I was able to get on the water before 8am on Friday before the tournament to do a little practice.  I went out on the water with my dad.  On our first stop, my dad pulled on a good bite and I caught a 3lb plus smallie on a 3/8oz Texas Craw TT Jig and we got out of there.  We spent the rest of the day checking some new & old water, getting no more them one quality bite and moving on.  I would have had 14lbs plus, but I was pretty sure I could have done better catching multiple fish from some of the better areas.

I drew boat #15 out of 52, so I was able to get to my first area with no competition.  We pulled up and no bites right away, after about 20 minutes my partner & I had each boated a small keeper largemouth, which was weird, because this was a big fish smallmouth area.  We then headed to my next deep smallie spot and caught nothing there.  From there I hit up some reeds and caught one decent largemouth on a 1/2oz Fall Craw Tru-Tungsten jig.

Honestly I spent most of the day back and forth between deep smallie and shallow largemouth areas and it took until 10am to get my limit.  Between 11am & Noon I got on a bit of a run on some docks and was able to cull a few times on both a pumpkinseed Ring Fry and 3/8oz Green Pumpkin/Brown TT Jig.  At about Noon, I am guessing I had about 11lbs in the box.

It was then back to rotating through some deep areas and I managed one good smallmouth bite at about 1pm, it was probably just over 3lbs, which I caught on a baby creature bait.  Which gave me an hour to get a few more of those big bites, but that never happened.  My partner caught 4 or 5 keepers and was able to cull, but nothing big for him either.

My total was 12.96lbs, which on a lot of lakes is pretty decent, but I got destroyed.  That was only good enough for 23rd place.  The money cut was mid 15lbs and it took almost 20lbs to win.  I keep rethinking how I should have done things different, but I am not really sure.  I feel like I fished good areas and did not get any quality bites.  The only thing, is if I had a little more time prefishing, I could have had a few more deep areas to rotate through and one of them would have paid off.  Or maybe it was on of those days, where my timing was off and they were biting on my spots when I was some place else, tough to tell, because they sure bit for some guys!!!

Well, the next day I headed to Vermillion, to practice for the 4th Weekend Series event that is just a couple weeks out.  I caught a lot of smallies, no real size.  Got some ideas for tournament day, hopefully I can get back up there closer to the tourney to get dialed in.  As for this week, time to focus on the Federation Nation Divisionals in Oshkosh, WI on the Winneconne / Winnebago system next week.

Tight Lines all!!!
Rich
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