Winter Series
Stockton Lake
12/17/06

Notes:

I usually don’t get the opportunity to fish two tournaments on the same weekend but this was about it for this year with the holidays coming up. This time John was out because he had his son but Ben had already committed to fishing with someone else. I called Kevin Smith, the Youth Director for the MO TBF and he was more than willing to come down to Stockton. Neither one of us had been on Stockton for a long time and would just have to fish blind. Sometimes that is good, sometimes not so good. This day was just ok.

The turnout for the tournament was rather light and this was surprising as the weather was very nice for a December day. Several of the local teams weren’t there but some of the best on the lake were. I really didn’t know what would be enough as the weights through the summer were really low. I did expect around 13-14 lbs to put you in the hunt but Stockton always seems to surprise a person, usually on both ends of the spectrum. Either it is really good or really bad.

At the launch, every boat ran either down to the main lake or over to the Big Sac side. Kevin and I went to the Twin Bridges area and on the first pass on a channel swing, we put eight short fish in the boat. That told me the fish would be biting and whoever found the better fish would load the boat. The conditions were perfect for jig fishing, calm and overcast. We worked a couple of swings over slowly but kept catching short fish. We could see where Ben was fishing and made a short run over to him to see how he was doing. They had put two keepers in the box by 9 am and were getting many bites.

I decided to move up lake to some timbered channel swings to see if we couldn’t get a better bite. On the first rocky point I hooked up with our first legal fish, just barely 15" but in the well it went. I didn’t see much activity on the graph but I did catch a couple more short fish as we moved into a pocket away from the drop. We moved up to the next point near a drop off and I missed a fish in a deep laydown. Kevin was able to put a short fish in the boat but as we came around to where the point dropped into the channel, I hooked up with a better quality bass. Kevin scooped it up and after a couple of casts, he hollered for the net. Two fish came from the drop within 30 feet of each other.

It looked like the fish were relating to the drop near a point at the mouth of a cove. We decided to hop to the next point and try to work this pattern. Unfortunately, the further we went into the arm, the more stained the water became and the less bites we had. There was no point in going any further so Kevin and I moved back to the channel swing that had produced two of our keepers. I boated a short fish on the upper end of it and as we approached the productive spot on the lower end, I felt a heavy sensation on my line. This produced our fourth captive in the livewell and two casts later, our limit fish was boxed. Talk about fish grouping up, four legal fish in a 50 foot stretch of bank! It was noon and we had plenty of time to catch a kicker fish to upgrade with. Or so we thought.

I knew of a timbered channel swing that had produced quality fish for me in the past so off we went. We made a couple of stops on the way but that only produced one missed bite. Again, the further we went, the more stained the water became and the less bites we got. In the clear water, we were getting numerous bites from short fish. As the water became stained, we were lucky to generate a couple of strikes. Big mistake and I should have known better. Thinking back, the only times we were able to get bit in the stained water was when the sun was shining. So we wasted most of the afternoon in an area that was unproductive while the best bite of the day was happening in the clear water.

Kevin and I couldn’t come up with anything to cull with and finished 5^th with 10 lbs 6 oz. Not horrible but I felt we should have done better. We caught 30-35 fish throughout the day but I made a mistake when selecting locations. There might have been some better fish in those areas but it wasn’t the right day to fish for them. I later found out the better fish moved up shallow in the afternoon but we totally missed that bite in the clear water. It really helps to pay attention to the current conditions instead of fishing in the past. There have been a few rules that Ben and I have come up with but I opted to ignore them. Ben was rewarded with a quality 2^nd place bag of fish by sticking with what should have worked for that type of day. Great job Ben.

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Rockaway Beach Booster Club Buddy
Lake Taneycomo
12/16/06

Notes:

My usual partner for Taneycomo, Ben Henderson, couldn’t make this event as he had family commitments. I teamed up with John Gorman to see what we could do. John has taken a little break from fishing tournaments and concentrated lately on hunting but it was good to get him back in the boat again.

John and I practiced the weekend prior and found the pattern had changed from the month prior. Ben and I had caught all of our fish from docks but with cooling water temperatures, those fish had either left the docks or had lockjaw. John and I concentrated on channel swings but we only found two holding fish. They were biting the usual lures though, jigs and finesse worms. John even found a bite on a plastic craw rigged on a finesse head.

This tournament series is really pretty fun. It feels more like a club tournament than a serious event. Each event I’ve been to seems to pull about 15 boats and most everyone knows each other. The payout is good and they always have several draw prizes to give out. The fish coming to the scales haven’t been huge this year but everyone is catching fish.

John and I were one of the first boats out and we zipped down lake to a nearby channel swing. John quickly put two keepers in the livewell on a watermelon finesse worm, one being just a keeper and the other a solid two pound fish. Based on our practice results, a limit of two pound fish would put us in good position at the end of the day.

We moved up the swing and ran into Brennan and Marion Halbersma. Brennan is a member of my Youth Club, a new writer for MAO, and has been putting in a lot of time on the water. Brennan and his father were also catching fish but didn’t have much by way of size. We talked briefly and turned around to make another pass. This proved futile and we ran down lake to try a few other swings. The further down lake we went, the colder the water became. This was not good and it was time to run in the other direction.

Taneycomo is a different beast of a lake because of water from Table Rock. Most lakes get colder in the winter as you run to the upper ends but not Taneycomo, as long as they release some water from Table Rock. There was pretty good current most of the morning so generation was not a problem. John and I moved to a swing in the mid-lake area and I stayed with a black/blue jig while John worked a finesse worm to get bites. I had not been getting bit but I thought I needed to be dragging my jig. Growing tired of that, I went to popping the jig more and immediately flipped two more keepers in the livewell. Then the wind kicked in for the day. The forecast called for 15-20 mph winds and it had been calm until about 10:30 am. On certain swings it was difficult working a jig out to 15+ feet but that was what the fish wanted so we fought it as best we could.

Growing frustrated, we started to move around some and back down the lake we went. The better fish have historically come from the lower end and it kept calling to us. We fished some of the best areas I knew of without so much as a short fish and I told John that we needed to make one pass on a set of docks. Maybe there was one small keeper in there to finish out our limit with. Sure enough, a 14" largemouth grabbed my brown roundhead jig along a center walkway but getting it in the boat wasn’t easy. A tie-off rope decided to make it interesting but I was able to get John close enough with the net to corral the fish and clip my line. At lunchtime we had a small limit but I guess you have to get a limit before you can start culling, right?

We spent the next few hours poking around but just couldn’t come up with anything productive. Finally, after working up lake again, we decided to hit a spot that had been good in the past but we hadn’t tried this year. Just our luck, a flat-bottom boat was messing around in that area and we didn’t get to fish it. We just moved over to a spot along a channel swing and on my first pitch, my bait didn’t feel right when I picked up the line. It was a solid keeper and out went a smaller bass from the livewell. On the next cast, my line jumped and another fish to cull with went in the net but it only helped a couple of ounces. We stayed in this area the last hour of the day and although we boated another limit of fish, we could only bump up our weight a little bit.

Back at the ramp, just about everyone caught fish late in the day. We ended up tied for 3^rd with 8.40 lbs, put a small check in our pocket and received a HumminBird flasher as a draw prize. Not a bad day overall but we just couldn’t get that kicker fish to jump us up in the standings. Maybe next month.

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Missouri TBF State Championship

Lake of the Ozarks

November 3-5, 2006

Well, it’s hard to believe but another fishing season is basically behind us. Looking back one year, I would have never guessed the Federation would go where it is today. I couldn’t have dreamed BASS and TBF would part ways and I would be right in the middle of a new and exciting Federation in the state of Missouri. Last winter, every "grass-roots" angler in Missouri was asked the question, "which way are you going?" Some chose one way and some chose another. Everyone definitely had their own opinions as to why.

The outcome has been thrilling but yet very difficult. A new organization doesn’t just happen, it has to be created. The creating was done by several hardworking individuals in the fold and although everyone didn’t always agree, I believe the foundation has been set for a strong group of anglers dedicated to youth, conservation and fishing. Our size has basically doubled this past 9 months and the Missouri TBF Bass Federation is striving to double again in the coming year. We have made some significant changes to set ourselves apart from where we came from and to offer different opportunities to the "bass club" angler. The details of these changes will be forthcoming but I am undeniably thrilled to be a part of the Missouri TBF Bass Federation.

Practice Day

This would be a very short day on the water as I had to be in at noon and help set up the weigh-in trailer for the tournament. Two of our youth anglers, Brandon Allen and Dalton Wilson were going to be part of the tournament and Brandon stayed at my house the night before. We hit the water right at day-break and I wanted to see if there would be any type of an early morning bite close to the ramp. We picked a small pocket and a bluff wall to run down. A strong front had rolled through mid-week and this was the dreaded "2^nd Day" after its passing. I rolled a 14" spotted bass on a clown spinnerbait going down the bluff wall before the sun got up but once it was bright, the bite basically ended on the bluffs. I turned a couple more short spotted bass on a crankbait but by mid-morning, it was time to do something different.

I wanted to fish an area of rock but another boat was sitting on it. It turned out Ben Henderson was able to get on the area later in the day and it was holding fish. I decided to hit a point the wind was blowing onto but another boat pulled up to it from the other direction at the same time. We met and went in opposite directions. I cranked the point without success and worked into a gravel pocket lined with boat docks. With the sun being up, Brandon and I decided to flip to the walkways to see if the flatter areas were holding fish. The second dock produced a healthy bass in the 4 lb+ range on a brown 5/16 oz Eiron Breaker jig and I shook off a fish under the next walkway. We fished through the rest of the docks to the channel drop but didn’t have another bite. We also hit a couple more pockets to see if the docks were holding fish, zero. Brandon and I were running out of time and we zipped down a creek channel swing. Brandon was throwing my clown spinnerbait and he about lost the rod when a hybrid jumped on it. He finally wrestled it to the boat and showed his youthful enthusiasm by wanting to catch more of them. No Brandon, we are preparing for a bass tournament! It was a nice fish by any standard though.

At noon we called it quits and tied up at the dock. Ben came down to the ramp and we were about done with the trailer but I had a little bit more to do. I told Brandon to jump in with Ben and get a few more hours of practice in before the meeting that night. Off they went and Ben was the lucky one to have Brandon’s undivided attention. Did I mention Brandon likes to talk? A lot. Youthfully enthusiastic is a better word for it.

After finishing up the weigh-in area, I went back out for another hour or so. I hit the back end of two creeks and worked some main point docks, hoping to find some suspended bass. I didn’t turn a fish and the weather was starting to change. The skies had begun to cloud up and the wind was kicking in. The forecast was calling for cloudy weather all weekend and a chance for rain. That was really what Ben and I wanted. We couldn’t get our jig fish to go in the sun but two weekends ago, they bit pretty well when the weather was terrible. At least we had one thing in our favor. After Ben and I had our usual pretournament conference that night, it became clear that we needed to stay around shad and maybe the fish were starting to migrate to the channel swing transitions with the cooling water.

At the tournament meeting, I drew out with two gentlemen from the Sol Pro club from Kansas City. My Day 1 partner, Willie Fisher was a riot. The fishing was tough for Willie but my hat is off to this man because of his medical condition. Willie had a stroke not to long ago and had recently regained his ability to walk. On top of that, he had kidney stone problems as well. I could tell through the day that he was getting a little tired and likely a little cold but not once did he complain nor did he have a negative attitude. Willie had plenty to talk about and he made my day. He came up a little short on his fishing goal as his best fish was just a hair from being a keeper but he never stopped fighting for that one elusive bite.

I drew Kenny Holland on Day 2 and Kenny was more interested in learning about jig fishing and I was happy to pass on what I could to him. The bites were even harder to come by on Day 2 but Kenny also kept a stiff upper lip throughout the day. I would fish with either one of these guys any day and they are a true testament of the Missouri TBF Bass Federation anglers. Thanks for the fun, guys!

Tournament Day 1

The day was cloudy, cool and drizzly. The wind picked up later in the morning but it wasn’t really a hindrance. After an hour of messing around on a bluff wall and a couple of pockets without a bite on topwater or spinnerbaits, I ran into the Niangua arm to see how Ben was doing. After a short conference, Ben said that he only had one fish roll on a topwater but was getting bites on a jig. I went down to the far end of the rock area he was fishing and decided to follow it out into the channel drop. Although the weather seemed perfect for a topwater bite or at least for an active presentation, it wasn’t happening. I turned around and picked up my brown 5/16 oz roundhead jig, smeared some Smelly Jelly on it and went to work. After about 5 casts, I felt the familiar tug of a bass and leaned into her. I immediately knew this was a quality fish and Willie knew it too when she thrashed the surface before bulldogging around the boat. Willie expertly scooped her up and I think he was more excited than I was. A 4.57 lb fish at 8:30 in the morning takes a lot of pressure off.

We made another pass on that area but could only turn a couple shorts. We spent the rest of the morning fishing all new areas. I boxed a just barely keeper from a nearby channel swing at 9:30 am and then made the one major mistake of the day. After I caught that keeper, I didn’t retie. We moved to a pocket with docks right next to a channel swing. I pitched up under a walkway and when I tightened my line, it was already swimming out to deeper water. I set the hook and SNAP went my line. AAAARRRRRGGGGG and a few other choice words spewed out. I found later by refishing that dock, there was an unseen underwater cable that my line was likely against when I set the hook. Could I have prevented that fish from breaking me off? I don’t know but if I had retied, I might have.

We ran up above Larry Gale and I pulled into another deep channel swing end. Here I hit another largemouth in the 4 pound range at 10:30 am. The better fish seemed to be a little deeper than the rest. I had a few other bites but I couldn’t hook every one. They were mystery bites. I didn’t feel a tap or even see my line move, just pick up on the jig and the fish was there. Those are the hardest bites to land for me. We ran up to the area I fished in the Heartland Pro-Am but we didn’t get a bite. The water was about 5 degrees colder and I gave up on this area pretty quickly. Ben didn’t and he figured out the bite. More on that on Day 2.

We worked our way back down lake and I caught my final keeper of the day off a channel bank in a small creek. This one was also just barely 15". After lunch the bite really slowed down and the bites we had didn’t hold on for the most part. Willie and I really worked hard but I just couldn’t get the limit fish on the line. Willie was really optimistic and thought I would be in the top five with what I had. I wasn’t as sure since the bite was pretty good in the morning. Surely someone had a big sack of fish to blow everything open. My bag turned out to weigh 11.71 lbs and put me in 4^th place. Good call Willie!

Ben and I had our usual conference to decide what we should do. He was sitting in 2^nd Place and I didn’t want to get in his way. He said that his upper-arm fish were biting better in the afternoon and to come on up. It seemed to me that the fish I caught on the lower to mid-arm shut down in the afternoon and running up lake seemed like what we both needed to do by mid-morning.

I started outside of the rock area on the other end of the channel swing. As I worked towards the spot I caught my best fish on Day 1, I stuck a short fish and then I slipped a largemouth in the livewell at 7:30 am. The plan was to stick with a brown jig early in the clearer water and then switch over to a black/blue Eiron Breaker Hammer jig later. We jumped through four more channel swings and I had several bites but couldn’t get them to hold onto the jig. Why they were shut down still puzzles me but it was the same for Ben. The conditions were very similar to the first day.

We moved up-lake at mid-morning and I had a good fish pull off on a bluff wall. No indication of a strike but I fed too much line to allow the jig a straight drop. When it didn’t drop as far as it was supposed to, the fish was already swimming with it. I moved to where Ben was fishing and he still had yet to box a keeper. I asked him where I should start to stay out of his way and he lined me out. We worked the upper end of the section he was on and I missed another bite. This was getting very frustrating so I switched over to a 3/16 oz finesse head to try to entice a bite from a keeper spotted bass. I doubled back and when I met Ben, I finally got a 12 ½" Spot to hang on at noon. Ben had his second fish in the livewell and wanted to let that area rest until the end of the day.

I hit several small channel ends in the general area but nothing was working. Time was running out so I went back to Ben’s area and he said than he had four keepers now and they were starting to turn on. Well, I surely couldn’t tell by my results. Ben went down to the far end of the swing and worked toward me. I did catch a couple short fish on the finesse worm but when Ben said he had his limit and was leaving, I had to go back to the 3/8 oz Hammer jig. Live or die, make it happen. I figured one more fish would keep me in the top 6 and a boater slot at Divisionals.

All the time I’ve spent fishing a jig, you would figure I’d know what to do to make them bite when it is tough. It took me exactly 5 hours of futile fishing at the end of Day 1 and another 6 hours and 15 minutes on Day 2 to get it. I missed another fish that felt me and spit it out before I could set the hook at 1:45 pm. The bulb finally clicked on and I remembered what Ben said the night prior, "They wanted it like they did at Taneycomo." Ben had won an ABA tournament down there when the water cooled down to 43 degrees and he had to drag the jig instead of popping it. I was popping it all day and although the fish were eating it, I couldn’t feel the strike. When I popped the jig, that’s when the fish felt me and spit it out before I could set the hook. Better late than never, Einstein.

We had to leave at 2:15 pm to make it back with a little time to spare. We worked one last section and I started to drag the jig off the rock ledges. BANG, short fish. A few more casts and "Whoop, is that a fish?" Swing and yep, good fish and into the boat with a solid spotted bass at 2 pm. Two more casts and there’s another fish. Nope, to short and back into the lake. Tick, tick, tick, running out of time. Two more casts but nothing. Time to run and we cut every buoy and point to make sure we got back to the ramp in time for weigh-in. We had plenty of time and even made a few more casts near the ramp. Time to see where everyone shook out but I had to wait as I was bumping fish during the weigh-in.

Everyone had a tough time except for a few and the line was pretty short compared to Day 1. I grabbed a bag and retrieved what I had. The scales read 6.23 lbs but I wasn’t sure if that was enough to remain as a boater. Ben came up behind me and dropped his limit on the scales. 12 lbs something and this was going to be close. I could tell Ben was nervous and he stayed hidden while the results were being tallied. After the year of bad luck fishing Ben and I have had, he deserved to get this one. The list of names where called out and my good friend Kevin Smith was Lucky 13 alternate, great job Kevin! Up the list they went and there was a log jam around 15 lbs. More names kept being called and the list was getting shorter. Finally, mine was called out in 3^rd Place. Ben was still in hiding and when the 2^nd Place angler was called, I felt relief for Ben. Everything finally came together for him and his consistency paid off. Congratulations Ben! (editors note:  read Ben's Journal - Click Here)

I needed three more decent keepers for the weekend to make a challenge but it wasn’t meant to be. I definitely had the bites but I didn’t figure out how to hook them until late in the game. My finish is really attributed to Ben and us working together. Putting two heads together has worked really well for us and he didn’t have to share any of his water with me. Hopefully we can work together at Divisionals in Mississippi next June to have the same result.

Day 2 fish. 3^rd Place with 17.94 lbs.

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Heartland Pro-Am

Lake of the Ozarks

Practice Day

10/22/06

Since we both had the Missouri TBF State Championship coming up, Ben Henderson and I teamed up for a day of practice. We dropped in at Shawnee Bend to look around but after an hour of fishing, we decided water that was almost as clear as Table Rock Lake wasn’t to our liking. Out we went to Hurricane Deck. We poked around from there almost to PB-II. Our morning was very unproductive. We had a couple of shorts from docks near the back of a couple creek arms but couldn’t find much. We tried bluff ends in the wind on the main lake with a spinnerbait but the shad were down in about 15 feet of water. We gave up and decided to make a change.

