FROM STAFF REPORTS

COLUMBIANA – Warren Wyman of Calera weighed a five-bass limit totaling 18 pounds, 1 ounce May 3 to win the third Walmart Bass Fishing League Bama Division tournament of 2014 on Lay Lake. For his victory, Wyman earned $3,889.

“I had to change my game plan because we had a long fog delay,” Wyman wrote in a release. “Normally, I would have started off with topwater but I didn’t get to do that because the sun was already up by the time we got to go out.

“I went and targeted some prespawn and spawning fish in a spawning area,” he wrote. “It was an area with rocks, sand and grass altogether and the fish really like that. I started off flipping a jig and a Brush Hog around the grass until the sun got up enough so that I could see them.

“Later on I went to some other areas where I normally do really well, but I noticed that the water was very dingy,” added Wyman. “It seemed to me that the water had just gotten dirty, so I went back to where I started which was the only place I had seen clear water.

“Once I caught my last big one around 1 o’clock I was feeling pretty good,” finished Wyman. “But, I didn’t get any practice time for this event and I had caught some bed fish, so I thought someone else may have found some big ones in practice on a bed. I think that the dirty water actually helped me because the area that I chose to fish had fairly clear water.”

Wyman said that he used a variety of baits to put together his limit including a homemade jig, Zoom Brush Hog, a white Zipper finesse worm and a watermelon-colored homemade finesse worm.

Bill Spratlin, of Chelsea, finished fifth in the event, while Montevallo native Ezekiel Findley weighed a five-bass limit totaling 14 pounds, 5 ounces Saturday to win $1,944 in the co-angler division.