Well, the launch went smooth and it was slightly overcast with a mild wind.  The wind was blowing into my reeds, so I had to go check to see if bigger fish had moved up to feed.  I started there and caught a few dinks real quick and moved around to some adjacent patches and I managed 3 small keepers on a weightless LFT Watermelon Candy Ring Fry and my partner got a nice keeper on a Yum Buzz Frog .

After wasting almost an hour in the reeds we went out to my deep spot, which is a deep edge off a flat on Le Homme Deu.  My partner each caught a few on crankbaits, I caught them on a DT6 Parrot and my partner was throwing a white SPRO crankbait of sorts.  It then slowed and I switched to a mojo rigged Fork Secret Baby Ring Fry and I caught my big fish of the tournament (2-12).  The flat was 6-8ft and broke to 12-18ft in the area I was fishing.  I caught one more keeper on the mojo rig to cull a reed fish.  I tried a 8″ LFT Worm on a jig worm and got zero bites.  I then tried my chartreuse craw 1/2oz Rat-L-Trap and had one on but it came off.   Reluctantly, I finally pulled my drop shot out, which consisted of a 3″ Watermelon Red Flake Fluke rigged on a Reaction Innovations D.S. Creature.  On my 3rd cast I put a keeper in the boat that culled a fish. I probably caught a bass on 20 of my next 50 casts on the drop shot, and my partner probably caught 2 or 3 fish.  I absolutely crushed them on the drop shot, but I did not get any real big bites, but I did cull several times.  My partner did round out his limit on a texas-rigged watermelon Berkley Gulp Turtle Back Worm .  The bite finally slowed so we moved to another weedline.  I caught several fish on the drop-shot, but did not improve and I tried the reeds one more time, hit a stretch of docks and a weed flat near the weigh in with a Swim Jig and only caught one more small keeper that did not help my limit.

I kept feeling I needed one more good keeper, I just never got the bite.  I felt that I wasted my time in the reeds as I am pretty positive I culled all three of those runts out.  THe other thing that bugs me was that the fish were really on when I first pulled up on the first weedline and another boat was culling shortly after I got there.  I believe if I went to start on that weedline, I would have had about 11-12lbs or more instead of 10-05.   Well it turns out 10-05 was good enough for 10th place.  Not too bad, not real great.  Dean Capra won it with 15lbs.  My dad got his money back on the non-boater side, so it was a good start to the season and we are both in good shape for points for staying close on AOY and making the regional on Patoka Lake in October.

Got a couple local club tournaments in Lakeville and then the Pan-O-Prog tournament on Marion.  Then the 2nd weekend series tourney on Whitefish Chain.  See Full Tournament Schedule

Tight Lines,
Rich
www.richlindgren.com
basstournament.blogspot.com

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