Up the Niangua arm we went to the upper reaches. We started on gravel flats with docks but even with the presence of shad, we couldn’t turn a fish. The water was a little cooler up there and so we decided to try a steeper bank that led off from the flats. Maybe the fish had begun to pull off the flats to deeper water. I tied on a 3/8 oz Eiron Breaker Hammer jig with a blue Zoom chunk trailer. When absolutely dumbfounded and lost, always go back to the old stand-by. This proved to be the right move as the first bank produced a 4+ largemouth and a couple more fish. The next rock drop-off produced another 3 ½ pound fish and a couple other bites. Ben was throwing his Missouri Craw 5/16 oz roundhead and wasn’t getting bit. He finally caught a fat spotted bass under a dock walkway. We ran out of time but had some fun in 2 hours. Maybe we found something. Neither one of us had fished the Niangua arm but once before so we were pretty happy with what we found. We hit about 5 spots and got bit on each one of them to solidify the pattern.

Tournament Day

10/29/06

The weather during practice was cloudy and cool but a big cold front came through on Friday while Saturday was cold and clear. Sunday was also clear but turned out to be pretty warm. It didn’t register to me what was going to happen with the bite on the second day after the front rolled through, it would get tough.

I was paired up with a young man from Ozark, Dwight Lewis. We ran up to my primary area and I pulled out a couple quick short fish on a wiggle wart but soon found that was about it. I worked my jig over the areas that had been productive but I couldn’t get the fish to hang onto it. The drum were another story, I stuck 6 or 7 big fat ones. I did miss one fish from a concrete pillar behind a dock that was my fault but other than a handful of shorts, I couldn’t make it happen. My non-boater was able to coax a nice 2.65 lb largemouth on a brown 5/16 oz jig and it turned out to be enough to get him a check. At 1 pm, I had to make a move just to get some points to stay in contention for the Championship.

I bailed out and ran down lake to one of the creek arms that Ben showed me. There was one dock in the back which in the past had produced a couple fish and there was shad around it. I pulled out a ¼ oz Eiron Breaker finesse head tipped with a green pumpkin Zoom finesse worm and got to work in hopes of collecting a small spotted bass or two for points. We worked around one side and then back to the last slip on the back side. I pitched the worm to the far corner of the stall and hopped it twice. I didn’t feel a tick but it went "dead". I set the hook on my only keeper of the day, a largemouth just barely over the 15" mark. We hit several more docks in the back of a couple more creeks but couldn’t add to the pot.

The day was tough for everyone, the upper echelon were only able to get a limit after working hard all day. Most came from docks in my "bail out" area in the mid-lake. I finished in 61^st Place. What should I have done differently? Not a whole lot really. I found a good group of fish but the weather really turned them off. Usually, dirty water fish are ok after a front comes through but not this time. I should have been fishing deeper docks in clearer water, based on the results of the field. I hadn’t had any experience in the lower Niangua so that was ruled out. I did know the general area that Wes won from but I talked myself out of looking for a small limit of spotted bass. That was what I typically could catch from there and what I did last year. I didn’t draw a check then either. This year, it only took a little over 7 pounds to draw a check. Live and learn. Swing hard during pre-front or stable weather. Stay close and be conservative during post-front conditions. A small limit will go a long way then.

Dwight dropped into 16^th Place with his one fish. This was Dwight’s first Heartland tournament as he is recently out of high school. On a very tough day, he held in there very well and even with only one fish, placed high by staying focused. Watching the start of what appears to be a life-long tournament calling was what made the day worth it for me.

Also, congratulations to Jim Lovan of Springfield, MO. He works as a sales representative at the Bass Pro Shops - Tracker Boat Center in my hometown and I’ve gotten to know Jim this past winter. He had me make a special jig color for him and I named it "Rusty Craw" just based on its overall look. He did very well in the back of Terry Thomas’ boat and won the Amateur with the Eiron Breaker jigs I made for him. Great job Jim!

Jim Lovan – 1^st Place, Amateur Division and the winning jig.

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Heartland Pro-Am Championship

Grand Lake, Oklahoma

9/29&30/06

After fishing the Best of the Best Championship the weekend prior with Ben Henderson and finishing a dismal 19^th place on a lake that we knew pretty well, I knew I had to make a change in fishing tactics for this tournament. Ben and I had the bites to place high enough to draw a small check but once again we couldn’t get the fish in the boat. On Day 1, I lost several fish on a tube (imagine that) and I vowed to find a different pattern at Grand that would allow me to solidly hook what fish I did get to bite. That meant focusing on a jig as much as possible. I figured the number of bites I would get would drop but at least I had a better chance at landing them.

I had only three previous days of experience on Grand but I would get two practice days before the tournament. I felt good about that. I’ve found for myself I’ve done better when practicing right before the tournament or not at all. Things discovered a week or two prior to the events seem to just distract me into working a pattern that has already disappeared. I’d rather figure out what the fish are doing at the moment instead of a week ago.

Very little information was available on the internet but I did get an idea that it would take 25-26 pounds to win (correct on that) and getting a limit each day would put you in the hunt for a check. The fish always seem to be in transition and scattered this time of year, not really in the back of creeks but not very deep either. I followed my own Bassin’ By the Numbers article and applied the information gleaned from this series. I’m not a deep water angler so that pattern was out. Shallow docks in stained water with shad were the key to this time of year. I did some map and aerial photograph study and tried to tie the right combination of docks with structure, namely flat coves and big flats midway in large creek arms. I also had a friend tell me about an area near the dam that was productive for him in the past.

Practice Day 1

I had a friend ride with me from my National Guard unit and having an extra rod in the boat turned out to be blessing. I found shad in the back of flat gravel pockets but I couldn’t get them to come up on a small Eiron Breaker buzzbait. My partner was throwing a baby chug bug and had several small fish come up on it and was thrashed by a bass about three pounds that came off half way to the boat. That told me the fish were in the area and a pattern I’d found a few years ago at Lake of the Ozarks might work. This included fishing the last two or three docks in the back of the coves. Bingo! We ran several pockets that morning around the dam and put a number of fish in the boat including a nice three pound fish.

We moved to a major creek arm midway up the lake but couldn’t put anything together except a bunch of short fish around a bridge piling. I didn’t like what I saw so I crossed that spot off the map. We fished another creek arm which had a little more color to the water. I checked a long series of docks on a big flat and found fish relating to shad there also. We poked around in a couple of other smaller pockets and I had two solid bass eat my jig, one from a big shallow stump and one from the last dock in a pocket. I tried to shake them off but they wouldn’t let go and they hooked themselves. I needed to cut the hook off my jig but didn’t do it. I did shake several fish off. At the end of a 12 hour day, we’d found a good pattern and I figured I had boated about 12 lbs of fish but could have had more.

Practice Day 2

I practiced with another friend of mine whom I was staying with for the week. He took a day off work to go with me. We spent the day poking around and marking the map. I didn’t hook anything big but I didn’t want to. I shook most everything off and kept moving along. Lyn hadn’t fished like that and made the comment that it wasn’t really the most fun way of fishing. I explained to him that we had found a pattern and were only looking for places that were similar. I had to catch them during the tournament, practice fish meant nothing except that they wouldn’t bite the next day.

We looked for specific types of docks in specific types of coves. The banks had to be flat gravel and the docks were better if they were small, older docks sitting in 2-6 feet of water. The presence of shad in the back of the coves was also a must. I was throwing a brown 5/16 oz roundhead Eiron Breaker jig with a green pumpkin Zoom craw. I had tried watermelon red and green pumpkin jigs but seemed to get more and better bites on the brown jig. Lyn showed me one other lure that would also work. I gave him one of my spinning rods with a 3/16 oz Eiron Breaker finesse head tipped with a green pumpkin finesse worm and he tore up the fish on it. He didn’t have anything big but bites came on every dock. That bite played a crucial role for me in the tournament.

Tournament Day 1

I drew Mike Cerutti and we were boat #39 based on my finish for the year. Mike was the runner-up in the Amateur division last year and a good angler. We made the long run down to the dam area and got to work. I hoped for a topwater bite in the backs of a series of pockets but we only came up with a couple of short fish. I could tell the bite was changing from the past couple of days. The shad weren’t up like they were either. Mike did put a small keeper in the livewell early on a spinnerbait so he had a start. I gave up on the topwater bite and pulled out my brown jig. I went to work and had three smallish keepers in the livewell pitching to docks. I also had a good number of short fish as well. I used a watermelon red baby brush hog with the tips dipped in chartreuse for a trailer. The fish were pretty active and the extra action seemed to help.

At 9:30 am we pulled out of that area and went to a large creek arm. I pulled up onto a large flat to work the scattered docks. The docks were separated by a good distance so in between them I just cast out my jig and swam it back to the boat. We came up to a boat ramp and Mike made the comment "Look at all those baitfish. You’d think that there is a fish around them somewhere." On the next cast, my jig got heavy and I leaned into a solid 2 pound fish. That was a good bonus fish! I didn’t expect to catch anything swimming the jig but keeping a lure wet will pay off at times. We worked around the series of docks and by 10:30 am I had my limit but it was small. I was happy with that as I had my better bites later in the day during practice. Most of the bites came from ¼ to ½ ways out of the dock stalls. The wind was starting to kick up to about 20 mph and made for an interesting trip back to the ramp that day. My Nitro 591 handled it great and Mike stated that Nitro has really changed their ride in the years since he had last ridden in one.

We poked around trying to stay out of the majority of the wind and worked our way back up lake. One of the good things about the pattern I’d found, it didn’t take long to fish the "sweet spot" in each cove and move on. I managed to break off two fish that may have helped me a little, one got wrapped up in a cross bar and fishing line in the front of a dock and I flat snapped my line on another. I tried not to let it bother me but I knew that every ounce would make a difference in a tournament like this.

At 1 pm we made one more move to my final creek arm. Mike and I made a pass through a series of docks with jigs but I could only come up with a couple short fish. The bite seemed to have faded as the front passed through and the barometric pressure must have changed quickly because of the wind screaming like it was. I didn’t want to but I picked up my nemesis, a tube. I have caught so many quality fish on it in the past and when the bite is tough, it seems to cause a reaction bite. We moved to another set of docks and I fought the wind long enough to make a perfect pitch between a pontoon boat and the dock. As I hopped the tube out from the back corner I felt a familiar TICK and I hammered the hook home. My best fish of the day of about 2 ¾ lbs was quickly dropped in the livewell and out went a squeaker.

We worked that area out and I decided to make another stop on another set of docks in a large cove. The cove was open to the wind and it proved fruitless. I had one last spot close to the ramp that had a series of brushpiles along a steep bank. As I ran to this spot, I spotted a small cove that had some water running into it. Eureka! I whipped the boat into the cove and I could see shad flipping up next to the pool of freshwater coming in. I grabbed my rod with a baby brush hog on it. Mike tossed in a senko and he swung on a decent fish but half way to the boat it came off. I made a cast into the fray and felt a bump on my line but I missed it. I reeled in and cast back into the same spot, thump and in the net with my last keeper of the day to cull a couple more ounces.

We ran back to check in and were the very last boat in with less than a minute to spare. The bag line was long but most people only had a few fish and the day turned out to be fairly tough. About 13 ½ lbs was leading it and I weighed 8.81 lbs for 14^th place. I wasn’t completely out of it and with a 12 pound bag on Day 2, I could possibly draw a check.

Tournament Day 2

Joe Rantz and I pealed out of the ramp for the place I had stopped at the end of Day 1. The water was turned off and the shad were out in the middle of the cove. I worked a spook and a jig but neither one of us could raise a fish. No problem, just 10 minutes burned up. On the horse we went for the ride down to the dam. We fished jigs around the docks but I could tell there was something wrong. I had four bites by 9:30 am and every one of them pulled off. I decided to make a change.

I pulled out my spinning rod with 8 lb line and a 3/16 oz finesse head. I quickly put two small keepers in the livewell, one of which was the ugliest bass I’ve ever seen. I had caught it in practice on Wednesday also, it was so nasty looking there was no mistaking it. It was sickly and looked like a cross between a walleye and a bass. It was over 14 inches but I would bet it wouldn’t have weighed a pound. But it was a pound that I needed. Joe also had a good start to the day by dragging a 3.34 lb spotted bass out from under a dock on a finesse worm.

Big Joe’s spotted bass.

I went back to refish a lone dock in a cove that produced a number of bites the day prior. I missed a couple of fish on my jig earlier that morning so I knew they were still there. I worked all the way around the dock and pitched my finesse worm into the dock slip. I felt the heavy sensation of a fish and set the hook. I didn’t budge the fish and only got a couple a slow head shakes before my line snapped. AAAARRRRRGGG! That was the one bite I needed. I lost it a little bit and slammed my rod down into the bottom of the boat. I calmed down and knew I had to do something different to land these fish from around the docks without breaking off again. I dug out a rod with 12 lb line and tied on a ¼ oz finesse head. Hopefully the larger line size would balance out the heavier weight and make the same fall rate.

We went to the productive creek arm from Day 1 and went straight to three docks in one pocket. Joe pitched to the back corner of the first dock with a Sweet Beaver and his line shot up underneath it. He muscled the fish out and dropped a small keeper in the livewell. We moved to the next dock and I broke off a fish in a brushpile in front of it. Joe whacked another bass but it was just short of being a keeper. I got lucky and made a pitch way back under a gap in the floats and my line immediately started to get heavy. I snapped the hook home and carefully fought my best fish of the day out from the dock, one nearly 3 lbs. That fish really took some of the weight off and I settled down a little bit. We worked around the dock again and back into a dredged out area to the third dock. I pitched to a float corner, my line sank about a foot and then it started to slowly swim out towards the boat. I set the hook and I could see the bass swimming towards the boat in the water. It didn’t really fight, maybe it didn’t realize it was hooked. I brought the bass along side the boat and flipped it in. It was bigger than I realized, better that a couple pounds. That was #4 in the livewell.

We worked several more docks in the area but the banks were steeper and we only managed a couple more shorts. The pattern was pretty specific so we moved to another flat with a series of docks. The second dock we came to gave up my 5^th keeper of the day, a feisty largemouth a little under 15 inches from the front corner. It was 12:20 pm and I was in good shape, time to get rid of a couple small fish. Continuing down the row of docks, I was dragging at least two fish from every dock and I could tell Joe was getting a little frustrated fishing behind me. He was after a good check also but that finesse worm was catching everything before he had a chance at them. I then lost a quality fish in a stall because of a boat lift. There wasn’t a boat on it but the lift arm about ¾ of the way out was down in the water. I pitched to the back corner and after about 3 hops out, my line started to move. I set the hook and the fish wasn’t happy about getting stuck by this green pumpkin worm. It thrashed under the floats and I had it coming out but it dove under the arm of the lift. I just kept pressure on it and tried to run in there with my trolling motor. Then it just came off, not much to do about that fish. If you don’t get the bite, you’ll never have a chance at getting it in the boat.

We finished that pass and hit the back-ends of a couple other coves without success. I wanted to leave but we decided to hit that one productive dock again. I hammered a couple short fish from the brush in front of it and then in a shaded gap under the side, my last keeper of the day snapped up my finesse head. I culled out that ugly looking fish, which was alive and kicking to my surprise and that was the end of my keeper fish for the day at 1:30 pm.

We moved to a couple more areas and boated some more short fish before hitting the pocket with running water with about 15 minutes left to fish. We made two passes on it and then Joe stuck his third keeper to finish out his day. He was pretty happy about that fish. We went to the ramp and waited for a bag. I watched Shawn Kowal pull his monster fish out of his livewell and saw what it was like to sack up $39,000. What a bag of fish! Joe weighed his three fish and had a total of 9.04 lbs and a 6^th place check worth $550. Great job Joe! Joe and I knew each other several years ago from a bass club that we were in together.

I bettered my weight a little from Day 1 with 9.93 lbs for a two day total of 18.81 lbs, putting me in 11^th place overall. I was shooting for a Top-10 finish and a check but it wasn’t meant to be. This was my best finish for the year so that was something to be proud of, especially against the caliber of anglers who were at the tournament. I had my opportunity to move up on Day 2 with a good sack but breaking a fish off early on light line killed me. I was very pleased with how my practice went and the adjustments I made on the water on Day 2. I stayed with my fish but gave them something more subtle to generate strikes after my jig bite went away. I wish I would have discovered that prior to the tournament and had my setup ready but it will be something to apply to future tournaments.

This past year has been a great learning experience for me. The biggest thing I’ve learned is that at this level you can’t make any mistakes and a plain limit just isn’t good enough. You have to put a decent fish in the boat to separate yourself from the pack. Focus is a big key also. Every cast, every decision has to be dead on and that is something I have to work on. I found the pattern to place very high at Grand. I knew I was doing things right when the Davis Brothers, Mike Eutsler and Dave Barker were fishing the same general areas as me. The difference between myself and these guys is that they make very few poor casts and over the course of the day, they are able to generate more and better quality strikes fishing the same number of areas because of their abilities and focus. They are professionals at this game and their success level is something I am aspiring towards. It isn’t a lot of fun not talking to your partner much in the boat during the day but if I want to reach the next level of success, I’d better step up my focus another notch. I can see where I need to go; now I just have to work hard and get there. It’s been a good year even though the success hasn’t been there in the name of a check. Sometimes the best medicine is the kind that doesn’t taste very good.
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Stockton Lake

BATS Buddy Tournament

9/3/06

I was joined for this tournament with my daughter Emily again. She wasn’t too happy with me after I found out that the tournament started at 7 instead of 6 am. She wasn’t happy because we were already at the lake and wondering where Mark (the tournament director) was. I wasn’t the only fool in the dark because there were four other boats at the ramp when I arrived at 5:20 am. So I talked with several guys while Emily curled up in the front seat of the truck. No harm done, just a little lost sleep.

After the positive results from the past two tournaments on that one little point, I pretty much decided that we were going to just work that area all day. I really didn’t have anything else going on so it was do or die. We were all alone in the area and were able to do whatever we needed to catch fish. I fished for well over an hour with only one short fish coming into my Nitro. Emily fished for a little while but grew board with the lack of action and decided it was nap time. That was alright, I wasn’t doing much better than she was.

The water temperature was much cooler than it was last week, 77 instead of 83 degrees and the shad were not really that active. I could still see schools on the LCR but they were not being bothered by larger fish. I had one blowup on a buzzbait but the fish totally missed it and wouldn’t take a throw-back bait. A crankbait didn’t result in any strikes nor did a big worm. I finally hooked into a short fish on a baby brush hog right on the tip of the point. I was getting a feeling that the bit was a little off.

I complete that pass and turned around with a BPS green pumpkin Stik-O with the tips dipped in chartreuse dye. I rigged it wacky-style on 6/20 Power Pro braided line on a spinning rod. I thought there were still some fish up shallow but they might want something a little less intrusive. I was right and quickly put a couple short fish in the boat. Emily was done with her nap by then and wanted to net the next fish for practice. Ok, no problem.

A couple casts later I tossed a little too close to the bank and I ripped the bait away to keep it from settling into the rocks. As it started to sink, I felt the tap of another fish and I snapped the Mustad hook home. I told Emily to get the net ready but it wasn’t very big. I brought the fish along side of the boat and she scooped it up like a pro. I didn’t think it was big enough but Emily wanted to be the measuring judge as well. So on the board it went and by golly, it was a 15" sweeper just barely touching the line. Good enough and into the livewell at 8:35 am. Back to work.

Emily got interested in fishing again but it only lasted for about ½ an hour. Then it was messing around in the boat plus taking a break long enough to net and measure every fish that I caught. That was fine with me. It was fun just to talk to her as I fished.

