I started the tournament in the bottom of Fleming Creek through the bridge.  I worked the area over with white spinnerbait, black buzzbait, crankbait and Zoom Speed Craw on a Tungsten texas rig.  No bites, I did notice that the water was a couple degrees cooler then on the other side of the bridge, I think that was a bad sign.  We worked back out on the lake side and onto a week flat, the area looked good but several boats had been through there.

We than ran up to the dam where I started cranking a deep weed point with a Spatter Back Lucky Craft Flat Mini DR Crankbait, it was not long before I caught a 12″ bass and my partner spooked some shad with his spinnerbait on the other side of the point, I threw back in there and caught a 14″ bass.  We worked this area for several hours and all at once I caught a fish that was right at 15″ and one over 17″ on the crankbait.  I ended up letting the one go, because I thought he may be short.  Hopped around the rest of they day, caught a 13″ bass on my Secret Weapon Lure Spinnerbait near the weigh-in.  After day 1, I was in 40th place with 1 fish for 2lbs-13oz, if I had weighed that other fish, I would have been right on the cut bubble with just under 5lbs.  Overall it was my best day on the water with 2 keepers and 4 short fish.

Day 2, I started near the dam where I caught two keepers and two shorts the day before.  We worked it with all kinds of lures and I only got one really short fish.  We hopped around the rest of the day, running areas that I thought had good potential and new banks throwing swim jigs, cranks, spinnerbaits, chatterbaits and never got another fish.  Tough, tough day for our boat.  Not weighing a fish dropped me to 64th, the fish that I almost weigh became irrelevant.  I was very disappointed in my performance.

I never really found the fish in 3 days of practice, I largely attribute that to being very unprepared for the tournament.  I did not do nearly enough map study and preparation before we got there.  I also believe I had the wrong mind set going in when it came to seasonal patterns, I think I was trying to find a later fall pattern then what most of the quality fish were in.  It was good for me to get knocked around by this lake, it will help me to focus and prepare better in the future.  Congrats to the 5 guys from MN that are going to Nationals at Lake Guntersville: Bradley Leifermann, Dean Capra, Thomas Borkowski, John Schlee & Brian Brown!    

Rich
RichLindgren.com 
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