Jason Christie bemoaned the crystal water and dead-calm conditions of Bull Shoals Lake. "Clear water and no wind scare the heck out of me," said the Elite Series rookie from Park Hill, Okla., on that second day of competition. He dropped from fourth place to 14th. It was a serious fall in what had become the "ounces-count" Quest. On the third day, he managed to climb up to 11th place and qualify for Monday's fourth and final round. He was 5 pounds, 6 ounces behind the leader. On the final day, Monday, Christie turned in a huge bag, the tournament's largest: 18 pounds even and landed squarely in the winner's seat with his first Elite Series trophy. It came with $100,000 and his second consecutive Bassmaster Classic qualification. "Awesome," said Christie about his secure return to the Classic. "I was hooked on it last time, and I'm ready to go again." Christie's winning weight was 56 pounds, 8 ounces. The five largemouth in his Day 4 bag of 18-0 included two 4-pounders and a 5-0, the largest bass of the day. His margin of victory was 1 pound, 2 ounces over Fred Roumbanis of Bixby, Okla. That was a notable achievement given that the Day 3 leader, Casey Scanlon, led by 12 ounces, and the Day 1 and 2 leader, Greg Vinson, led by 1 pound and by 3 ounces, respectively. His winning pattern was firing casts to schooling fish busting the surface of a creek he fished all four days. But he didn't see that schooling action until the fourth day. On the first day, he used a crankbait. The second day he tried the crankbait, then put it down when it didn't produce and went to a Carolina rig. The third day he went again to the rig, but abandoned it for flipping bushes. On Day 4, when the fish started to show themselves, he broke out a Heddon Zara Spook One Knocker, a bait with one big internal weight in a transparent finish. "I was going from bush pocket to bush pocket, and they came up," Christie said. "I stayed there. When I need a 3 1/2 to cull, and I haven't seen a 3 1/2 all week, I'm going to stay there." "The only ones you could catch were the ones close to you," he said. "They were going so much, I'd turn to one side, go for one, then turn to another. I tried to stay on top of it as much as I could." He said the bass were breaking the surface across a "giant" area. He caught his entire 18 pounds Monday on the Spook. When he was flipping to bushes, he used a green-pumpkin Yum Wooly Hawg. The crankbait was a Bomber 6A in crawdad. Christie's victory was his first Elite Series win, but third on the Bassmaster circuit.