I pretty much threw every bait I could think of on that point except a couple. I caught several more shorts and then a solid keeper about 2 ¼ pounds on a watermelon red baby brush hog at 9:50 am. I tried a pass with a finesse worm after that but didn’t draw a single strike. Time to go some where else. I cranked some flatter gravel areas in search of some hidden chunk rock on a roll-off but I guess it is still hidden. I did slip a keeper walleye in the tank which drilled a shad crankbait. I later filleted it for an elderly couple across the street at home. They got a big kick out of that as they rarely get fresh fish to eat, especially a nice walleye.

I hit another nearby point but still couldn’t raise a single fish. Back to the goldmine of a point to beat on it some more. I hadn’t tried a little jig so I tied on a brown 5/16 oz Eiron Breaker roundhead jig with a green pumpkin craw trailer. I worked around the point and slapped a small drum in the mouth. Emily hadn’t seen a drum before and was pretty interested in that fish. A couple more casts and I felt a fish pick up my jig. I buried the hook in this fish and I could tell it was a decent fish. After just catching a drum, I thought this was a bigger drum as it didn’t fight like a bass. It made a decent run at first but then it started the "swirl-circle" fight typical of a drum. Emily was ready with the net at any rate and when it came up I was totally surprised by a 3 ½ pound largemouth.

So just before noon we had our weight for the day. I had a good fish pull off a few casts later and another fish spit my jig out about as fast as it took it in. I knew there was something turning the bite off (besides me beating on them all day!) as the few strikes I was getting was progressively deeper throughout the day and several fish gave me the double tap. What I mean by that is that I believe sometimes when fish are in a negative mood, they will sometimes strike at a bait but will blow it back out immediately. You set the hook and there is nothing there. The first tap is your bait going in and the second one is the bait coming back out.

I tried to give the point a break by fishing at a different location but the move didn’t prove fruitful at the new point. The last 45 minutes of the day was given to the point but only a couple more shorts showed up. The ride was a little bumpy on the way back in as I fished to the very last minute and had to run hard to make it back in time. Everyone had a tough day and we finished in 3^rd place with 7.25 pounds. One more keeper would have been enough to push us over the top. Too bad this will likely be my last trip up to Stockton for a while as my schedule dictates trips to Pomme and Grand Lake later this month. Hopefully I can squeeze in another trip up there this fall when the water cools but by then this group of fish will likely be long gone. It was fun while it lasted.

Thanks for the check Mark!

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Saturday Night Bass Assassins Buddy

Stockton Lake

8/26/06

After last weekend’s results and finally finding a group of fish, I was excited to head up to Stockton for another tournament. I figured the group of fish I had located wasn’t going to go any place soon unless the weather changed the lake conditions but without any rain, everything remained the same. I asked Brennan Halbersma to go with me. Brennan is 15 years old and is a member of our TBF youth club. He is a pretty darn good fisherman for his young age and he finished the year in 3^rd Place against some very stiff competition in the TBF youth division. I backed out of a promised trip earlier this year so I had to make up for it. This was only Brennan’s second night fishing trip and he was pretty excited about it.

It was a light turnout for the tournament but we were ready to go no matter what. It is always nice to shoot the bull with the guys prior to takeoff and the camaraderie is why a lot of guys keep coming back to Stockton. Everyone knows the fishing hasn’t been that great this year but why not have some fun?

At 7 pm we jumped my Nitro 591 up on plane and pushed the Mercury to the max. There would only be a little more than an hour to fish before darkness fell and I’m not much of a night angler so I wanted to do what I could before the lights went out. We also had a storm coming in and the clouds showed up right at takeoff. That would play into our decision making process later in the night.

Brennan and I ran to the point that was productive for me last weekend and got right to work. The shad hadn’t moved away and fish were already working the schools but those were probably white bass. We made two passes on the point and only turned a couple of short fish. I threw a 10" worm and a baby brush hog while Brennan stayed with a black/blue jig. It was getting close to dark and I switched to a 1/8 oz Eiron Breaker white/red buzzbait and I gave Brennan a chartreuse/blue crankbait to make another pass on the point. We made about 5 casts when Brennan said he had a fish on. I asked him if it was a good one and he said, "Na, it doesn’t feel very big." Famous last words but I could tell by the bend in his rod it was a decent fish. He finally got it up next to the boat and I corralled our first keeper of the night in the net. It was long and skinny but it was a start.

We finished that pass and I idled back to the other side of the point to try again. I went back further onto the pea gravel and chunked my "Little Squeak" buzzbait some more. The first cast resulted in a good swirl right on the bank but the fish missed. As we came to the transition to chunk rock, another solid keeper rocked my buzzbait and at 8:20 pm we were in good shape.

By the time we finished out that pass it was totally dark. I turned on the black light to start a slow pass with a 10" blue fleck worm and Brennan went to a 7" red shad worm. Brennan quickly realized why I had fluorescent line on and why he should have asked me why I told him to rig one rod with it earlier in the week when he was preparing his tackle. He was having a hard time determining where he was casting and feeling the bottom. Couple that with a huge cloud of bugs descending on us at dark and driving Brennan crazy, he had his hands full. I honestly scooped two handfuls of dead bugs out of the boat when we moved later in the night.

Ignoring the bugs, we slowly worked around the point. Half way down the side, my line did a small side-step. I reeled down and hammered the Mustad hook home but this wasn’t an average fish. She made a strong run out in front of the boat. I yelled "net" to Brennan but maybe he didn’t hear me very clearly with all the bugs in his ears. He finally jumped down into the bottom of the boat but couldn’t come up with the net. In this few seconds of commotion, I had to make the decision of what to do with this fish. Instead of waiting for the net, I decided to boat flip the fish because it was coming perfectly towards the center of the boat from the front. I didn’t realize how big the fish was until she was coming over the side and landed with a thud at Brennan’s feet between the consoles. The first thing out of Brennan’s mouth was "Oh my God, that fish is huge!" Flipping the fish over the side wasn’t my brightest move of the night but luckily she was hooked solidly.

So at 8:50 pm, we had three fish for around 8 lbs. I figured it would take about 10 lbs to win, that was the winning weight from the night before and most night tournaments. I would have liked to stay put for the rest of the night but there was a storm coming in and I really wanted to be closer to the ramp because of it. We fished another channel swing nearby and made another quick pass on the point but only came up with a couple of short fish. By this time, the lightning was a little to close for comfort. A couple of flashes were pretty close and were so bright that you could hear the shad scatter on the surface. Time to move.

We ran a series of brushpiles but were unsuccessful. We hit a lighted boat ramp and I pulled a short fish on a black/blue 5/8 oz Eiron Breaker Chatter Hammer from the end of the ramp. By this time, the rain started in earnest and the wind picked up out of the west. We only had about an hour left to fish, just enough time to work two more piles. The first one was a bust so we made one last move for the night. We went to the windy side of the lake into a pocket with a pile. I could tell Brennan was getting pretty tired but to his credit, he kept chunking. He stayed with his homemade jig and it paid off. With about 15 minutes left to fish, Brennan made a cast right to the bank. The jig didn’t hit the bottom and then Brennan barked he had a BIG fish. In the dark they all seem like monsters but I had the net ready. The way it was fighting I though he had a 3-4 pound fish but it shrank in the net. I slapped it on the board and it just touched the 15" line and into the box it went. Now we had our goal of about 10 pounds. We poked around this pocket until time ran out and I boated one more short on the Chatter Hammer. Time to give up and I’m glad I didn’t have to run very far in the wind and rain while it was pitch black.

We checked in at the ramp a little early but found everyone already there and had weighed their fish. Tough night for everyone else. We sacked our fish and Brennan lugged them to the scales. We had a nice sack of 4 fish that nearly weighed the target of 10 pounds and Big Bass with the 4 lbs 6 oz boat flipped fish. Brennan was super excited but quickly fell asleep on the way home. I couldn’t blame him.

It was fun to fish with one of our "students" from the youth club. It was also very gratifying to see the results of Ben Henderson and my hard work with running the club. Brennan is a very good angler at 15 years and I could see the thought process working in his mind of the fishing principles that we have taught him in "class". Couple that with his youthful excitement and it was a very rewarding night for me as well. The next morning Brennan made me take him to Bass Pro before dropping him at his house. He spent every last penny of his winnings on fishing tackle. Now that’s a man of my heart!

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Stockton Lake

BATS Buddy Tournament

8/20/06

I had intended to fish this tournament with my daughter Emily but after a trip to the White Water theme park on Friday and fishing our youth club tournament on Saturday, she was too worn out to get up on Sunday for a long day at the lake. I tried to wake her up at 4 am to go to the lake but I could tell it was a little too much for her and I told her to go back to sleep. I was a little bummed but it wasn’t that big of a deal, I didn’t want her to think she had to go. Even worse, I didn’t want her in the boat all day and not enjoy it. There will be another day.

I gassed up my Nitro 591 and I can say that I am very pleased that I hung a 150 hp Mercury OptiMax on it instead of a 200 now that the price of gas is pushing three dollars. $20 of gas is enough for me to fish all day as long as I stay on one arm of the lake. I gave up 10 mph but I just couldn’t justify the extra $6,500 price tag and then using that much more gasoline because I wouldn’t be able to keep my foot out of the throttle. If you have it, you got to use it! Some boats are able to pass me but I can’t think of one time that a boat which passed me was sitting on the location I wanted to fish. I believe I made a good tradeoff and I would think that more people will be looking at boat and motor size when they make a purchase in the future.

My game plan for the day was to fish stumps on big flats with a tube or worm and hope that I could corral a couple more fish than the last trip. I spent a few hours practicing on Stockton the weekend before after Ben Henderson and I donated our money at Table Rock. I found one main lake point that was loaded with shad and another pocket that I caught several shorts out of but never landed a keeper. With a couple of flats that we had been catching bass from the past couple of months, I figured at least I would have plenty of water to fish.

I was boat #1 and right at 6 am, Mark called out my number and off I went. A storm was rolling in and I thought I should hit a couple of channel swings with a Spook in clearer water to try for a topwater bite before heading up onto my first flat. I hit four points and didn’t raise a single fish. It rained briefly and after that broke up, I went up on a huge stump flat to give a buzzbait a try. I quickly worked the area over but could tell that wasn’t the ticket. The shad were gone from the area and they had likely pulled out because the water had dropped about a foot the last few weeks. I flipped a little while but nothing turned out.

I gave up on that area by 7:30 am and decided to hit a couple brushpiles on the main lake. Several anglers that I had talked to seemed to catching fish on the main lake early in the mornings from deeper water. I drug a ¾ oz Eiron Breaker football jig down a drop and through the brush but nothing was interested. Hmm, now what? Time to hit the backup areas and hope for the best.

I zipped over to the main point that I had found shad to be piled up on last weekend. I hadn’t turned a single fish from it last weekend but with shad on it, bass had to be close by. I had only a couple of other areas to try so why not? I tied on a white with red 1/8 oz Eiron Breaker "Little Squeak" buzzbait and went to work on the point. When I came to the very tip of the point, a good fish swirled on the bait. I ripped my bait back to the boat and immediately pitched back to the rings with a black/blue Bass Pro Shops tube with a 4/0 Mustad tube hook. The lure never reached the bottom and my first fish of the day was in the livewell at 8:45 am. I fished the buzzbait around the point and into a cove. I boated several chunky largemouths but they were just a little short of 15". Time to move.

I went to the cove that produced shorts for me last weekend but I only had one swirl on the buzzbait. This fish wouldn’t take a throwback bait. I did notice that the shad were not in the cove but out in the timber lining the channel in front of the pocket. I fooled around in this area but couldn’t get a suspended bass to come out of the timber. Back to the point where my first keeper came from.

I dug out a big crankbait but after 30 minutes of throwing it, I took it off. The point was fairly steep and I wanted a small profile crank like a Deep Little N but I left those at the house. I came up with a Bandit 300 in lime-chartreuse and half way down the side of the point, I had a bite up close to the boat. I thought it was a white bass by the way it hit and I was just going to sling it into the boat because it didn’t fight that much. That was a stupid move that almost cost me a fish as I banged a solid keeper off the side of the boat. Then the fish woke up and made a few runs on short line before I scooped her in the net. That got my heart rate up!

Now I had two solid keepers off of one point and several shorts came from the same area by 11 am. I turned around and dug out a watermelon red Zoom Ol Monster 10" worm and rigged it with a ¼ oz weight and a 4/0 Mustad Ultra Lock worm hook. This is a new hook out this year for Mustad and it has an extra deep Z bend behind the eye. It keeps more plastic in the bend and makes your baits last longer before tearing out. It is a standard wire hook with the great Ultra Point design which is impossible to dull. This is the perfect hook for all types of plastic baits. As I worked back around the point, I felt a familiar tap on my fluorocarbon line and I laid into this fish hard. For about 5 seconds I thought I had the big kicker that I was looking for except that it wouldn’t come up. Then I knew I had something else. After a few minutes of wrestling, a 15 lb channel catfish finally gave in so I could disconnect. Fun but not what I was looking for.

The sun was coming out so off I went to another flat to give the point a rest. I wasted another hour without getting a bite (no shad on the flat, imaging that!). I stopped at a couple of other points in the area but nothing was doing but a few short fish. Back to the productive point. I dug around in my rod locker for something different and came out with a 10" blue fleck power worm on a flipping stick. After about 5 casts, THUMP goes the worm and I ripped the lips on my 3^rd keeper. Now I thought I might have a chance at a check based on how tough the lake has been lately but I really wanted another keeper or even a limit. I still had about 1 ½ hours left to fish so it was doable. I worked the point slowly with the big worm and moved to an adjacent point but no takers. Back to the drawing board and the primary point.

I dropped down to a watermelon red Zoom baby brush hog to hopefully get a bite on a smaller profile bait. How many fish could be on this point anyways? I hooked a couple of short fish but was running out of time. As I came around the point and worked to the last part before it flattened out, I felt the tell-tail tap of a fish. I hammered the hook home and guided the fish into the net. This was my 4^th keeper and I had 5-6 minutes left to fish. I quickly turned around and made a few more casts to the tip of the point. One more bite was possible and on my last cast, WHACK went the brush hog but it turned out to be a feisty flathead catfish. I stowed my gear and made it back to the ramp with a few minutes to spare.

I weighed my four fish for a total of 8.75 lbs for 2^nd Place and a small check to cover my expenses. Based on my results from the entire summer, I felt like I won the lottery by boating four keeper fish on Stockton. As much as I’ve fished this lake, I’ve never really fished the point that was loaded with bass. I’ve fished the general area before but I learned a little more about the lake last weekend. I caught 20 or so fish in addition to the four legals off of that one point. It had a nice steep drop from the channel swinging into it and large rock but no wood cover. The key to it holding fish was likely the presence of shad and the dropping water. This was the best place in the entire area for fish to pull back to. I would have liked to have gone to it first thing in the morning, maybe I could have sacked my 5^th fish from there by spending a little more time on it. I’m glad I went back to it as much as I did. Hopefully it will hold up for a couple more tournaments.

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Stockton Lake

BATS Buddy Tournament

8/6/06

Where to start? Well, the nuts and bolts of the tournament was Team Eisenbacher took first place with one measly largemouth weighing in at 2 lbs 1 oz. It was caught at 9:30 am on a black and blue tube on a mud flat while flipping stumps. Eight other teams went out and fished hard but Stockton Lake was the winner of the day as nobody else was able to boat a keeper. By default, we took home a nice pay check of $365.

To add more to the story, this was a rather proud day for me. I took my ten year old daughter, Emily, with me for her first bass tournament. She has been involved with my Youth Club for the past two years and I wanted her to have a chance to see what goes on at a real tournament before I turn her loose and let her fish the TBF youth tournaments next year. That is if she wants to and she’s ready with her abilities. This was another step in the process.

Ben Henderson and I had spent a little more than a month up at Stockton and have had our lunch handed to us by that lake (no different than yesterday). We have found some fish but haven’t been able to get them in the boat. We fished the Best of the Best a few weeks ago and brought a lone fish to the scales to land in 12^th place out of 30 teams. We had nine keeper bites that day plus a good number of short fish. I lost two on a buzzbait, two on a tube and one on a crankbait. Ben dumped three and put one in the livewell. The two I lost on the tube were broken off with 40 pound braid. We made the right decisions but couldn’t put them in the boat. We both were completely frustrated and knew we missed out on a good paycheck. On a day when most reported only getting bites first thing in the morning, we had something going all day.

Ben and I went back for a night tournament after that and got kicked around again. Ben put one in the box before dark on a crankbait. I lost a keeper fish right next to the boat and Ben had a big fish on for a couple of seconds on a craw but the hook was still in the plastic when he got it back. It took 5 lbs something to get a check. More frustration. I will say that I found a good night bait. Most people will throw a big bladed spinnerbait but I threw a ½ oz black/blue Eiron Breaker Chatter Hammer and landed several fish. Unfortunately, the one I lost was on this bait. The blade just stopped throbbing but I didn’t set the hook hard. I jacked the rest of the fish (a handful of shorts) but it was too late. Ben then fished with a different partner during another tournament and just missed a check again. Same story, several fish just pulled off. I’m sure most have read his sorrowful tail in his journal.

So I made some adjustments to my gear, notably going up to 65 lb Power Pro braid to flip with and also put the swimming pool to good use in the back yard. I took several baits out there and took a good look at how they fall in the water. This opened my eyes. No wonder a tube is so effective, it is very erratic in the water. I also had Emily toss some baits so she could see how bait reacts to movements of the rod and how they move. Pretty good technique if you have a young angler just learning to fish.

At 3:45 am, I woke Emily up and off to the lake we went. She laid the truck seat all the way back and tried to sleep on the way to the lake but I think she was to excited to fall asleep. I spent some time the night before getting the boat ready for the day and that included making sure she had whatever was needed to make it an enjoyable day. When you fish with your regular partner, you don’t think much of it. Just toss in some water and go. This was a long tournament (6 am-3 pm) and I didn’t want it to be a negative experience. To me, the worst thing that a parent can do is force the youth into anything. It just turns them off and something that you love to do may be lost on the child. So I didn’t have any expectations for her, Emily could do whatever she wanted during the day. I just wanted her out there and experience the day.

Before the sun got up, we stayed on the main lake and fish a channel swing with several laydowns on it. We worked topwater (a spook and Emily tossed a chug bug) around them and then flipped a worm in the trees but had no interest in our baits. We also targeted an area of rip-rap without a sniff. I moved to a brush pile and Emily decided it was time to take a nap. That’s fine, it was her day.

I worked the brush pile over with a big worm and came up with a couple of shorts. They were on the inside of the brush. How people catch pile fish is beyond me. Maybe I have to go to a different lake, LOL. I roused Emily from her nap and we ran up to a mud flat littered with stumps. Even though the water was hot, I always seem to be able to catch some fish shallow if you can find the shad. Emily fished for about an hour with a small spinnerbait but the heat was making her sleepy, or maybe it was getting up at 3:45 am. She rolled up against a life jacket and promptly dozed off again.

I worked over the flat, changing between several baits. With the breeze that was blowing there should have been a crankbait bite but I couldn’t turn a single fish. The sun went behind the clouds briefly and I had a largemouth just a hair short of 15 inches crush a 1/8 oz Eiron Breaker white with red buzzbait. I finally broke down and committed to a black and blue tube on 65 lb Power Pro braided line and a 4/0 Mustad tube hook. I quickly stuck a short and then at 9:30 am hammered our only keeper of the day. Emily finally had enough sleep and got a rod back in her hands.

