My tourney partner Ryan Brant and I decided that it would be a good idea to reinvest some of our Pan-O-Prog tourney winnings into the Celebration Outdoors bass tournament 3 weeks after that event. Didn’t really have time to prefish with the Weekend Series tourney in Wabasha.
Last minute, Ryan had to work, so his brother Corey jumped in the boat with me, no big deal, as Corey is quite the stick as well, he currently sits in 3rd place for Silverado points after 2 events. We drew boat 12, and decided to start shallow like we did in Pan-O-Prog. The first area yielded only a single short fish, but Corey quickly boated a 3lbr in our second spot with a Ring Fry using a Force Bead as weight. We continued with the shallow pattern, I put two decent 2lb fish and a three rats in the well on a 3/8oz Green Pumpkin/Brown Tru-Tungsten jig . During that stretch I got sawed off by a good fish and had another 3lb fish get the best of me and spit my jig. 
But now that we had our limit, we decided to test some deeper spots that had produced in the past, we were just about to leave our 2nd deep spot when Corey hooks up on a tube with a 3/8oz Tru-Tungsten sinker in about 13 feet of water and lands a nice 3lbs plus fish that culls are first rat. Just as I was thinking it was time to move on again, i got picked up dragging my ring fry on a mojo rig , another 3lb fish to replace rat numero dos. We tried quite a few more lures for quite some time and that deep spot would not yield another good bite for us. Corey’s fish was hooked deep, so I got to use some of my livewell care tricks to ensure his livelyhood.
With about 30 minutes to go, we revisited an area where that 3lb fish had given me the slip, I pitched my jig in between a dock and boat lift. As I started to lift my jig , a fish grabbed it and started to head for the lift. When I set, my 17lb fluoro got cut off pretty clean, feeling pretty dejected as it seems there is always a good fish or two that do this late in the day that cost me money. Grumbling under my breath, I grab a fresh jig from the deck of the boat and slap a used chuck on their quick and flip it under the front of the boat lift. It did not take long to get picked up again, it did not take long to realize this would be the best fish of the day. After a brief struggle, she was in the net, it was pretty obvious I had got my revenge on this fish, as it had 18″ of my line hanging from its mouth and the old jig was already in her stomach. This tank was a huge cull over the 13 incher that was still in the well. Corey got wrapped right after that and lost a good fish. We hit a few more spots in the last few minutes, but could not improve on either of our 2lb fish. In the back of our minds, we knew we had a good day, but know we had 3 missed opportunities during the day to probably crack the 20lb mark, which is not uncommon on Lake Marion.
That 4.66lb fish is in my left hand, could not keep his lips of my Tru-Tungsten jigs!
In the end, our 18.61lbs was more then enough and gave us a 2lb margin of victory, but my lake 4.66 fish was beat out for big fish by a 5.3lb beauty. It was nice to get a win for this year, now I will probably turn my attention to Minnetonka in preparation for the Minnesota State Bass Federation Tournament of Champions in early September.