Time to get caught up a little big……

I came into this tournament feeling pretty confident and hoping to make a dent in the deficit from 1st place in the club standings.  My optimism & confidence train wrecked into two keepers.

I ran up to Afton, only to arrive simultaneously with another club member.  Turns out the fish never really went on that spot.  My partner Art & I started working the adjacent weed beds and edges.  I started catching some short fish on a white swim jig and then missed a few others that felt bigger because I could not catch up to them before they spit the jig ( I have since ordered a new Curado DHSV Reel ) 

We then followed the weed edge to some docks, I quickly caught a short smallmouth and largemouth off the first dock and missed another fish.  Art then caught a nice keeper largemouth on the inside weed edge on a 4″ Fork Craw Green Pumpkin that he texas rigged with a 1/8oz screw lock weight.  I then caught my first keeper on a swim jig.

We checked the starting spot again and each got a few dink smallmouths. We then moved to another weed area and each caught a nice 16″+ smallmouth, mine came on a Zoom Speed Craw and his on the Fork Craw.  We went back to the original weed area & docks, Art caught 3 more keepers on the Fork Craw by casting into openings and then pulling it into the next hole.  The two big fish hit as he was pulling it over a weed clump into the next hole.  I broke off twice and lost another fish next to the boat off the docks.  It was the story of my day, I caught tons of fish, most of them short and I managed to screw up my keeper bites.

Art ended up with 5 fish for 10.7lbs, 2 smallies and 3 greenies, all out of the weeds.  I two fish for 4.1 lbs.  Art won the tourney and had the only limit out of 18 guys. So I only managed to gain .1lbs on the leader this weekend, but did move from 7th to 3rd.  One thing is for sure, I need to clean up my fishing before the weekend series on Whitefish, I cannot continue to drop and break off fish like this.

Hats off to E2 (Edwin Evers) on his big win on Lake Eries, he pulled away with a bag of smallies over 23lbs on the last day!!

Rich
RichLindgren.com 
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