We worked the flat over for a couple more short fish and moved out to deeper water. I worked for a suspended worm bite in the standing timber at mid-day but I never had a bite. We moved back up on the flat and made another pass. A few more shorts and I decided to move to another flat that I hadn’t fished in a long time. We had about an hour to fish but my only bite came as soon as my tube hit the water and I didn’t get a good hookset. We ran back down towards the ramp and I stopped at a brush pile with about 10 minutes to fish.

I pulled out a 3/16 oz Eiron Breaker finesse head matched with a cut-tail worm and made a few casts. I found the pile and shook my bait in place. THUMP but the fish was stuck in the pile. I could feel it shaking its head but wouldn’t come out and I couldn’t horse it out on 10 lb line. I quickly ran the boat to the back side of the pile and kept steady pressure on the fish. After a minute, the fish finally worked loose and was coming up. I knew it was a good sized, maybe two keeper bass would get us close to a check. My heart sank as I finally saw the fish, a 3 lb drum!

We ran back to the ramp but at least we had a fish for Emily to take to the scales. As I was walking up to the truck, Mark Taylor asked me if I had any fish. I told him one and then he said to hold on to it because nobody else had said they had a fish yet. I laughed and thought surely someone would have a couple of bass. There were some good local guys in the tournament. We loaded the boat up and Mark said that my fish was good for the entire tournament. Everyone else zeroed. We bagged our fish and Emily took it to be weighed. She had a big grin on her face that was priceless.

Was this tournament win something huge to write about? As far as the fishing went, no not really. The lake was the winner in this tournament and I was just the lucky one who caught a keeper fish. Nothing to brag about there except I’ll likely have the distinction of weighing the smallest winning bag of the year in an open tournament. I guess that is something.

What was important was that I spent the day with my daughter and hopefully the fishing bug has chomped on her just a little bit. Did she fish all day long like a seasoned Pro? Nope, she took a nap, read a book, went swimming when she got hot, drank lots of water, talked about the birds and other critters, and fished as much as she wanted to. That was fine with me. I was there to see the beaming smile when she took our fish to the scales. If she turns into a serious angler, that is to be seen. What was important to me was that she enjoyed the day, we spent quality time together, and she had the opportunity to experience what I do when I’m fishing a tournament. That was worth the entry fee any day.

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Stockton Lake (Fun Fishing with Family)

7/3/06

I had a 4 day break from work over the holiday weekend and it was time to have some fun hammering some bluegills off the bridge pillars. I took the entire family (Sara, Emily, Ryan and the two dogs, Ralph and George - our new beagles) and my niece Amber. I rigged up all of our rods with a small baitholder hook and a couple of split shots. Two boxes of nightcrawlers in a cooler of ice and we were off. Well, the dogs didn’t really like the curvy trip to the lake and Ralph got sick in the truck. Good thing most of it was on my leg! Why did we bring the dogs again? I thought I was done with throw-up after the kids got out of diapers.

We got to the lake, I washed out the truck and my swim trunks, loaded everyone up for a short jaunt to the bridge pillars. We tied up and went to work. If you want to take a kid fishing and catch a pile of fish, this is the way to do it. The first pillar produced 25-30 big fat bluegills and a couple of crappie, one at 12 inches.

None of the other pillars were as productive as the first one but we caught several hand-sized ‘gills from each one. The fish were about 10 feet deep and we caught them doing two different things. As I came up to the pillar, we would make a few casts around it with the nightcrawler to catch a couple aggressive fish. Just cast it out, pull off a length of line and slowly crank it back. Then I would move the boat right next to the pillar. Everyone would drop their bait right next to the concrete 10-12 feet down and jiggle, then wait. Sometimes they would pile on as soon as it reached the right depth, some of the others were a little shyer and took a minute to bite. We’d catch 5-10 fish off of each pillar and move to the next one.

We dropped 87 fat bluegills on ice in 5 hours to take home to filet. If you don’t think bluegills have much meat on them, I put 4 ½ quarts of filets in the freezer. These will be pretty tasty in the deep fryer. On top of that, the crazy fish didn’t care if the kids were jumping off the other side of the boat for a swim. This was a welcome break from bass fishing. For anyone who is burnt out on the tournament scene, grab the kids or the neighbor and head out to your favorite lake to catch some summertime bluegills. A can of worms and a light rod is all you need for a barrel of fun.

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Saturday Night Bass Assassins

Stockton Lake

7/1/06

After the youth tournament was over and we cleaned up the picnic, Ben and I jumped in the truck to head for Stockton Lake. We decided on a whim that we should go up there and get in on a little night fishing. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not much of a night fisherman but I hadn’t been on Stockton since January and wanted a change of scenery.

We dropped my Nitro in the Little Sac arm and found some stained water with a few shad running around. It was late in the afternoon and the wind had been blowing all day so the fish were pretty active. We stuck a couple of shorts on a black neon BPS tube and then I had a solid keeper jump off a shad crankbait. We left that area and poked around in a few more places that we liked to fish but couldn’t find anything more promising. Ben had been out on the main lake earlier in the week and had a couple of keepers after dark on a Texas rigged craw. So we pulled off the lake around 5:30 pm to take a break and respool some reels with fluorescent line for night fishing with a black light.

The tournament was from 7 pm to 1 am and from talking to the regulars on Stockton prior to take-off, the bite was tough. Ben and I figured that if we could get two keepers before dark and two more after the lights went out, we might have a chance to get a small check. We had the right plan but the fish didn’t cooperate.

We went to stained water before dark and couldn’t beg a bite until the last ½ hour before dark. The wind died and we only managed two shorts until the sun went down. Then at twilight, the bite was on but the time was short. I was running the bank as fast as I could to take advantage of this late bite and we came up with the first half of our goal. I was burning a ¼ oz Eiron Breaker white buzzbait along the bank when a short nailed it up near the bank. The next bite I had was a keeper and it drilled the bait on the back side of a log in very shallow water. Nothing a good Mustad Ultra Point hook and 50 lb Power Pro line couldn’t handle and we were on the board. Just before it got completely dark, I had a big swirl on my buzzer that didn’t connect from a stickup but I had a worm ready to throw back at this fish. A blue fleck worm didn’t even get to the bottom and our second keeper was flipped into the livewell. We tried to coerce another fish with a buzzbait but it was too dark. In hind-sight, we should have got out of there but it is hard to put something productive down.

At 9:30 pm it was pretty much dark and we made the short trip out to the main lake. We fished four locations pretty thoroughly but we could only come up with several short fish. We found fish between the bank and the brushpiles but couldn’t get the keeper bites. Many of the bites we had were a big thump but nothing was there on the hookset. The bite was just a little off for us, maybe we had our rotation of spots wrong. Who knows, everyone struggled to get bit after dark.

We went back to the ramp at 1 am and placed our two fish on the scales just to say we did it. We had 4 lbs 2 oz and finished 4^th. Seven pounds took home a small check and nearly 10 pounds won. Just have to figure out where the fish are at night up there, might have to go back again soon because for once, night fishing was pretty fun.

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Missouri TBF Junior Tournament

Lake of the Ozarks - Warsaw

7/1/06

I wasn’t able to make the last Junior tournament because of my National Guard commitment but was more than happy to provide my boat for the final event of the year. Our club had two boys in contention (2^nd place in each age group) to make the National Championship but they would have to have an outstanding tournament to make it. No matter the outcome, our group has progressed by leaps and bounds this year. Ben and I are very proud of how the boys have competed this year.

After getting our team ready at the ramp (glad Jimmy was able to get into his car after Dalton locked him out!), Kevin called out the pairings. Blake Felix and Chris McGovern piled their gear into my Nitro 591 and we were off as boat #6. Blake had recently fished out of Ben’s boat at Truman Lake and Ben commented to me that he was far ahead of his years when it came to bass fishing. Ben was absolutely right.

Blake took control of the boat but Chris fished from the front deck also. I basically just asked Blake where to stop and when to go. I also manned the net and was very busy this morning. We really didn’t go too far down the lake all morning, I guess we really didn’t need to.

We pulled into a main river channel swing and the boys fished topwaters along the big rock. Blake quickly hooked up with a small Kentucky on a Pop-R that went into the box and I could see that he was visibly relieved. Blake had done some figuring on the points and knew he had a big enough cushion to only need a respectable finish to make it to the National Championship. But by no means was he done fishing for the day.

We worked out way down the bank and Blake switched to a Zara Spook. He worked it on the outside of a dock and his bait disappeared with a big splash. He fought a feisty Kentucky to the boat but when I scooped it up with the net, I could see that it didn’t have the hooks in its mouth or even near it. Chris made a comment that it was hooked in the side and I reluctantly told Blake that he needed to release the fish because it wasn’t hooked in the mouth. He asked me if I was sure and I told him I had recently had that discussion with Mike Eutsler of Heartland. Mike is a former Conservation Agent and knows his regulations. Here is the pertinent section of the Code:

3 CSR 10-6.410 Fishing Methods: (6) Fish not hooked in the mouth or jaw, except those legally taken by snagging, snaring, grabbing, gig, longbow, crossbow, underwater spearfishing or falconry must be returned to the water unharmed immediately.

Blake said that he had caught many fish that way during practice and wasn’t aware of that rule. I can say that he did the right thing by letting it go but he wasn’t happy about it. It turned out to be one of the best things he did all day.

We moved to a small point and Chris had a big fish blow up on his Spit-N King but not get it. I suggested that he should have some type of throw-back bait ready when a fish misses his topwater. He got a jig rod ready and laid it at his feet. A couple casts later Chris hooked up with a nice Kentucky. It didn’t really fight on the way to the boat but went crazy next to the boat. It took two dives and I tried to scoop it in the net but on the third run, it pulled off. Chris was bummed to say the least.

We moved to another point and Chris was tired of lost fish on the topwater so he switched to a pumpkin green flake jig Eakins jig while Blake continued on top. A couple of casts later resulted in a keeper largemouth for Chris and he wiped the skunk off. We moved around to several other channel banks but the fish weren’t real cooperative. They would come up but would only swipe at the bait. Blake finally gave up and decided it was time to go to a big worm.

We ran to a deep bank littered with laydowns and Blake pitched a 10" blue fleck power worm while Chris worked his jig. In short order a keeper largemouth stretched Blake’s line and was deposited in the livewell. This fish came from the mid-section of a big laydown. We fooled with this spot a while and then we moved to an isolated dock that was a favorite of Blake’s. He pitched into the stall and swung on a fish but missed it. He retied, repositioned the boat and reworked the stall. He was rewarded for going back after that fish as the third largemouth went into the sack.

Blake moved around the dock to the opposite corner and had his best bite of the day. He wrestled a solid 4 pound fish out from under the dock. He again retied and pitched to the inside stall. Zing went his line and up came his fifth keeper of the day. All of this happened by 8:45 am! Blake was done fishing for the day as they couldn’t cull during the tournament. I’d bet instead of 12 some odd pounds, Blake could have sacked 14 or 15 pounds during the day if he could have culled. He had a weight that anyone would be proud of during a summer tournament. See what I said about him being beyond his years as an angler? No doubt about it.

Now it was Chris’ turn to catch some fish. Blake did something that most wouldn’t expect by running the trolling motor for Chris and took him to some productive places. We went into a pocket lined with docks and Blake commented how he shook off a nice fish a couple days prior from a certain dock. Chris pitched into the dock and THUMP! Chris soon placed the Big Bass for the younger age group into the livewell.

We ran to another pocket with docks but it proved unproductive. Blake told Chris that he figured he could get a couple Kentuckies from the main river along a channel bank with a crankbait. Chris didn’t really have what he needed for this so I dug out a medium running crankbait from my box and put him to work. He caught a Kentucky that was just a hair short and then at the end of the swing, Chris sacked his final keeper of the day.

We ran out of time and the boys went to the scales. Blake won his age group with 12.79 pounds and Chris won the younger with 6.05 pounds and had a 3.05 pound Big Bass. Neither won by a landslide and this shows the entire group is learning at an accelerated pace.

I was pleased as several boys from our club weighed fish and was happy Brandon Allen finished 3^rd in the older age group. He also had the Big Bass of the day with a 4.66 largemouth. Brandon has really come into his own this year and hopefully he will be a force to deal with next year. Brennan Halbersma from our club also had an outstanding year as he finished in 3^rd Place in the Angler of the Year standings. Not bad for his first year.

All and all, I’m really happy with the results of the Missouri TBF youth program. None of this would happen without the support of the adults who donate their time and boats to take the youths out on the water. Also, a big thanks has to go to Kevin Smith who spent a great deal of his time on this project. He organized the picnic lunch after the weigh-in that was more than enough to feed the entire group of parents and anglers. Kevin was given a small token of appreciation at the event from all of the clubs with a plaque, a weekend get-away and a certificate for some fishing supplies.

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TBF Central Divisional - June 14-16
Muskogee, Ok

Practice Day 1
Sunday, May 28

I hooked John Gorman’s aluminum boat up to the truck at 2:45 am and rolled out the door for a 200 mile trip to Oklahoma. I asked John to trade boats for the weekend because I wanted to save as much money as I could during this short trip and also wanted to access any place I could with his shallow running boat on the river. I ran west on I-44 and then turned south on Highway 69 through Oklahoma. It was four-lane road all the way and pretty easy driving. After a quick stop at a local Wal-Mart to pick up a license, I was at the Muskogee ramp by 7:45 am. The wind was blowing pretty well already but I like the wind when the water is pretty warm.

I had some rip-rap areas marked in the general area and a couple of creeks. This was my first trip to this area of the Arkansas River but I didn’t expect it to be much different from what I had experienced a few years ago down at Dardanelle in Arkansas. The water should be in the upper 70’s and the fish should be on the move to main river locations for the summer. The current on the river generally draws them out of the creeks because of more oxygen. After reviewing several BFL tournaments on the FLW website, I didn’t have real high expectations for weight. Most 1-day tournaments were won with 13-15 pounds and weight dropped pretty quickly after that. I expected a limit of fish for three days would put you in the hunt so that’s what I went out to find, keeper fish.

As with any river system set up for barge traffic, a lot of main river areas have rip-rap to keep erosion/sedimentation under control. There are wing-dams as well as points and channel swings with rip-rap. I love to fish rip-rap with a crankbait and found a couple areas that looked perfect. The main river didn’t have emergent water willow but rock and laydowns will have to do. I started on an area near the ramp and within the first hour I had two keepers in the boat and a few short fish. One small keeper came on a chartreuse/blue crankbait and one about 2 ½ lbs came from a laydown on a watermelon red baby brush hog. That was a good start to the day. I spent most of the morning running different areas of rip-rap and found a couple of places that had fish and several that didn’t. The presence of shad really made the difference.

Around 10:30 am, I worked my way into a creek and immediately found shad being chased. I worked my way to the very back and back out again. I found some bass relating to areas of rock with laydowns. I was mostly junk fishing, hitting whatever looked good. I boated a keeper on a 7" blue fleck worm, a bandit 200 crankbait, a square-billed crankbait and another on a Bass Pro Shops black neon tube. All of these fish were between 2 and 3 pounds and I was done with that creek by 2 pm. The problem was that you really couldn’t pinpoint one thing that the fish were holding on. If it looked good, hit it. I was satisfied that I found better quality fish and could possibly up-grade a fish or two. I really needed a "fast and furious" keeper location for early in the morning.

I messed around out on the main river for a couple of hours and then put it on the trailer to move to another part of the lake. I went to the gas station for a bite to eat and to fill John’s boat up. He wasn’t kidding by telling me that I would be able to run around all weekend on one tank of gas. I put $8.50 in the tank before it clicked off. Makes you wonder why a person has such a big motor when a little 60 horse does the job just fine with very little expense.

I drove to the lower end of the lake to an area called Greenleaf. It was about 6 pm when I pulled up and looking out of the ramp gave me a chill. It looked like Nirvana! Flooded water willow as far as an eye could see and the water was fairly clean. This got me really excited because any time I’ve found vegetation in the water, I’ve found bass. This situation was no different. I dumped John’s boat in the lake and just put the trolling motor down to cover water. There were two arms to this "lake" and I started in the more clear side. Even though the sun was still shining, I immediately went to a buzzbait and turned the trolling motor up on high to cover water. I had a ¼ oz white Eiron Breaker buzzbait tied to 50 lb Power Pro line and immediately started to get bit. The first laydown I came to exploded with a solid 2-3 pound fish but she jumped clean over my buzzbait. I boated a few shorts and when I came to another laydown, SLURP, down when the buzzbait and into the boat with a solid 2 pound fish. Man, this is fun!

I changed over to a prototype 1/8 oz black buzzbait that I am tinkering with and went to work. After its results that night and from the Heartland Pro-Am tournament at Truman, I’m sold that this little guy is ready to be put on the market. Check out my website at http://www.maout.com/eironjig.htm  to view the "Little Squeak". There were several boats in the area but I didn’t see anyone catching fish. I kept covering water and catching fish. Before dark, I boated 4 keeper fish between 2 and 3 pounds, had several quality blowups, and caught about 20 short fish. This place seemed to be loaded with bass. Not catching every fish that bit didn’t matter to me; it gave me an idea of the quantity and quality of bass in this side of the lake.

I moved over to the other arm of this backwater area and it was more stained. I ran down a length of rip-rap but couldn’t generate the strikes like I did in the cleaner water. It grew dark and I was beat from a long day on the water. I felt my day was very productive with 10 keepers and many short fish. I didn’t have a real big bite but shoot; I haven’t had a big fish since January at Taneycomo. In a three day tournament, a limit everyday would go a long way on a river system.

Practice Day 2
Monday, May 29

I only wanted to fish half a day and then hit the road to go back to Missouri. I hadn’t touched much of the other half of Greenleaf and I wanted to know what was in there. Even though there was shad running all over the place early in the morning, I couldn’t come up with much. In fact, white bass seemed to have taken over the place. I found one flat point that had a few bass on it and it also had numerous logs scattered amongst the grass. I had a couple short fish and a small keeper there on a white spinnerbait. Along another area, an old road was submerged and I caught a few more fish with a small keeper on a bleeding shad Hammer jig, swimming it through the grass on top of the road bed. This was promising as it might be another pattern. What I did find was the popularity of this area. I passed the same few boats a couple of times in areas of this backwater lake. It was Memorial Day so everyone was out enjoying the day and this place got hammered. Oh well, if I get to go in there I’ll just have to plan on it getting a lot of pressure. It might be a place to get a couple of keepers and move on to other areas. I did find that the better fish seemed to relate to the windy side of the lake and the grass had to have deep water as close as possible. I pulled off the lake at noon to make the 200 mile trip back to the house.

Practice Day 3
Monday, June 12

After a disappointing Heartland Pro-Am tournament at Table Rock on Sunday, I went home, loaded up for the week and took off for Muskogee, OK. I wanted to fish the upper pool so instead of traveling to our motel and then back to the ramp in the morning, I just pulled off at Waggoner and slept at the ramp in my truck. It was late anyways so I just crashed in my back seat. I put in at Afton and looked around in a couple of oxbows and out on the main river. I didn’t really like what I saw so after a couple of hours and a few short fish, I put the boat on the trailer and headed back to the main pool. I drove to the lower end and went back into the grass at Greenleaf. It was mid-morning and the wind was blowing pretty well out of the north.

I stayed on the south side of the lake where the wind was blowing into and had a couple of keepers on a black neon BPS tube out of the grass line. The water level was the same as it had been and I was satisfied with what I had checked. I went out to the main river and started to look for areas at the mouths of creek arms. I had found on river systems that fish will migrate out of the creeks and could be located near the mouths if there was good structure nearby. I fished several placed on the lower third portion of the main pool and caught some more shorts and a couple more keepers. These fish came on a red/black crankbait and a worm. I found a couple of promising places but the fish still seemed to come in random places.

