I arrived to prefish around 3pm on Friday afternoon, found some decent smallies deep and a few good largies in the reeds.  Saturday was much of the same, not much for size except for a few fish I was able to flip up on soft plastics in the river area of the lake.  I did not have near the fish that I had going last year for this tournament.  I drew boat #32 and had a pretty solid non-boater, he ended up being a lot of fun to fish with.

I decided to fish some reeds that I thought would produce a solid 10-12lbs, but I ended up wasting over an hour fishing reeds, we each had a couple fish in the well when we left, but nothing special.  The first weedline that I pulled up on, we had a near double and I soon caught a nice smallie and largemouth on a drop shot with a little 4″ Chompers worm in a watermelon flake color paired with a 1/4oz Tru-Tungsten drop shot weight and a drop length of about 16″.  A northern bit of my drop shot weight so I switched to my finesse carolina rig (a.k.a. Mojo Rig) which was sporting 1/8oz Tru-Tungsten bullet sinker pegged about 20″ up from a Green Pumpkin Fork Craw.  Within the first 5 casts I whacked my 3.94lb smallmouth, I continued to fish with that and filled out a nice limit of fish.  I mixed in some docks as well and caught one of my nicer largemouth on a 1/4 oz Green Pumpkin/Brown Tru-Tungsten jig.
 
We hopped docks and weedlines the rest of the day, the docks did not produce any more good fish, I had one decent one on and he jumped, but it was marginal in whether I would have culled with him.  I culled a few more times deep with the Fork Craw and my partner finally put on the Fork Craw with about 90 minutes left and he culled his entire well with two nice smallies and a largemouth.  His 3 fish total was 9.86 with a 4.59 smallie which put him in 5th.  I also lost another good smallie that leaped next to the boat where he caught the 4.59, that is the nature of smallmouth bass fishing though.  My total ended up being 15.99lbs and that was good enough for 12th place.  The positive news is that I moved from 8th to 5th in the point standings, which is keeping me on pace to qualify for Nationals on Clarks Hill reservoir in November.

I think the biggest mistake that I made was starting in the reeds, had I started deep, I think I would have had a little better bag, maybe moved up in to the middle of the Top 10….   I need to quit playing it safe sometimes, live and learn.   Also of note, my dad took 4th as a non-boater with just over 10lbs and had moved to 6th in his point standings.  I hope to have some pictures to post here later as well.  On to the river for the next few tournaments and the State TOC on Leech is just around the corner as well.