Let’s just start out by saying, I have had worse tournaments, but not many that I can recall. 

Neither Frank or myself spent much time practicing for this tournament, so we started in a place that I did well last time the club fished here and one of the few spots I checked the previous weekend.  We started in a shallow pad bay that a lot of lily pad roots which almost all of them were holding fish the previous weekend.  We each made a few casts with reaction baits and I quickly switched to a weightless ring fry. I started catching bass immediately, but none that exceeded the 14″ minimum.  About 15 minutes later I caught a 14 – 1/8″ keeper, I thought about it for a moment and tossed it back.  These first two club tournaments are both “no cull” tournaments, so once it goes into your livewell, there is stays, no upgrading.  My logic was, that I wanted to win the tournament and I was fairly confident that I would catch bigger fish, after all that was about my 6th fish of the day in the opening moments.

As you may have already guessed, things deteriorated from there on out.  I continued to catch short fish and my partner caught a keeper on a spook, he was smart enough to drop it in the well.  We continued to fish hard and about and hour later I caught another keeper, I smartly dropped that one in the box, although considered releasing it as well.  I caught that fish right before a little front passed through & before the skies turned high & blue.  I then decided that the majority of the fish were probably moving out of this bay, so we went out on the first drop of the mouth and I quickly started catching bass on a crawfish colored DT6, none keepers.   I then switch to a mojo rig and caught several more, again all short.  My partner makes on cast with a worm on a Ball Buster and gets his 2nd keeper.  We continue to check similar drops and I continue to catch a short fish here & there.

Pictured is the bait that I caught my 2 keepers on.  Weightless Lake Fork Ring Fry with 2 TT Force Beads held in place by a bobber stop.

We then head back shallow, I miss a good bite in a clump of pads, my partner then catches his 3rd keeper in that area on a 4″ senko.  We scramble around the rest of the day, each catch a few more shorts and I only weigh one fish, which left me mired in 15th place for the tournament.  Sounds like most of the better bags came on the drops, but they also caught their keepers early, so my move deep was a little late

Fortunately, I am wise enough to learn from my mistakes and I vowed to make Sunday a better tournament. Plus there was a blizzard bet on the line for the weekend, BrushHog & I had a blizzard bet for total weight for the weekend and I was in a 1.8 lb hole.

Rich
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