Practice Day 4
Tuesday, June 13

I partnered up with the team alternate, Brad Martin and trailered up to the middle part of the upper pool. Several guys on the team said they were able to get bit pretty well on a Zoom Horny Toad and I wanted to learn some more places in the upper pool in case my tournament partners wanted to run up there. We had a good morning as far as bites but couldn’t put a single fish in the boat. I had 4 or 5 keeper bites but couldn’t connect with a single fish. I tried a new hook in the Toad but missed the first three fish that bit. I switched back to a Mustad 5/0 MegaBite and stuck the next two fish. I cut that hook off and went back to a hook designed for a Toad. I missed the next three fish that bit and decided on which hook I should use for the tournament! All of the fish we found seemed to be relating to the mouths of pockets and oxbows. The lock must have been very busy because the current went back and forth for most of the morning.

Brad and I loaded up the boat around 11 am and went back down to poke around in the main pool. We went to an area of rip-rap and Brad found out how quickly Zebra mussels can clip your line. I’m glad we don’t have those little monsters in our lakes. They will actually clamp onto your crankbait hooks and make you think you are hung up until you pull them loose. We fished our way to a transition area that someone had planted a few brushpiles. Brad had a nice 2 ½ pound fish jump off a spinnerbait next to the boat and I had a similar fish jump off a Bandit 200 near the boat. We spent the rest of the afternoon looking at new areas but didn’t come up with much. We went back to the motel and got ready for the tournament.

Tournament Day 1
Wednesday, June 14

I drew out with Joe Glover from Arkansas. He was catching fishing in the main pool from one of the creeks that I had also caught fish in during practice. Joe said he wasn’t really catching them very well early so we decided to go to my fish in the grass early. We ran down to the lower end of the lake to Greenleaf and my heart sank when we pulled in. The water had dropped about a foot over night and I knew I was in trouble. My little experience with grass has been when the water drops out, the fish pull to the very outside edge or just won’t bite. Joe lost one fish on a Chatter bait and had another fish blow up on a buzzbait but that was it. I didn’t have a bite after two hours of fishing. We were also the last boat in there and the places I wanted to fish were covered up. Two of our team members were sharing one stretch of grass and boats were sitting on the other better area I wanted to fish. Joe was getting pretty nervous about this area and I finally conceded that it was time to get out of there.

We ran up to his water, the mouth of a creek lined with stumps and laydowns. It was calm so I put a watermelon red baby brush hog on. Joe was working over the stumps pretty good with a blue fleck worm and I had pretty slim pickings. At 9:15 am I put my only keeper in the boat, a 2 lb 2 oz largemouth. I caught several shorts behind Joe but just couldn’t connect with anything better. Joe put a nice keeper in the livewell on a black/blue Chatter bait (check out my new Chatter Hammer at www.maout.com/eironjig.htm ) at about 10 am and that was it for us for the day. We worked the creek over hard until about noon. By mid-morning the bite seemed to die. We went out in the river and hit numerous places but nothing we did was productive.

We weighed our fish and everyone on the Missouri team had a rough day. I was only 4 pounds out on our team so there was still hope. I needed to have one good day to stay in it.

Tournament Day 2
Thursday, June 15

I was paired with Skip Hutchinson from the Kansas team. He was on a crankbait bite that produced better later in the day so he gave me the boat for the first half. I went back to Greenleaf and took my lumps. I just didn’t get it when it came to the bite. I needed to slow down immediately and flip/pitch first thing in the morning. I started out with a Zoom Horny Toad and nailed 5 shorts until the sun got up. I started to pitch a smoke/red flake BPS tube and boated several more shorts from the grass line. We burned up my half of the day but just couldn’t come up with any keepers. I didn’t loose any fish, just didn’t get better bites. This was very frustrating. I was in the right place but couldn’t get the right bites.

Skip took over and we went out on the main river to mouths of cuts and creeks to work over big laydowns. Skip put a small keeper in the boat and had one about 3 pounds jump off on a small square bill crank. I caught several shorts on all different types of baits from worms, tubes and cranks. My frustration level peaked and I was basically just fishing on autopilot. I just didn’t have a bait that I felt I could go to and be confident in catching a fish.

At 1 pm, Skip had burned through his locations and we decided to run up the lake. As we were running, we both spotted a channel swing that looked promising but neither of us had fished. Brian Maloney had talked about this spot the night before so we gave it a try. There were several big logs laying right on the drop and we finally found the shad. I think Skip caught a couple shorts on his crank while I was pitching my tube in behind him. I worked the tube through the end of a big log and my line started to move sideways. I set the hook and this fish definitely had some shoulders on it. River fish are so strong. She came up to jump twice, bulldogged around the boat, and finally Skip corralled her in the net. She was 3 lbs 15 oz.

That got us excited and we went to work with what little time we had left. Skip caught another 14 inch keeper and I lost my first fish of the tournament that mattered. Skip got hung up on a log and ran the boat up in there to get it back. While he was retying, I pitched to the next log over and walked the tube up it. I felt a jolting THUMP and I reeled down to set the hook. I hit the fish hard but it was swimming directly towards me, back up under the log. I moved the fish about 3 feet and it came off. That one hurt as it felt like a solid fish but everyone was losing fish. We ran out of time and rolled back to the ramp.

My 2 day total was 6 lbs 1 oz and my chances for making Nationals were pretty slim. I couldn’t win our Team title but maybe if some people stumbled, I could still make second place and be a non-boater. I only needed 8 pounds and that was not out of grasp here.

Tournament Day 3
Friday, June 16

If nothing else, the grind would be over after today. It had been a long week after fishing the Heartland Pro-Am and immediately traveling to Muskogee. I was paired with Randy Williford from Louisiana. Randy had a real chance at winning his Team title and that was just what he did. Randy wanted to fish from my boat and I was more than happy to run my Nitro 591. It was nice to be comfortable in a boat instead of working out of a little bag. Randy had fish in the upper pool and I was pleased to see some new water. We locked up and went to work in an oxbow close to the lock. We ran part way in but most of the birds were located near the mouth. We caught several shorts near the back but as we worked out way towards the mouth, the bite heated up. I must have caught a dozen shorts, broke a fish off in the grass and lost a real nice fish that just pulled off. All of these came on that smoke/red tube. Randy also caught several shorts, had a 14 inch keeper on a brush hog, and jumped off a solid keeper on a crankbait.

We ran the mouths of oxbows, fishing the outer half. I stayed with the tube but that bite died. Randy had been catching fish on a crankbait but they were outside of the grass. The fish were pretty random for him but I’m sure there was a log or something that they came off of. He just kept casting out in open water away from the grass edge. What I believe happened was that the fish moved into the grass early to feed and then pulled out over the drop after the first couple of hours. The color Randy was throwing was pretty specific also. I tried several different colors without success through the day. Randy just kept chunking and catching fish.

At about 9:30 am, he boxed a second fish about 2 lbs. He then wanted to run up the pool to another oxbow but when we got up there, a big barge was coming down river. We made a quick U-turn and made a calculation as to when it would get to the lock. We needed to beat the lock or run the chance of being locked out and not making the weigh-in. We decided that 11 am was the goal.

Randy had a spot in an oxbow that had some rip-rap and the wind was blowing into. I caught a big grass carp on a crankbait which gave both of us a good laugh. It was about time for us to go but Randy wanted to push it just a little bit closer. Good thing he did because about 5 minutes later he hooked one about 3 ½ lbs on his crankbait. We finished up that bank and got to the lock. We made the right decision because 4 or 5 boats were DQed because they couldn’t get back to the ramp. The barge blocked the upper lock and they always take precedence.

We slipped into the middle pool and made the long run down the lake to the place that I caught the 4 pound fish the day before. I gave in and borrowed a crankbait from him. A Bandit 200 was about the right size and it was a perch colored bait. We commenced to cranking and within a dozen casts, Randy asked for the net. He had another solid keeper in the livewell, his 4^th of the day. We stayed in that general area for the rest of the day but other than a few short fish, that was it.

I went in with my tail between my legs and Randy weighed about 9 ½ pounds to give him more than 18 for 3 days plus the win for his state. Greg Cooper won ours and came within 2 ounces of winning the entire tournament. He also won the BassFan Divisional tournament the following day, I assume from the same areas in Greenleaf. Our Team finished 3^rd overall, 1 ounce from 2^nd and about 6 ½ lbs from winning. We got a small check to split and some real nice trophies. The treatment we received while in Muskogee was great and Oklahoma did a great job of putting the tournament together. It felt good to be a part of the TBF and FLW definitely supports us to the fullest degree.

Overall, I had a poor week of fishing. I found what I needed to during practice but I didn’t spend enough time on them right before the tournament to really figure out how they would bite. I didn’t want to stick too many fish and I didn’t expect the water to drop out as it had been pretty stable every other day. Also, a topwater bite can trick you into thinking it will work anytime but in reality I should have slowed down earlier. It may have worked in an area that didn’t get the amount of pressure that Greenleaf did. The guys who went to the lower pool had great days fishing Horny Toads but they didn’t have any pressure. Jim Mitchell had a phenomenal Day 3 down there but was also locked out by a barge. That’s the breaks and the chance you take when going through a lock. Finding the right fish but not figuring out the bite was what was so frustrating for me. In a draw tournament like this, when you have your turn running the boat, you had better put fish in the boat if you want to stay. Otherwise, you are at the mercy of your partner and fishing used water. I can’t complain about my partners, they were great and let me do my thing for my share of the day. I just didn’t put the fish in the boat and that’s fishing.

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Heartland Pro-Am

June 11, 2006

I’ll make this short because the result of this tournament wasn’t very good. I was able to get to the lake Friday before the tournament and practice a little bit. I did a little calculation of the points needed to make the Top 40 and qualify for the Championship. I thought that I should have enough points to make it without weighing a fish but wanted to weigh at least one to make sure. All the past results indicated that the James arm would be the place to go and this tournament was no different. I decided that to weigh one fish, I should just maximize my time and fish close. I selected a small creek near Kimberling City and figured that the docks would produce. Surely not all of the fish had moved deep yet.

I took my children, Emily and Ryan with me as they are out on summer break. We got to the lake around 10 am and there wasn’t a breath of wind. We pulled up on a set of docks and I started to pitch a brown 5/16 oz Eiron Breaker roundhead jig matched with a green pumpkin craw to any good looking dock or laydown. In between a set of docks there was a small drain that had several cedars planted in about 6 feet of water. I pitched up next to one and THUMP went my jig. I carefully played that fish out of the pile and another fish just as big was trying to take the jig out of its mouth. Emily took a picture of this 16 inch fish and I dropped it back in the lake. I moved to the next dock and pitched the jig to a shaded area. I hopped it once and felt another tap. In came another solid keeper. That was a nice start to the day.

The kids couldn’t stand it any longer and we took a break to swim around the boat. That was a relief as it was around 90 degrees and not a breath of wind. The kids swam off and on around the boat as I fished some more docks. The fish may have minded but not too bad. I was mostly just looking for docks to fish and I did catch another keeper, this one being a Kentucky from under a dock. I also boated about 10 shorts. I found several areas that had brush piles around the docks and numerous docks had cedars tied up in the stalls. I also caught fish on a 7/16 oz brown/purple roundhead jig matched with a Zoom speed craw swam around the hanging cedar trees. The fish that were on the bottom were biting from the first two stalls and the rest of the fish were suspended over deeper water in the outer stalls. We messed around until about 3 pm and decided to go get some ice cream. I thought I found a good pattern but it was dependant on one thing, the sun. I didn’t get it during the tournament.

Tournament Day

The forecast called for a chance of storms Saturday night but would clear out by mid-morning on Sunday. That would be fine, maybe we could get a topwater bite over the brush piles that I found. I fished with John Gedville and he needed to weigh a fish also to make the Championship. We did catch some shorts over the piles but nothing would keep. The sun never came out and the fish didn’t get up under the docks. I did break one good fish off in a brush pile at the end of a dock but that was my only chance.

We messed with the docks until 1 pm but the bite wasn’t improving. I bailed out and decided to go to some areas that might give my non-boater a better chance at getting a keeper and some needed points. We went to some humps and deep banks, John drug a C-rig while I cranked and used a football jig. We caught some shorts but it just wasn’t happening.

We both went in with a donut. John didn’t quit have enough points to make the Championship but I made it in even without weighing a fish and not fishing at the Bull Shoals tournament. The Heartland Pro-Am Championship is at Grand Lake at the end of September. Making the Championship was the goal of the year and at least I accomplished one goal after it was all said and done. This past year was a good learning opportunity as I made some mistakes and had the chance to fish a lot of new water. It was good to get off of my "comfort zone" lakes and be forced into something new. It will only help later on down the road.

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Heartland Pro-Am

Truman Lake

5-21-06

One more tournament to go for the season and hopefully weighing a bag of fish continues next month at Table Rock Lake. My results for this tournament were pretty good but there were a few things that could have gone better and I made a couple of mental errors. More on that later.

This was my third tournament at Truman in the past month and I felt like I knew what the fish were doing for the most part. Thankfully, the fish hadn’t moved from the same areas I fished at the end of April. Ben and I had a fair limit last weekend but once again, we weren’t able to find a kicker fish. In fact, I haven’t caught a fish over 3 pounds up there this past month. I still don’t have a clue where those fish are at. Last weekend the fish were relating to the outer half of the spawning pockets. This weekend was no different and when you found fish, generally there were several more in the area. I’ve been concentrating on the lower Osage to the lower Grand as I’m most familiar with this area.

I met my partner for the day, Bernie Gram at the gas dock in the morning. I wasn’t able to make the pairings meeting because my niece graduated from High School the night before. Bernie is an older gentleman and has 63 years of experience catching bass. He has been fortunate enough to be drawn as a non-boater in several BASS events and had numerous interesting stories about the Pro anglers. We were boat 54 but Ralph and the crew from Heartland ran everyone out smoothly and at about 6:45 am I opened my Nitro 591 up for a short run to a nearby creek.

I hadn’t been able to get an early morning bite on Truman and this day was no different. I joked with Bernie that I wouldn’t get anything in the boat until after 9 am, which was about right. We fished the back end of the creek with buzzbaits and tubes but my only bite was broken off. I throw a tube on 50 lb Power Pro braided line but it was clipped on the hookset. I wouldn’t be surprised if that fish was a walleye.

I had enough of that area and we made another move to the lower Osage. I’ve been catching fish from several flat pockets but the fish weren’t just anywhere. Even though the cove looked all the same, the fish were only holding on one side of it. Since it was still cloudy, I pulled out my go-to topwater, a white ¼ oz Eiron Breaker buzzbait with a Mustad trailer hook. When the fish are spawning or finishing up, the males seem to stay cruising along the bank protecting fry and they are suckers for a small buzzbait. Plus, it was flat calm in the pocket.

The very first laydown I came to exploded when I ran the buzzbait past it but the fish (a solid keeper) missed it. I immediately pitched back into the boil with a baby brushhog but couldn’t get it to come back. That was the general theme for the day. I could get fish to roll on the buzzbait but they weren’t interested in a follow-up bait (tube, brushhog or senko). This is probably because they are protecting, not feeding. In a couple of weeks those fish would likely be crushing a buzzbait. We moved down the bank and ¾ the way down the bank, I had a slight slurp and my bait disappeared. This fish was no match for Power Pro braid and Bernie scooped up my first fish at 8:45 am. I throw my buzzbaits on a 7 foot medium action rod with 40 pound braid. The rod is soft enough to forgive the no stretch in the line but allows me to get a solid hookset at the end of a long cast. The small diameter line and long rod also allows me to really cast a small buzzbait a long way.

My first fish only had the trailer hook in its mouth. Maybe the color wasn’t what they wanted or maybe it was too big. I decided to go to the smallest buzzbait that I had, a 1/8 oz prototype that I have been playing with. It has a ¼ oz blade on it but it is right over the head and has a very short frame. It is solid black with a black blade. All of the baitfish/fry on the banks were very small so that’s why I went even smaller.

We worked out of the pocket after picking the bank over with a watermelon red baby brushhog with no bites. There was a channel bank between two pockets that looked right for fish to pull out to after spawning. I stayed with the black buzzbait and at 9:15, a suspended fish drilled it after I bumped the side of a hardwood. Keeper number two swimming in the livewell. We worked back into another pocket and I came up to a cedar laydown. I pitched into the very middle of it with the brushhog and when I picked up my line, it didn’t feel right. I put a slight amount of tension on it to feel for a fish but it didn’t move at all. I thought I was hung against a limb and I really wasn’t paying attention to what was going on. Bernie and I were talking about my time in Iraq. You can’t catch fish if you aren’t concentrating! I sort of popped/lifted my rod and sure enough, I rolled what looked to be another keeper sized fish. I gave myself a good cussing under my breath to pay attention and kept fishing.

This area played out and we fired up to move again. I wanted to stop at a couple of bluff cuts but boats were in the general area and I didn’t want to move in on them. We pulled into a channel swing end that transitioned around a point to a small pocket. The entire point was lined with cedars. The sun had come out so I went to a baby brushhog. I learned something from the TBF Championship, when the sun is out I needed to slow the speed I was moving the bait and also work not only the laydowns but also the first line of standing cedars out off the bank. This was where the fish were positioned around the point and into the pocket. I flipped two more keepers into the boat in short order. The second pulled me behind a limb but I wrestled it out and into the boat. Stupid mental mistake #2 for the day coming up.

Instead of sitting down and retying, I fixed my brushhog and pitched to the deep end of a cedar laydown. Two hops and a fish was pulling me down. I laid into her but she kept going and SNAP. No more fish. That was really the only bite that I would have liked to have seen. Was there a rough spot on my line from the last fish? I don’t know, I didn’t check it! I was really beating myself up now. You have to capitalize when you can. The chance at a check depends on it. As usual, only a couple pounds separated a check from going home with nothing.

It was only 10:45 am and surely in 4 more hours I could get one more to fill out my limit. I had good hopes because of how fast they bit on that point but nothing is for sure. We hit two more pockets and sure enough, only one small fish to show for it. The "clamp" factor was starting to set in. Clouds started to drift in and out so I picked my buzzbait back up and sure enough, had another solid fish blast out of a laydown to jump completely over it. A follow-up bait didn’t get a response either. The next pocket produced the same result from a laydown. I worked around to the other side and there was a tiny dent with a laydown in it. I fired across it with my buzzbait and watched several fry flip out of the water. No sooner did I say "there’s got to be a bass protecting those fry" to Bernie, WHOOSH and Little Squeak disappeared. That one must have followed it out before attacking and thankfully I had a good sharp trailer hook on because that was the third fish in the box on a buzzbait, all being stabbed with the trailer hook.

Now it was after 1 pm and what do you do to get a better bite? I tried deeper areas but that wasn’t the trick either. I guess if you are going to get a kicker bite on Truman, it will just happen. It seems that some people just get on a better quality bite and others are only on keeper size fish. This changes from day to day as you could see from the Heartland results after three days. I’ve just been on a keeper bite.

I finally gave up and decided to hit one more spot of wind blown rip-rap before heading in. I asked Bernie what he wanted to throw and I’d throw something different. He opted for a crankbait so I tied on a War Eagle and slow rolled it down the rocks. I made about 10 casts and my rod loaded up. This was a 2 pound fish and here’s stupid mistake #3. I didn’t put culling floats on all my fish as I put them in the livewell. I’ve got them, just didn’t use them. The 5^th fish was about 15 ¼ inches and I put a float in that one because I thought it was the smallest. Check your fish!

