County, Arkansas.

It's a resort hotel about 200 miles south of there.

That's where they found her.

And here's a cold case that just took an unexpected turn nearly 30 years later.

Back in October of 1996, a fisherman on Beaver Lake in Arkansas discovered a sleeping bag floating in the water.

Inside was the badly decomposed body of a man who had apparently suffered blunt force trauma.

Investigators couldn't identify him, so more than two decades later, he was simply known as Lakeman.

A couple other things, too, Roger.

Did you hear the really sad story? A 74-year-old swimmer up in Benton County killed after being hit by a boat on Beaver Lake.

Lord have mercy.

He's a professor.

Imagine you're an investigator, and it's October 1996.

The setting is Benton County, Arkansas, specifically this area near Montenay by Beaver Lake end human remains are discovered.

It's a male.

Yeah.

It's not a hard fact at all.

Right.

We really have to look at the mechanics of physical anthropology at that specific time because when remains are found in a body of water, especially like Beaver Lake, the degradation is just catastrophic.

'Cause of the water itself.

air.

In 1967, on Beaver Lake in Arkansas, they held the first real bass tournament in America.

Less than one minute in, a 26-year-old kid from Lynchburg, Tennessee, set the hook on a two-pound largemouth.

First fish...