My Tournament today went fairly well, but it was definitely a grind. My goal going in was once again to catch 10lbs to keep me in contention for AOY. The temperatures dropped a fair amount and the morning started off a little colder than normal.
I started by throwing a spinnerbait around bulrushes with nothing to speak of. I was getting hung up in stringy shallow weeds on almost every cast and in the back of my mind I had thoughts telling me to move. I left the area and went down to the middle of West Rush to fish some large flats that were out in the middle of the lake. The flats had milfoil on them and I was burning a booyah spinnerbait over the top of them. After about 30 minutes I had put two fish in the boat. One was decent sized (1.5lbs), the other one was just a little swimmer(12 inches).
After I had hit the flats for awhile I moved to another patch of bulrushes, but this time I backed off. There was a curlyleaf pondweed weededge outside of the rushes and I was throwing to the outside edge of that. Most of the outside weedegdes around the lake were in the 10-12ft range. However, this spot had a hard bottom and this weededge only went to about 6 or 7ft. I pitched my All Terrain Jig to the outside edge of the weedline a caught a good fish right away, about 2lbs. I fished the area for a little longer with no bites, but finding this spot would come in handy later in the day.
I then went back to the flats area and picked up one more swimmer (barely went 12") on a spinnerbait. Knowing that I needed some bigger fish I went to fish some docks that I've had luck on in the past. On the second dock I threw to the edge of it and a pretty good sized bass came out and sucked my All Terrain Stick Worm right off the hook. I rigged up another one and on the next cast I landed a nice 3lb fish. I now had my limit and it was 9:45am. However, I had two little guys in the livewell that needed to go.
I proceeded to run around the lake and try many other areas without any luck. It was a grind going that long without a bite. All I needed was two more good bites, so I just kept my head down and continued going. At 1:00 I landed my next fish, about 1.5lbs, on a jig next to a dock. This would cull one of the small ones. Then, with 15 minutes to go until check in I went back to the hard bottom weededge. On my first cast, my jig started swimming off to the side and I stuck a good 3 pound fish, I was a little overjoyed at this moment even though I still didn't have a spectacular limit. I did what I needed to do though, and that was to get rid of the two little fish I had. This would cull out the other small one and help me reach my goal of catching 10lbs.
Overall I ended up in 2nd place with 11lbs and some change. If I were to fish the day over again I would probably spend more time fishing that one hard bottom area that I had found. With the wind blowing into that spot later in the day I think it could have been good had I left myself more time to exploit the area.
My next tournament is with the Silverado Pro/Am Tour and I will be spending the next week up north. I hope you all have a good 4th, and maybe even have a chance to catch a fish or two over the holiday!
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