I culled up a couple ounces and that was it for the day. We zipped back to the ramp and when I was bagging my fish up, I pulled one out that looked pretty small. I grabbed my board and it just barely swept the line! That’s the fish I should have culled but I didn’t weigh all of them to find out. My 5 fish weighed 10.68 lbs which put me in 16^th place overall. The last check was a little less than 2 pounds in front of me. I’m not going to say I could have up-graded that much but if I could boat a larger portion of my bites and not make foolish mistakes throughout the day, I would be a lot closer to competing with these guys. I was 0.01 of a pound out of 15^th place and maybe at the end of the year a point or two would make the difference in making the Championship or not. I moved up to 31^st place overall and I found out that I will get to dump my Bull Shoals zero. That should help out as 6 of 7 tournaments count towards the year-end standings. So as long as I don’t roll a doughnut at Table Rock next month, I should be able to make the Pro-Am Championship. If I zero, I wouldn’t have any business going anyways. We’ll see and thanks for reading!

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Missouri TBF State Championship

Truman Lake

4-29 & 30-06

Hallelujah, finally something to be excited about! I made the MO TBF State Team by the skin of my teeth but I’m going to Muskogee, Oklahoma just the same like 11 other guys who are fighting for two spots at the TBF National Championship. It has been 5 years since I fished a Divisional Tournament and I was beginning to wonder if I would be able to get there again. I qualified for the 2003 tournament but I was whisked off to Iraq and the last couple of years didn’t work out for me. The overall number of anglers wasn’t as high as State Championships in the past but there were a large number of "local" guys who knew how to fish Truman. Couple that with three hours of practice on Friday, I’ll take 12^th Place any day. Here’s what I did to come up with my fish.

Practice Day

I hadn’t been on the lake since last October but Ben Henderson and I had found some pockets on the main lake that we thought should hold fish during a spring tournament. Ben had fished the weekend prior and found some keeper fish in these pockets. The water temperature was close to 70 degrees and Ben found a few bed fish. Typically, the weather made a big change during the week and cold weather swept in. With that in mind, I decided to look at slightly deeper areas near spawning coves in hopes that the fish pulled out to these areas. It was cloudy and cool Friday morning and I decided to pick on one creek arm that I knew quit well and see what I could find.

My second cast of the day resulted in a short fish on a white ¼ oz Eiron Breaker buzzbait. I started at the end of a channel swing that leads around a point into a gravel pocket. I worked the entire pocket and out again without a bite. I moved to another channel swing with small cuts in it and cranked a shad Bandit 200 and had a few more short fish and I was seeing numerous balls of shad on the graph. I didn’t see much for activity in the pockets. I worked back into the creek and pitched a black/blue 3/8 oz Eiron Breaker Hammer jig along a channel swing and popped a couple more shorts plus a solid 2 ½ pound largemouth. I moved back in the creek to the fresh water coming in from the rain but it was 57 degrees and I didn’t see any birds or shad activity. I didn’t get a bite back there. I had time enough for one more area and I fished a couple of transition areas with a Senko in the back of bare pockets but didn’t have a single strike.

I pulled off the lake at 10:30 am so I could check in the team at registration. I wanted to go back out afterwards but after helping set up the Heartland weigh-in trailer, the rain started in earnest and I decided to bag it for the day. John, Ben, and I had plans to camp this weekend but the rain put a stop to that. We were fortunate enough to find a room and get dried out. From what I had seen on the water, the feeling I got was that the fish had backed off a little bit to the closest channel swing due to the cooling temperatures. Wrong!

Tournament Day 1

At the Friday night meeting I met both of my partners for the weekend. I drew Tal Matthes of Team Concepts for Saturday and he didn’t really care what we did. He did have a few places to go near the area I thought about fishing so we could add that to the plan also. Tal was a pleasure to fish with and I owe all my first day fish to him.

We hit a bluff cut first and Tal put a few short fish in the boat but the wind was screaming. I decided to quit fighting the wind and we moved to a channel swing ½ way back into a creek to get out of it. I quickly stabbed a short fish on a jig but we worked the entire length of the swing without a keeper bite. I changed over to a ¼ oz black Eiron Breaker buzzbait when we came to the gravel transition and had a good fish come up on it from a laydown but she didn’t get the bait right and pulled off. We worked the pocket plus another channel swing and continued to boat short fish. At 9:30 am I told Tal I had enough and it was time to go try his stuff.

He said great and away we went to a series of timbered pockets. Tal took over and shortly he put a nice keeper in the livewell on a watermelon lizard. This fish was in the back 1/3 of the pocket on a gravel bank. He said he had caught three keepers from that pocket the day before. He and his practice partner had been catching keepers in pockets like this for a couple of weeks. We continued down the series of pockets, skipping the ones with boats and continuing to boat short fish. Most of the fish seemed to be in the back of the coves but we didn’t run into any keepers. I was alternating between a Senko and a watermelon red baby brush hog.

After rolling through his water, I suggested we hit one more pocket that was the first pocket off of a bluff wall. I seem to catch better quality fish if the channel swings right in front of a pocket. Tal recognized this pocket and said it was a good one also. At 11 am, I pitched to a laydown on the side of the cove and a solid keeper made my line jump. I was pretty relieved to "get the skunk off" for the day and get something in my side of the livewell. We worked to the back of the cut and in the very middle was a stump sticking out of the water with a laydown right next to it in the water. "That looks right" I thought and pitched towards the end of the laydown. Another bass hammered my brush hog and keeper #2 was in the livewell 5 minutes after the first one. I turned the boat to the left into the corner and told Tal to pitch to the laydown in the back while I rerigged my bait. There had to be one in there. He pitched his lizard in there, made one hop and "thump". That fish didn’t stand a chance against Tal’s 300 pound frame and came flying into the boat. He laughed a hearty laugh but said "It’s not a keeper like yours!" I told him that I said there was a fish in there but didn’t make any promises about the size. That drew an even bigger laugh from Tal.

Well, now I thought I had it figured out what we needed to do to finally catch fish. We were going to have to run new water but it was time to pattern them. We started running the back ends of bigger pockets and small bluff cuts near the channel swing. We pulled into one and I stuck a big fat walleye. We moved around the cut and Tal swam his lizard through a cedar tree to retrieve it when another keeper jumped on it. He expertly paused for a second and then hammered this fish home. A couple casts later I pitched into a laydown cedar and when I picked up on my bait it didn’t feel right. Time to set the hook and keeper #3 was swimming in the well by 12:15 pm. Nothing huge but all of our fish were solid keepers. This area had shad near the bank with a mixture of cedars and hardwood.

As we moved down the swing, it changed to all hardwood and we stopped getting bit. Time to move. We thought about going back to some of Tal’s pockets but they had been hammered all day long by other boats. I told Tal I knew of a point with cedar laydowns next to a channel swing that should hold some fish. We zipped to this point and went to work. I pitched to the base of a laydown but my line flipped over a cedar limb. I shook my rod to get it loose and a fish started pulling my line down. I set the hook as best I could but all I did was roll the fish over enough to get a good look at her and see a nice keeper pull off. Sometimes you can’t win them all, especially when working around a thick grove of cedars.

We fished around the point and hit several laydowns without success. The sun seemed like it wanted to come out a little bit. I spotted a lone laydown back in the gravel pocket and pitched to the end of it telling Tal there’s got to be a fish in there. I hopped it once and my Mustad Ultra Point hook found it’s mark in my 4^th keeper. We worked around to another gravel pocket and I found another laydown just under the surface. I pitched in there and tried to set the hook on a bite but missed. I tossed right back in there and this time I got a solid thump. At 1:30 pm my limit fish was dropped in my Nitro livewell and I was done for the day. I gave control of the boat to Tal and grabbed a bite to eat. We hopped around to a few move pockets before running out of time for the day but Tal just couldn’t connect with another keeper. Catching fish wasn’t a problem, we must have boated 30 fish between us. I will be the first to admit that my fish were completely attributed to Tal’s pattern and I most likely wouldn’t have had more than one or two fish without him. Thanks Tal, I’d fish with you again any day.

My limit weighed 11.08 lbs and put me in 6^th Place at the end of Day 1. Kevin Smith had the best limit of the tournament and was leading with nearly 14 lbs. James Key from our club hadn’t been fishing in about 5 years but stood in 5^th Place with a nice limit. He fished with Mark Horton (Mark finished 2^nd overall) and had a great day of fishing.

Tournament Day 2

I rigged a couple rods for the day and sat in my 591 Nitro early the next morning. Ken Pettry jumped in and we were ready to do battle for one more day. I really didn’t have much going early and I assumed it would be cloudy again as that’s what the forecast called for. Never trust a weatherman.

We went to the back of a creek to start in hopes of catching a decent fish early in the new water coming in. Ken was the first to get a bite but he set the hook so hard the fish came flying out of the water and slammed into the side of the boat. A nice two pound fish got a headache but no boat ride. First time I’ve ever seen that!

After this area didn’t produce for us, I gave control of the boat over to Ken and let him do what he wanted. I didn’t think I would have a chance for anything until late morning so Ken worked from the front with a Senko and I pitched my baby brush hog. Ken had a good 3 lb fish pull off his Senko and we boated several shorts. After Ken had enough we went to a gravel pocket that I had lost a fish from the day before. The sun was out and the wind was picking up. We worked into this pocket at about 10:30 am pitching to laydowns with brush hogs. Ken worked his bait down a log and yelped "net!" He wrestled his fish to the boat and I scooped up the Big Bass of the tournament, a beautiful 5.43 lb largemouth. She didn’t look like she had been spawning so I think some of the females were just moving up. Most of the fish caught in the tournament were males and only a handful of females were bagged.

We finished out that pocket but I still hadn’t figured the bite out. We moved to the next gravel pocket and found the fish grouped up in one small area. Ken put another solid keeper in the livewell and I had a couple more short fish. At least we were getting some bites and I figured that the day would be tough on everyone.

I was watching how Ken was moving his bait because he was getting more bites than I was and I then realized what I was doing wrong. I was keyed into what was happening the day before and I was really popping the bait off the bottom, just like how I had worked it the day before. The fish didn’t want it that way and I wasn’t paying attention to what the conditions were and that should have dictated how I worked the bait. After the sun came out, the fish seemed to move to the stumps and not so much in the laydowns. They wouldn’t bite a bait that was being moved to quickly. They wanted something that was worked like a worm, lift and drop. Makes sense on a day when the weather changed dramatically.

It took me all day to figure this out but by then it was a little late. I finally hooked up with a keeper at 12:30 pm in another gravel pocket. I had a sinking feeling that one fish may not be enough to keep me from falling out of the Top 12. I really needed a second keeper but neither Ken nor I put another one in the boat.

I weighed my one fish and it gave me a total of 12.97 lbs for the weekend. I was the one bumping fish at the weigh-in and I watched several good bags of fish come in but I lost track of who brought in what. Not knowing where the cut-off was, I sat in suspense with everyone else to hear the name of the 12^th place angler. Finally, Missouri TBF President Dan Porterfield pulled out the list and my name was the first to be announced. Phewwwww, what a relief! I almost blew it. It didn’t matter that I came in as the last angler on the team or that there was no money involved with making the team. Going to the TBF Central Divisional tournament was the goal and all 12 of us start on the same level for a shot at the TBF National Championship. It may not mean much for some anglers but for the weekend guys who struggle to scrape up money for gas and eat peanut butter & jelly sandwiches all weekend, this is a big deal. Every angler on the team is very proud of our accomplishments and each of us is looking forward to attempting to win a trophy individually but also as a team in Muskogee, Oklahoma this June. I’ve been ready for 5 years.

Heartland Pro Am 
Grand Lake, Oklahoma
4-23-06

Saturday – Practice Day

My tournament fishing has been less than stellar lately and I feel like I’ve missed the entire spring bite. I had a very poor showing at the Heartland Lake of the Ozarks tournament and the following Best of the Best tournament wasn’t much better at the end of March. Ben and I did get some decent points in that tournament and are currently in 6^th place overall in that tournament circuit. Heartland, on the other hand, has been a downward spiral for me as far as points go.

I dropped to 24^th after the LOZ tournament from 14^th and I had to miss the Bull Shoals event due to my commitment to the Missouri National Guard. I went to North Dakota for two weeks of Engineer training. The training site is right on Devils Lake and is known for walleye and northern pike. The ice was melting off while I was there and another student in the course took me out a couple evenings after class. We hammered the pike one night and the walleye the next. It was a nice diversion from tournament fishing, that’s for sure. But back home, I fell from 24^th to 40^th in the overall points for the Pro-Am after missing Bull Shoals and I would really like to make the Championship. I have to be in the top 40 to do that. At this point there isn’t any room to spare.

John Gorman made the early trek down to Grove, Oklahoma with me on Saturday for practice. I did as much map study and other preparation for this tournament as I could but there isn’t much information out there. A friend of mine (Loren Kelly) told me about an area to try that he had done well in the past. That was a big help because I had only been on that lake one time in the past. John and I would have to pick an area and make it work, no matter what. I didn’t have time to find more than that.

We started at daybreak on steeper banks half way back into a creek as I hoped to find a few fish early at the mouth of spawning areas and then planned to work flatter, spawning areas later in the day. We spent part of the morning bouncing around from place to place but didn’t have so much as a sniff. I had enough of that and went all the way back into the creek. It had a nice defined channel with chunk rock and laydowns. This led into a huge flat with a creek coming in. John was the first to boat a fish with a solid keeper coming on a brown, Eiron Breaker roundhead jig. Shortly thereafter, I had a healthy 3 pound fish jump onto my black ¼ oz Eiron Breaker buzzbait. We decided that with the amount of shad in there, it was pointless to keep fishing. We moved up into the creek and I had one good blowup on the buzzbait but nothing really stood out in there.

We moved out around mid-morning and decided to try another small creek arm nearby. The sun was up really good and we went to the last set of docks in the creek. I started flipping a black neon Bass Pro Shops tube and stuck a nice keeper and shook another off within a few minutes. That was enough there. We went to the other side of the creek and fished gravel indentions looking for spawning fish. We could see lots of shad in there and the bass were with them. John caught numerous shorts on a spinnerbait and I hit a couple more keepers on a wacky rigged Yamamoto Senko. Time to stop beating that area up.

We spent the rest of the day hitting other spawning pockets but didn’t come up with a single bass. At least we narrowed it down to a couple places and I was going to live or die right there. I figured I had around 10-11 pounds with a limit and if I could duplicate that I would be doing about as good as I could with what I found. Lack of experience on a lake coupled with limited practice time means generally I am fishing for points unless I get a lucky bite. It is easier on a familiar lake to go try certain areas for a big bite.

Sunday – Tournament Day

I drew boat #44 and Jeff Perry from the Kansas City area. He dropped my new Nitro 591 into the water and we waited for our boat to be called. I had this boat out for the first time the weekend prior to break it in so I really didn’t get a chance to see what it could do. I was feeling my way around it as I had run a Tracker Avalanche for the past couple of seasons. We made the 20 minute run and I was very happy with how it trimmed up and laid out at full throttle with a 150 Mercury OptiMax. With the price of gas approaching 3 dollars, I was pleased with the fact that I only burned about 12-15 gallons gas in two days of fishing. This new model for 2006 ran right at 60 mph with a full tournament load and full livewells. The Nitro 591 is a little under 19’ and fishes like a dream. It is very easy to handle around docks in the wind, plus it has plenty of front deck to fish two anglers comfortably. The best thing yet is that you can get one fully loaded with almost every option and a 150 Merc for about $25,000. That is a great deal that offers the best compromise for all of your tournament needs.

We pulled into our first area near the very back of the creek arm in stained water. I was the first boat in here and we went to work. I was throwing an Eiron Breaker buzzbait and Jeff was tossing a prop bait behind me. We worked the entire area to the back without as much as a sniff for either of us. I couldn’t believe that as it was cloudy which I thought would play into a topwater bite. Nope! We turned around and started to work back out with soft plastics. Jeff was the first to put a keeper fish into the Nitro livewells. He was pitching a Texas rigged weightless Senko and grunted on a solid 2 pound fish. I jumped for the net and about fell out of the boat when I caught my leg on the seat on the back deck. I corralled the fish and Jeff was in business.

We worked back out to the channel swing and I switched to a small crankbait. I had a solid thump and the fight was on with 8 pound line and a spinning rod. The fish dove under a log and got hung up. I worked it around a little and it finally came loose but then it started the circle-spin. Drum! John would be proud. We worked our way down the bank but didn’t work anything else up. Time to move.

There were a great deal of clouds which I didn’t want. I wanted the sun to position the fish under the docks in the other creek but I was just going to have to wait until it came out. I decided to go to the gravel pockets on the other side of the creek and try a wacky-rigged black/blue flake Senko soaked in Smelly Jelly-Sticky Liquid. The first pocket we moved into I cast next to a laydown and let the bait settle. It became heavy and my first keeper was in the sack. We spent the next two hours working this series of small gravel pockets with Senkos. I boated two more keepers including one around 3 pounds and Jeff dropped another keeper in his side of the well. We caught most of the fish from the back of the pockets but there were numerous fish feeding out at the front of them in the wind. I picked up a Bandit 200 and hit four shorts on my first four casts. We caught numerous shorts out in front on a crankbait but couldn’t pick up a single keeper fish. Same deal as the day before. I must not have been fishing deep enough to catch the bigger fish that were done spawning.

The sun came out a little bit around 11 am and I zipped over to the docks I wanted to flip with a tube. I made a pitch to a tire in the water and something said I had a bite but I didn’t react. I lifted up on the tube and pulled it from the fish. Good job stupid! We worked through the docks but the sun went back behind the clouds and I only picked up another short fish. Back to the other side with the gravel pockets. I cast to a dark spot near the bank and let the Senko settle. It started to move off and I had my 4^th keeper in the tank. One more and I had my goal of a limit for the day. I turned the boat around and Jeff threw his Senko into the same place I just pulled my fish from. He yelled for the net and he had his 3^rd keeper. Those two fish must have been paired up but the water was to dirty to see any nests. As we moved to another pocket, I finally caught a keeper fish on the point leading into it. My limit was complete at 12:30 pm and we packed out of there to a place that I thought I might get a better bite from. I had observed a bunch of birds in this bay the past two days but the wind was blowing in there to hard to fish. We wasted ½ an hour and just gave up to go back to the gravel pockets.

Maybe Jeff could finish his limit and I might be able to cull up a few ounces. I told Jeff we would go back to the shallow docks at 2 pm and try them again. We worked the pockets but didn’t come up with another keeper. Back to the docks but now there were several people walking around on them and the wind shifted to make working the bait difficult. I slipped in behind one and pitched my tube up next to a foam walkway float. I went between two cables and of course a nice bass went screaming up under the dock with my tube. I did what I could but my line slide up into the cable tie and a rope. The fish was pinned up out of the water but shook once before coming off. That one cost maybe a ¼ pound but not the kicker bite I knew I needed.

We went over to another bank to finish out the day and as I was trolling to get to the back of the pocket when I saw a keeper fish roll on a bed next to a stump. I whipped my MinnKota trolling motor around and told Jeff to give her a shot first. He cast past the stump and pulled his Senko into position. That fish jumped all over it but when Jeff set the hook, he rolled it and the fish came off. It must not have had the bait right in his mouth. That fish cost Jeff a chance at a check on the armature side. We were out of time so back to the ramp we went.

