Hard to find time to blog with the new addition in the house. I suppose I would have more time to blog if I fished less, but what would I blog about?
Last Sunday, I hoped to get down for some early practice on Mississippi River pool 4 near Wabasha, but things did not work out, so I just went to local Lake Marion for a few hours in the afternoon. I hoped to find some new fish for the upcoming Celebration Outdoors tournament this coming Saturday, that did not really work out, caught a few decent fish, but I did not feel like I unlocked any new secrets by any means.
I did get down and practice both Thursday & Friday for my Bassmaster Weekend Series tourney this past weekend on Pool 4. Both days were kind of short, only about 6 hours on the water each day. Thursday was very windy and it rained for all but the last hour, I learned a little new water at the top of Big Lake, got one big bite and found a few fish close to the ramp that I felt could be a good back-up plan. Friday I practiced with my dad, checked my Pepin fish, they were there but small and then loaded boat and headed to Wabasha, fortunately I found some good fish on one of my favorite eel grass lines. Checked a few more things, eliminated water after that more than anything.
My plan for race day was to get some solid keeper in the well on my grass line and then spend the afternoon on the upper end of Big Lake going for a big bite. I got some smallmouth bites early on a bone colored Vixen topwater, then found better quality fish flipping the edge of the eel grass with a beaver bait on a 3/8oz Tru-Tungsten flipping weight with MiHatchii OWG hook . My last two fish were probably my biggest and they both came on a Mad-Maxx frog in Busta Slime color. The 2nd generation Tru-Tungsten frogs are unbelievably soft and durable, really hard to beat this frog.
In the end, I weighed 4 largies and a single smallmouth that went 13.93lbs, good enough for 5th place in a pretty good field. This next weekend, another tourney on Lake Marion.
