A complete 180 occurred this past Saturday on Pool 2.  In short, John Haynes & I were each able to bag a nice limit on the very same body of water that skunked me the weekend before.  I personally believe it had to do with location, we fished many of the same lures & techniques, conditions were pretty similar but the scenery had changed.  It was cool in the morning, but between my Akinetix Long Sleeve Shirt and Multi-Sport gloves kept me very comfortable on our morning run down the river.

We started off fishing some rocks on the mouth of a backwater, where John quickly tempted some nice smallmouth with a 3/8oz Sunfish Tru-Tungsten Jig.  Those same fish, showed no interest in my Reaction Innovations Method Crank that I was trying to make work.  When John caught a nice chunky largemouth on that same jig further back in a backwater pocket, I picked up my Black Neon 3″ Yum Tube, rigged with 3/16oz Tungsten Sinker and Smart peg, and quickly caught a 12″ keeper.  A few pitches later I swung a 19″ sow into John’s lap while he was re-tying his texas rig.

Nice 19″ Pool 2 Bass!
After proving to myself that the tube would work, I switched to a green pumpkin chatterbait and caught a nice 16″ bass and John then caught a matching fish on a Watermelon Red CreatureX bait.  We quickly got out of that area knowing there were plenty more bass to be had. 

We checked run-off pipe on the way down river, the water was cooler then the river water, so we got out of there.  We then worked out way back into a large back water area farther down the pool.  We spent quite a bit of time down there, catching several nice largemouths on tubes, chigger craws and 3/8oz PB&J TT Jigs, many of the fish positioned around rock & wood.  One thing to note, is this was my first chance to use my new Youvella EWG hooks, and they kept all my fish well pegged on my tube, looks to be a very good hook.

On the way back up the river, we found two more areas with some smallmouth positioned on them, that may be very nice back up areas.  I hope to get back out on Pool 2 to check about 3 more areas that I found on Google Maps this Saturday.  It looks like this tournament could shape up to be a very good tournament.  The key is putting in the practice time to learn to get back to the productive areas.  For fun we bumped all our fish, so we could calculate our catch like we would in the tournament.  I would have had 15.5lbs & Haynes would have had 11lbs.

Here is what John & I learned:
Found a handful of baits that were producing
Identified several areas to target during the tournament
Learned how to safely navigate these areas
Learned I need a longer ruler for this tournament, 18″ board is not enough.

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