Jeff’s three fish were a little under 6 pounds and mine weighed 10.13 pounds after I took a ½ pound deduction for a dead fish. I must not have turned on the right livewell switch after we got back to the marina. I opened the livewell lid to retrieve the fish and they didn’t look good. No, I didn’t go "Ike" on my boat or toss anything into the lake. It was my fault as I didn’t flip the right switch. I learned my lesson about figuring out my equipment before going to a tournament but I only dropped three places in the standings with my penalty. I placed 30^th and the weights were extremely tight with a couple pounds more than what I had being in the top 10. Just a good kicker fish that I couldn’t find. From talking to people at the weigh-in, the bigger fish were holding just off of the spawning areas.

I moved up to 38^th place overall but will have to catch fish in each of the final two tournaments to have a chance at the Championship. The next one is at Truman in mid-May but I will have two tournaments up there between now and then. The final tournament is at Table Rock Time to man-up with a fishing rod and put some points on the board.

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Heartland Pro-am
LOZ
3/12/06

Sorry I’ve been so slow with this, it’s been a very busy week getting ready for the Missouri TBF meeting and working the Bass Pro Shops Spring Classic for a new sponsor, Mustad hooks. In fact, I’m headed to BPS later this morning (3/19) for a final day of selling. It is enjoyable to visit with many of the great people whom I’ve met while running around fishing. I also enjoy seeing the look on a person’s face after I’ve helped them make a good selection on some hooks and gave some reasons why I use the hooks I do in certain applications.

I was able to get a day of practice on Saturday(3/11) and I had a rider go along. Dalton Wilson, one of my youth club members who just fished the BASS Youth World Championship in Florida, came with me to give me a run for my money. More on that later.

Ben Henderson and I fished a tournament up there two weeks prior and found a few fish on the lower end of the lake. After the tournament, I went through my maps and marked what looked like similar places on it to take a look at during practice. Then everything changed. We had a big, warm rain during the week and I figured the fish would move into this warm water. So I had to remark my maps and look for transition banks in the back parts of the creek arms. The game plan was set. I wanted to fish the clearer water of the dam area early and move to this fresh water mid-morning to look for shad. I picked the Gravois arm to put in at during practice so we would end our day in the dirty water and then just put the boat on the trailer to go to the meeting. No wasted time running around and it was a close run between the clear water and dirty water.

Dalton and I put my Tracker Avalanche in the water right at daybreak and could see shad flipping in the water. The water temperature was 53 degrees and was stained. I wanted to go down lake at first but we just went to a nearby channel bank and started cranking a wart. Things just looked too good to pass up. Dalton flipped a small bass in the boat on a finesse worm but nobody was interested in my bait. I did casti into a beaver that was swimming down the bank but thankfully after a few feet, my bait pulled loose from her. That would have been a lost wiggle wart for sure. The stained water didn’t pan out so we moved down the lake.

The sun was up pretty good but it was slick calm. We worked several new areas that were at the mouth of pockets with a finesse worm rigged on a 3/16 oz Eiron Breaker finesse head but only came up with a couple of short fish. I worked a lot of new water but couldn’t find similar places to what Ben and I had fished before. I didn’t want to go bother the old places either. So Dalton and I worked our way back to the upper Gravois after fishing the back 1/3 of several feeder creeks. We just didn’t find anything that was right. Most of the creeks were silted in and didn’t have a defined channel. Once we got to the upper Gravois, there were boats everywhere. I counted 6 boats on one channel swing and I’ll bet there were 25 boats in the general area. Dalton and I hit every imaginable type of structure to try to dredge up a few bites but at the end of the day, we only came up with 8 bass. None were keepers and no two fish came on similar structure or lures. We basically didn’t figure anything out except that I didn’t want to come back to the Gravois!

And now, I’m going to tell on myself because I did something pretty stupid. Dalton and I had a friendly little competition going all day about who had the most fish (size didn’t matter thankfully), which ended up in the tie. At the very end of the day, we were pitching jigs to a channel bank and a big boat came around the corner that looked like the Water Patrol boat. Right then my heart sank because I just then realized I hadn’t purchased my new fishing license for 2006! Thankfully that boat wasn’t "The Man" and stupid me didn’t get a ticket for not having a valid fishing license. We quickly got off the water and I told Dalton that we needed to stop by Wal Mart so I could buy my license. He got a big grin on his face and said "Well, there you go. I win today because your license was expired!" I told him "Nope, still a tie" because he is under age and fishing with me which meant because I wasn’t licensed, he wasn’t either! He laughed and off we went to the store to make us legal.

At the tournament meeting I was paired up with Bob Hodges, an older gentleman from the Warsaw area. I told him I had some areas to fish early but after that we were going to wing it. I talked to a few friends and they were struggling with the bite as well. It is hard to watch weigh-ins were people are catching great bags and know that you would be lucky to put a couple in the boat.

So after blasting off, we ran down to the dam (literally) and started fishing. I ran to a pocket with a couple secondary points in it and tossed out a small jerkbait. Wouldn’t you know it, first cast and a great big crappie jumps on it. Not a good sign, it couldn’t have at least been a bass. I made a pass with the jerkbait and turned around to rework the area with a watermelon red Zoom finesse worm on my Eiron Breaker finesse head. I had one bass pick it up but I didn’t feel a tap. As I lifted by bait to move it, I felt about three slow head shakes of a good bass but too late, she already spit it out. We moved to another pocket where I caught a short fish and landed a just barely largemouth. Thanks for small favors and at least I had a fish in the livewell for some points.

And that was it. We fished the other areas on the lower end without any success and worked our way back up into the Grand Glaize, hitting everything that looked good along the way. I tried everything but I think I had one more short and my amateur had one also. I did send a rock bass flying over my head flipping a laydown with a jig. Best bite I had all day.

I weighed my one measly fish in, it was the second smallest weight of the tournament and I limped in at 69^th place. Guess that’s better than a kick in the teeth (sure felt like it after watching the weigh in) but I didn’t drop too far in the overall standings, down to 26^th place from 14^th. Just need to stay in the top 40 to make the Championship. I have to miss the next tournament at Bull Shoals because of National Guard so I guess that will be my throw-out tournament. I’ve got to make the right decisions at Grand Lake because when it gets toward summer, I’m not that great. I knew what should have been happening up at LOZ but didn’t go do it. I fished a couple weeks behind where the fish were and the warm weather moved them back into the creeks on the last secondary points. Its not rocket science but I made it that way. I looked at my front deck after the tournament and I had a pile of rods out. That’s a bad sign and I need to go do what I know how to, slow down and fish a jig. Maybe next time.

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Best of the Best
Lake of the Ozarks
2/25/06

This is a new circuit for Ben Henderson and me. Ben is sponsored by Center City Marine so his boat and equipment lines up perfectly with this circuit. Last year was the first season for Best of the Best tournament series and from what I have read; it was well organized and run. When Ben asked me to partner with him during these tournaments, I figured there was no way we could loose out on it. They seem to pay back really well and this circuit drew some of the best anglers last year. This tournament day was no different. If there is a good payback, you are guaranteed the best local anglers will show up.

I wasn’t able to pre-fish for this event. In fact, I’ve only been on the water two other times so far this year and it wasn’t to LOZ. Three trips in two months seems pretty pathetic but I’ve been really busy with other obligations, mostly fishing related so it hasn’t been a complete wash. Ben went two weeks ago with John Gorman but only had limited success in the lower Grand Glaize arm. Ben went again the Monday prior to the tournament and once he figured out that the fish weren’t where he thought they should be, he put a decent limit in the boat from the lower end. He didn’t catch anything huge but had a solid limit which would go a long ways towards year-end points. Ben and I are just not that familiar with LOZ to have visions of beating all the guys who have many, many years of experience on the lake. We just wanted a limit.

We decided to stay close to the ramp early and try to put a fish in the box before running down to the lower end of the lake. I figured with the warm weather during the week that it was possible a fish might be caught on a Wiggle Wart. We hit several points and didn’t get a single bite. The wind had shifted around to the north and was getting pretty breezy. After an hour of beating the water, we had enough and made the run down toward Shawnee Bend. Ben pulled his Skeeter into a cove that he had two quick keepers from in practice but the wind was blowing down the secondary point. We tried to fish but it was futile. We worked the area for another half hour with jerkbaits and jigs but still no fish. Time to make the run all the way down to the dam area.

We pulled into a deep pocket lined with docks and brush near a channel swing and Ben went to work with his jig. I tossed a jerkbait for a little while but I just couldn’t get any interest. I finally gave up on it and picked up my spinning rod with a 3/16 oz Eiron Breaker finesse head rigged with a watermelon red Zoom finesse worm. I opened the bag of worms the night before and gave them a squirt of Smelly Jelly-Sticky Liquid (crawfish/anise) to marinate in. John Gorman and I caught a lot of fish on this little bait at Stockton last month so I figured I’d better try it. I couldn’t do any worse than I was doing.

We worked our way to the outer part of the pocket and I walked the bait slowly back to the boat. The water was about 40 degrees so I didn’t it very fast. I lifted up on my rod and felt a heavy sensation. I honestly thought I was on the backside of a brushpile and lifted slowly up on the rod to pull it over the limb. When I did this, my line started to slowly pull down and I then felt the wide head shakes of a decent fish. Ben saw that I had a good fish on and jumped for the net. This fish pulled me around the boat once on my 8 lb BPS fluorocarbon but Ben scooped up a nice fish that was pushing 4 lbs. That was at 10 am and it was about time we had a bite! Thankfully that fish didn’t spit out my bait because I never felt that fish until I pulled back hard on her. Super sharp Mustad needle point hooks in my finesse heads help tremendously. In addition, I know that Smelly Jelly increases the number of fish I put in the boat when the water is cold. Once a fish takes a lure with this scent on it, they just won’t let go.

We moved to another pocket that I’d fished last fall with a nice point in the back that was fairly steep. Ben stayed with his jig and had a bite there but he broke it off on the hookset. I quickly put about half a dozen short fish in the boat but no more keepers. Ben made a comment about having to tie one of my finesse heads on but he continued to be stubborn. We hit another pocket and then a bluff wall but I only landed a short largemouth. I figured for sure I could get a 12 inch spotted bass on a place like that but I didn’t catch a single Kentucky all day on my finesse worm. I missed a fish on a point of a pocket and then we moved to a secondary point with big rock on it. I made a long cast and as the worm was sinking, I felt a tap. I set the hook hard but the fish came straight to the boat and didn’t get the hook in her. As I made that cast, Ben was finally tying on a finesse worm. He cast right where I missed that fish and he made about 4 hops before he had his first finesse worm fish at 11:00 am. It was a solid keeper as well. After dropping that fish in the livewell, my next cast resulted in a short largemouth.

We worked that cove out and moved again. Ben found a cove that was protected somewhat from the wind and had a few brushpiles in it. Ben leaned into another solid largemouth at 11:30 am which went into the box and then at 11:45 am I put our fourth fish in the boat to take a ride. We spent the next hour hitting some other pockets but were unable to get another bite. We decided to start hitting some of the wind-blown, main-lake points in hopes of catching a bigger fish on a jerkbait. I had one short fish on a clown jerkbait but we couldn’t find what we needed. We decided not leave fish to find fish so we went back to a couple of the productive coves but by 2:20 we needed to go back to the ramp area. Maybe if we had enough time we could hit a couple spots to try for one last keeper to finish out our limit.

We ran back to the Grand Glaize and pulled up on a point near the ramp. Numerous boats were doing the same but they left one open for us. The wind was blowing across the point but it was too windy to try to fight it. Ben drifted with the wind and picked up a Table Rock Shad colored jerkbait to finish up with. I stayed with the finesse worm. We each made a few casts and then Ben cast right to the very tip of the point. He jerked his bait down twice and he nearly had his rod ripped out of his hands. He wrestled another solid keeper to the boat and this time it was a big Kentucky. I hoisted her into the boat with the net, tossed it in the livewell, strapped everything down and we zipped back to the ramp to weigh our fish. We didn’t have any time to spare and were tremendously pleased to finish out with a limit.

Our fish weighed a little more than we thought at 14.77 lbs which put us in 12^th place out of 46 boats. Two more pounds would have put us in the check line, which really was just having a kicker fish to go with what we had. Ben and I were more than content with our day for not knowing much about the lake and not having numerous places to go to find a better bite. We just took what the finesse worm gave us and it was a decent average. The top anglers in this event all had numerous years of experience on LOZ which is really hard to overcome without many practice days. I will say that this lake always impresses me with the amount of fish it produces. Who would have thought it would take almost 17 lbs to draw a check when a front blows through? I wonder how big the bags will be in a couple weeks at Heartland when the water warms up a little. We’ll just have to go fishing to find out.

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Stockton Open
Stockton Lake
1/29/06

Wow the lake is low! Places that we were fishing last year at this time are high and dry right now. I think the lake is down about 9 feet and every stump is sticking out of the water. This is a good thing because it gives you a chance to see what you were fishing when the water is up. It’s real easy to tear something up when running around if you aren’t careful.

I picked John Gorman up from his house in Bolivar and headed over to the lake. We were one of the first to arrive at the lake so we had plenty of time to get our equipment ready and shoot the breeze with some of the fishermen. There was a pretty good turnout, 24 boats.

A front had passed through the evening before so John and I assumed our plan was going to work out just right. Normally when it goes from cloudy days to a bright, sunny day at Stockton, the fishing is pretty slow. We missed the boat on this one though. We knew the fish were feeding heavily prior to the tournament. John really caught some nice fish during practice on Friday but I’ll let him elaborate on that in his journal. Click Here to go to John's Journal.  He was on a pattern that was pretty fool-proof as far as a front shutting things down. He was on a finesse bite and with the water temperature holding at 42 degrees on the main lake, I assumed we were making the right decision. Never assume anything when it comes to little green fish.

At 8:30 am, we zipped out to the main lake with my Tracker Avalanche. We went right to a big pocket loaded with brush and big rock. I decided to try for a big bite with a jerkbait and John pulled out his spinning rod. He had been catching good fish on my Eiron Breaker 3/16 oz finesse head rigged with a 5" green pumpkin finesse worm.

Well to say the least, John put the whop on me for the first couple of hours. He boated two keepers and about 10 shorts. I didn’t have a sniff on the jerkbait. He just cast up near the bank and slowly drug the worm out to 20 feet, staying in contact with the bottom. Not rocket science but it was what the fish wanted. After the first hour of scooping up fish for John, I had enough and pulled out my spinning rod. It took a couple more moves to other locations before I landed something that would help the cause. At 11 am, I dropped a nice keeper in the livewell but we only had about 7 pounds.

I was using the same head but with an avocado/red flake worm. I use Zoom finesse worms and let them soak in a relatively unknown product, Sticky Liquid. This is produced by the makers of Smelly Jelly. Same potent, fish catching odor but it is a liquid that is perfect for marinating unscented plastics with. Just open the bag and squeeze a small amount in the night before your trip. Your baits are ready to go and you don’t have to reapply scent, it gets on the bait and won’t let go.

Time to make a change as the number of bites we were getting really slowed down. The sun was beating down pretty good and so we ran up lake to dirty water to see if the water was starting to warm. We hit a few channel swings but only had a few short fish to show for it. We finally went to a south facing bank that had the sun drenching it. The water had warmed up to almost 45 degrees here. The water was a little dirty so I went to a bigger clown jerkbait while John stayed with his little worm.

We started back on the flat end of the transition and when we got to the drop where the channel swung away from the bank, we found a big group of fish. The first bite I had was a good one. A 4 ½ pound largemouth grabbed my jerkbait right after I jerked it down next to the bank. This added considerably to our weight at 1 pm. We worked this area for a few more passes but all we could come up with were short fish. John had several on a Table Rock shad Lucky Craft jerkbait and then we both caught several more on a jig, all in one 50 yard stretch. I did get one keeper jig bite there but it was the wrong species, a 4 ¼ pound walleye! I thought I had the fish on that we needed to finish our limit but when I saw the white tail, I just had dinner.

We made one more move to a similar channel transition and John had a jig bite but that fish pulled off. We finally decided to run back down lake to the area we started the morning in hopes to get our final keeper but it wasn’t meant to happen.

Our four fish weighed about 11 ½ pounds which put us in 6^th place. We fished pretty well, I missed one fish and broke another off. The one I broke off came to the surface and it was only about 13 inches long. John broke a fish off on the finesse head but that’s to be expected with light line and had that one jig fish pull off. We caught 20-25 short fish, pretty good for the middle of winter with cold water.

We really fished the wrong conditions. The passing of the front wasn’t actually that dramatic and the wind never changed to the north, it blew from the west the entire day. Plus it blew all night long. The main lake fish that were up feeding the previous days under the cloud cover didn’t leave the bank until later in the day. The top finishers caught their best fish early in the morning and the Big Bass was caught on a wiggle wart. Jerkbaits and warts produced very well on the main lake. I didn’t get bit early on a jerkbait but we were in a pocket, not out in the wind on a main point. That’s where the feeding fish were. I didn’t expect those fish to be that active in 42 degree water but you learn something new everyday.

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Heartland Pro/Am

Table Rock Lake

12/11/05

I hadn’t been to Table Rock since last March and I wouldn’t say that I know enough about the lake. Fortunately, I have a few friends (very few) and Ben Henderson has fished down there for many years. I decided that I needed to spend more time on one lake and really figure out what the fish were doing. I wasn’t able to depend on a great deal of past experiences down there nor would I be able to spend three or four days prior to the tournament practicing. I figured if Ben and I could follow the fish as they moved with the change in water temperature, I would do ok.

This would also mean concentrating on only one area of the lake. The area that I know more than any place on Table Rock would be Long Creek. Ben has always given me a hard time because I refuse to go up the James River arm. "Too many people fish up there" is my usual answer. Ben made me a promise, if he couldn’t show me anything and we didn’t figure out how to catch fish up there, I didn’t ever have to go back. Deal. I know many tournaments are won up there but there is always lots of traffic. I went along with it but I didn’t like it. At least not right away.

I fished one day every weekend on Table Rock since the last Heartland tournament at Lake of the Ozarks. The first weekend, I went by myself just to look things over. I didn’t catch a single keeper on a post-front day but looking back, I was looking to far ahead. The water temperature was very warm and I was fishing areas that should hold fish late in the fall. I wanted to find a pattern that the fish were coming into, not going away from.

Ben went with me during all of the remaining trips. The second trip we had three keepers from the flat transition areas at the very end of channel swings. One was a solid four pound largemouth that annihilated a ¼ oz Eiron Breaker white buzzbait. We did find an area that had tons of baitfish and this was the general area we pulled keeper bass from. The fish were very scattered and would bite about any lure as long as it wasn’t a jig. (This was a reoccurring theme). A big cold front came through that day and dropped the water temperature 6 degrees that day to 53. Winter was finally coming.

The third trip, we tried to work areas down the James from Cape Fair but come up with nothing. We went up and found some fish finally. The water had cooled significantly during the week (48 degrees) and I finally gave in by throwing a jerkbait because nothing else was working. We made a pass down a steep bank in the back of a cove and had four keeper bites. We moved to a couple other banks like it and Ben put a nice 3 pound Kentucky in the boat and we found the fish relating to large stumps. Since we got a late start on finding fish, we were about out of time for the day. As we were driving back to the ramp, I noticed a bank that had stumps in what looked like the right depth. I whipped my Avalanche in a U-turn and shut it down. We made a pass on that bank and Ben had three more keeper bites on a jerkbait. I fished a jig, the usual nothing. The water temperature was getting where they should be eating a jig but Ben and I surmised that the bass were just too interested in shad to care about a crayfish. That bank had tons of shad on it and that was a key to the productive places.

The fourth trip was the weekend of the Central Pro/Am tournament. We went down on Saturday and were interested to see how our day went compared to those fishing CPA around us. The water had cooled even more (42-44 degrees). What we figured out was some banks produced better in the afternoon and some in the morning. I had three keepers with one pushing four pounds and had another big fish pull off. Ben had a rough day but caught a couple huge crappie on a jerkbait. He was the crash test dummy of the day and tried every other color and brand different from what I was throwing. I had the bait that the fish wanted (a clown Pointer 128 and a smaller clown unnamed jerkbait, gotta keep that one a secret!). We were hopping from spot to spot, catch a couple fish and move. We found several key areas that were productive and they had to have shad.

I was happy with how the fish were eating the bait and that we found the important spots on the bank, not just the whole bank. I knew I had the right jerkbait because all of the fish either had the entire bait in their mouth or they had the front or middle treble hook in them. Ben had several hits during the day on other colors and brands but didn’t hook up or they would only have the back treble. The only wildcard was the weather. The very backs of the pockets and creeks were getting really cold. We had to move down this week to warmer water. The forecast was for a really cold snap during the week and that was what we got.

Saturday, December 10

Mid-week we had a little snow and it was cold, very cold. Ben and I went to check the places we had marked from the previous weekend and the news wasn’t good. Ice! Time to start over. We had a good pattern but we needed to move down again and find the important spots on channel swings that would hold fish. We started on a point that we always fish and is a community spot. Ben jokes about that spot, it always produces a couple shorts but looks to good to pass up. Almost immediately, he catches a huge crappie on a jerkbait, a Table Rock Shad Pointer 100. That one went home to the frying pan. That was a good sign, crappie mean shad and shad mean bass. I was throwing a clown color and almost had the rod yanked out of my hand by a short largemouth. On Ben’s next cast he hooks a pig. It bulldogs in the 40 degree water and I finally lip a 6 lb 4 oz beauty. Great fish but wrong day.

Enough for that spot and we move on. One channel bank doesn’t produce (no shad on the graph) and then on to another. Ben lands a nice walleye (to the frying pan!) and I see numerous shad on the graph. At the break of the transition, my jerkbait gets heavy and a nice keeper comes to the boat. Up with the trolling motor and on to the next likely looking spot. Thump, I get a violent strike and a largemouth pushing 3 pounds comes to the boat. We think this is a good spot to try for a jig bite and I did catch a short Kentucky but we fish for too long without anything more happening on a jig. We move further down the lake but are unable to find schools of shad on the right structure.

Around noon, we move back up and I am determined to get a jig bite if it kills me. Well, it did. I slowly hopped a 3/8 oz pumpkin green flake Eiron Breaker Hammer jig down a break and felt a heavy sensation. I didn’t think to shake the fish off and in came a 4 lb 2 oz largemouth. Yes Ben, it was stupid to hook that fish.

Well, we pretty much quit fishing after that and were bummed that we weren’t fishing the Heartland Buddy tournament. Four fish for more than 15 lbs and a kicker. What do you do? We had to fish new water to find some fish, too bad they were all keepers for the most part. When the water gets cold, I find the fish tend to stack up in certain areas and you have to fish a little to find them. Hopefully the tournament would be as good to me.

Sunday, December 11

I drew out boat #12 and told my partner, Gary Gedville, to bring whatever warm clothes he needed to for the cold early run up the lake. It turned out not to be all that cold and the run was pretty comfortable. We ran to the community hole first and didn’t get a bite. The shad were still there as were the Blue Herons but the fish weren’t cooperative. My second stop produced my biggest fish, one close to four pounds. She came on a clown jerkbait from a small point on a channel swing with big standing timber. I finished out the pass with one short fish. Our next move didn’t produce and then I went to the swing Ben had caught a walleye from the day before. This spot gave up another solid keeper for me on the same jerkbait.

I decided to go back to the bank that I had my first fish from and fish not just the end but from the center on out. Gary picked up 2 shorts on a Table Rock Shad Pointer 100. I threw a clown Pointer 128 some but couldn’t get bit. The water was a little colder and so I went back to my smaller clown jerkbait. At the very end of the transition, my line jumped and a 17 ½" Kentucky ran all over the place before Gary got the net around her. This was at 10:45 am. Great, just have to have two more bites for a limit and the day is only half over. Plenty of time, right? Don’t count you chickens before they hatch!

We went back to the community hole and Gary got a very nice 3 ¾ lb largemouth on a jig. The jig bites were few and far between but they always seem to produce a quality fish. We hit a few more places including the bank I had pulled two of my keepers from but couldn’t come up with another bass for the livewells. At 1 pm I decided to start working our way back down lake because my water pressure buzzer went off once when we were running to different spots. I think all I did was have it trimmed up to high going around a sharp corner because I didn’t have any more problems with it. I didn’t want to get stuck up there with some good fish for points so away we went.

On the way back we hit a pocket that the wind was blowing into but didn’t find any fish interested. I ran way down to the back of a creek in the lower James and started throwing a shad wiggle wart on a windy channel swing. I had two fish hit it right at the boat but they both came off. I immediately turned around and worked a clown jerkbait over these suspended fish. I boated half a dozen Kentuckies but all of them were just a little short. We ran back to the ramp area, hit a couple more spots but time ran out.

I weighed three fish for 8.74 lbs and finished in 19^th place. 11 ½ pounds was the cut for a check. Just one average keeper up the James would have done that for me. I was worried about getting back and played it safe. Playing it safe at this level will generally get you nothing. I found the right fish to place high and needed to try for that one last bite. Cold water fish are pretty tough because you just won’t get many bites. I didn’t trust what I had found enough and left fish to find fish. I found fish but they were all small. One bright note is that I am in 14^th place in the overall standings; just have to be in the top 40 to make the Championship. I can’t wait until next March for the next Heartland Pro/Am tournament.

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Heartland Pro/Am
Lake of the Ozarks
10/30/05

Practice Day 1

Leading up to this event, it seemed a number of good weights were coming from the lower end of the lake. This may have something to do with the water being drawn down and the water temperature still being quite warm for this time of year. Whatever the case, I decided I would fish the lower end of the lake and I took up a friend on an invite to fish with him from a year ago. Harold Stark is an excellent fisherman and a good friend from the MOBASS. He grew up fishing the North Shore area and jumped in my Tracker Avalanche to show me some new water.

This was the weekend prior(Oct 23) to the event and a huge front had rolled though, bringing a very stiff northwest wind. I had heard of post-front conditions being better sometimes during the fall and this day was one of them. The morning started out great, Harold had a solid 4 pound fish on a buzzbait and lost another one just as big. These came off of primary and secondary chunk rock points with deep water nearby. We spent the rest of the morning fishing back into coves around docks with jigs and tubes. We had a couple solid keepers but not very many bites. Harold had placed high in a tournament recently by fishing docks but the fish just wouldn’t help us out. Harold thought it was from the water being dropped down as far as it was.

We decided to move back out to points and expand what we found earlier. Harold kept throwing his buzzbait, a black on black model and I kept changing spinnerbaits until I found the one they wanted. The sun started to peak out but the wind was still screaming. The shad we were seeing were very small so I tried to match the size. This didn’t work and nor did throwing a white or clearer skirt. So I dug around and decided to go to the other end of the spectrum. I pulled out a ¾ oz chartreuse spinnerbait with matching painted blades. I immediately started to put fish in the boat, catching 4 more keepers while the sun was still out. The clouds rolled back in and Harold went back to work with the buzzbait and the fish let up on my spinnerbait. I changed lures and found a couple buzzbaits that worked for me as well.

All told, we boated 17 legal bass with our best 5 going 16-17 pounds. We ran as pure of a pattern as I have seen since last spring. We caught at least one keeper from just about every stop. The fish were on the primary and first secondary point at the mouth of the coves and looking back, the presence of shad was the key. Some banks didn’t have as much wind on them but obviously that was important as well. At the end of the day I asked Harold, "what happens when the wind dies?" He thought the fish back off and suspend and are very hard to catch. "You basically have to fish the docks." We fished a number of docks but couldn’t get bit and I kind of put them out of the game plan. That turned out to be a mistake of course.

Practice Day 2

For a lake that is as developed as LOZ is, you would think that there would be more public boat ramps but there are only three below PB-II. I’m sure there are a number of pay ramps out there but they are not on the map and I surely don’t know about them. I wanted to fish the lower end but yet look at a few spots in the Gravois as well. I was going to put in at Shawnee Bend but I rolled right past the turn in the dark. So my last choice was the back of the Gravois.

When I got within a couple of miles of the ramp, I hit a big bank of fog. That surprised me because when I crossed the other arms of the lake there wasn’t any. I dropped the boat in and decided to fish around until the fog lifted. Then I could run down the lake and check the areas we fished last weekend. It was a good plan but it didn’t happen. I fished a buzzbait around shallow docks and boated a dozen shorts with one keeper. The fog just wouldn’t lift. Finally at 10 am I had enough and worked my way back to the ramp with my GPS. There was just no way of running down the lake. I would have to go back to Shawnee Bend and put in. By the time I got my trailer backed into the lake, the fog looked like it was getting thinner and a mile down the road, it was gone. Great, I wasted most of my morning because I missed my turn-off.

I finally got to the areas I wanted to check and only had about 3 hours to find out if the fish were still there. The problem I ran into and knew would be trouble was the wind direction. It had been blowing out of the south for several days and that would reposition the shad. I fished several of the productive points from the weekend prior and didn’t have much luck. The shad were not there. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky but it was supposed to be cloudy during the tournament. I figured I could still get fish to come up for a buzzbait during the tournament. I had fish roll on my buzzbait in the middle of the day but not take it. This told me that some fish were still there but it didn’t seem to be as many. I tried to locate some places that the wind was blowing into and found a couple that had shad. I just couldn’t get bit and only put one keeper in the boat before going back to the ramp. I hoped the change in the weather would turn the fish on. Too bad I wasted my morning practice by going to the wrong ramp.

Tournament Day

I was paired with Mark Horton. He fished the buddy the day before and didn’t have much luck until the last 15 minutes of the tournament when they boated three solid keepers from a place right by PB-II. His partner was not fishing the tournament so he said we could hit that spot at the end of the day if we needed to find a fish or two late.

We were boat number 83, nearly at the end of the line. Our number was finally called and I dropped the hammer on my Avalanche and raced down towards the lower end of the lake. There was another tournament going out of a ramp down past Shawnee Bend and a few boats had started on some of the points that were productive in practice. That actually made me feel better, I seemed to be making the right decision.

We pulled into a secondary point that was rather flat but had a steep drop away from the bank. I started with a 3/8 oz black with black blade Eiron Breaker buzzbait with a trailer hook. Mark quickly put a keeper Kentucky in the livewell on a black buzzbait with a clacker. We both had several fish boil on our buzzbaits but they just wouldn’t commit. A follow up with a tube or a jig didn’t sucker them into biting either. We bounced around to several main and secondary points but the shad were not on these areas anymore. The wind wasn’t blowing into the points either. At 8:30 am I finally had a small keeper Kentucky drill my buzzbait but a limit of one pound fish wouldn’t do me a bit of good. At least I was on the board. I decided we needed to move to the wind blown side of the lake.

I stayed with the primary and first secondary point pattern but didn’t get much for results other than a few short fish. Many fish were just slashing at the bait, not grabbing it. As we worked around a dock, my partner had a good fish boil on his jig as he pulled it from the end. That should have told me something but I didn’t listen. One of the major patterns involved suspended fish around the ends and sides of the docks. You have to pay attention to what the fish are telling you.

I pulled into a pocket that had several shallow brushpiles and I started to walk a 3/8 oz brown Eiron Breaker Hammer jig tipped with a Zoom Super Chunk through them. Mark cast back under a nearby dock and grunted for the net. He fought the largemouth to the net but it was just a hair short of the line. This time I listened and worked my way back to three docks in the back of the pocket. I pitched to the back corner and my line moved sideways. I drilled that fish and it was just over the line. The cove was forked so we went to the other backend and I pulled a small keeper Kentucky from under another dock on my jig.

I was stubborn about the point pattern and we tried it some more without success. We moved to another cove with an old, broke down dock in it. I moved behind the dock and pitched a pumpkin green flake Eiron Breaker Hammer jig to the end of the walk-way. When I picked up my jig, it didn’t feel right and the fight was one. Mark saw me swing and jumped down on the net. The fish made a three foot jump right at the boat. My jig popped out but it flew right into the waiting net. Thanks Mark! That made four fish in the livewell at 11 am but I may have only had about 5 ½ pounds. We worked out way into another pocket of docks and I broke off a fish. I felt it pulling down but I think a chain cut my line. That’s part of fishing docks.

We spent the next couple of hours hopping around to different spots but couldn’t come up with much. I decided that a small limit was better than nothing so I ran back towards the ramp to try and pick up a small Kentucky to finish out. Points are points and might matter at the end of the year. I went to a series of deep docks that produced for me in the past and only fished the very ends of them. I went with one of my most reliable baits when I have to have a fish, a ¼ oz white on white Eiron Breaker buzzbait. I call it "Little Squeak" and I can’t tell you how many times it has saved the day. Sure enough, it produced a 14 inch Kentucky by paralleling the ends of the foam over deep water.

I put that rod down and we had about an hour to fish Mark’s spot. This produced a solid largemouth for me and several short fish, all on a pumpkin green flake Hammer jig. The fish were relating to a steep bank back behind a row of cruiser docks. The fish were in the 10-15 foot range and the bites were very light. I was hopping the jig fairly hard and I pulled it from one fish. Within a couple seconds, a 4-5 pound bass rolled lazily on the surface right above where I was bit. I’m going to say that wasn’t the fish that bit me for sanity’s sake.

My small limit weighed 8.08 pounds and put me in 42^nd place. 12 something pounds was the range to get a check so one good fish would have put me there. I am just beginning to figure LOZ out a little so hopefully in future tournaments I can apply what I learned. I needed to look closer at the suspended bite around the docks but because of our first day of practice, I put that out of my mind. I also need to fish that lake more often but it is hard to when other good lakes are closer. 

Hopefully Table Rock in December will turn out a little better for me but I’m sure the weights will be pretty heavy.

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October 1 & 2, 2005

MOBASS FEDERATION STATE CHAMPIONSHIP – Truman Lake

After last year’s dismal showing at Lake of the Ozarks, I was looking forward to this year at Truman. I have done well up there, making the Divisional team twice. It suits my shallow water style better and you can always find fish in the stained water up there. I had three days to practice but I was unable to make it up there prior to the last three days in September. One of the problems this year was the tournament was earlier than usual and the water was still very warm for late September. Additionally, the water dropped two feet just prior to the tournament. Some decent weights were reported in a couple weekend tournaments so the fish were definitely biting. I just had to find a concentration of fish.

I decided to only practice in areas that I had caught fish in the past. This meant staying on the lower end of the lake from Long Shoals to the mouth of the Big Pomme. At least I wouldn’t burn up much time making a long run.

Practice Day 1

The weather was ideal for finding fish. A front was moving in and there was some wind out of the southwest. I hit the lake at daylight and went to a favorite bank out at the mouth of a major creek to start cranking. I put a solid keeper in the boat very quickly but I fished down the entire channel bank and only caught small Kentuckies. In fact, I had never caught so many Spots up there as I did that day. They were just tearing up my shad crankbait but were only about 12 inches long. The problem was I didn’t see shad in the area. That surprised me. The wind was perfect but the water temperature was 76 degrees. I moved to another spot and ran into a club member. He hadn’t found much yet, just some shorts. We worked around each other all day.

After talking to Don, I moved to another channel swing and then the wind died down. Out came my ¼ oz Eiron Breaker buzzbait, white with a white blade. This little guy can always be counted on to tell me what is in the area. I may not hook everything but my secret weapon will make the fish show their noses. I quickly had several shorts and another solid keeper. With that I decided it was time to work towards the back of the creek and see what was back there. To my surprise, the further back I went, the less I found for fish. My club member and I fished each side of the creek as far back as we could go. He landed one keeper and I had a few shorts. We finally ran into the shad but they were in the very back of the creek. Not the place I like to see them. I don’t like to fish in the very backs of the creek in the fall. If I can find shad on the last big flat in the creek, that is where I can catch better fish. It seems mostly small fish are in the very backs with just a few keeper size fish mixed in, getting a limit is hard for me to do.

The front finally came through mid-afternoon and the wind started to blow 20-30 out of the north. I cranked up a big walleye but the bite was pretty much over by then. The majority of the fish Don and I caught were out on the secondary points and swings in the creek arms. The water was too warm and the lack of shad towards the back of the creek meant the fish were someplace in between the summer and fall places.

Practice Day 2

I started the day cranking and spinnerbaiting rip-rap without a sniff. The north wind was blowing pretty good but not as hard as yesterday. The water temperature was starting to drop which could only help. After working every bit of rip-rap I knew of, I started to hit bluff cut pockets. Most of the cuts at Truman have laydowns in the back and sides. I hit at least half a dozen and every laydown had short fish in it. I caught those on a black/blue tube. I even fished a bigger pocket loaded with cedar trees but the result was the same. Every laydown had a short fish in it. By mid-morning I gave up on bluff cuts and ran to another creek. I met up with another club member who was having a good day up to that point. He had a keeper on a buzzbait on his third cast of the morning and two more keepers on a crankbait, one well over 4 pounds. All by 9:30 am. His fish were from secondary points and swings, just like what we had found the day before.

I finished the day by fishing a couple channel swings and totally picking apart the back of another creek. I had one keeper to show for it on a 7" worm (desperation bait!) and a sack full of shorts. I even caught two huge crappie on a flippin tube. The shad were there but the better bass weren’t. I had to get off the water by 3 pm to get back to Springfield for a school function for the kids but I doubt I would have found anything more.

Practice Day 3

I met up with a third club member and we went to another small creek. Today the wind had changed back to the south. We fished a channel swing towards the back with buzzbaits and crankbaits, only putting a couple shorts in the boat. That wasn’t a good sign but at least there were more shad in this creek. I destroyed my transducer on the trolling motor, there was a huge bolder just under the surface that I couldn’t see and I ran right up on it. Great, $75 down the drain. At least for what I planned to do, I wouldn’t need it. We moved out to the middle section of the creek and I had three keeper bites on a crankbait. The most positive thing was there were lots of shad in this area. We went to the ramp around 10:30 am to register the team.

From what I saw, it wouldn’t take but 10-12 pounds to make the team and 18-22 pounds to win it. I was dead on with that call but as usual, the word was several people had really sacked some fish in practice and the weights would be higher. Everyone that I talked to whom I trusted was struggling and I surely hadn’t found much. The fish were on secondary points and swings mid-way in the creeks and the presence of shad was key.

Tournament Day 1

Never live in the past, it will kill you every time. I found a key area but I didn’t listen to myself as where to start. It turned out good for my partner. We went to the wrong creek to start with, one without shad present. I cranked an entire channel swing and only caught a couple shorts. I knew it was a bad move when I could only catch a couple shorts, the fish just didn’t want my crankbait. My partner was smart, went to a slower presentation behind me (a worm) and hooked a 5.07 pound largemouth. So we were around some good fish but couldn’t get them to bite. I gave up on this creek and went to another but the shad weren’t there either except in the very back. The short fish back there wouldn’t even bite. Finally we went to the third creek that I should have started at. I went to a transition bank that I caught a 3 pound fish from on Friday mid-way in the creek. I caught several shorts but lost a better fish next to the boat. Just one of those deals. It seemed the bite got worse as the day went on and you had to get them early.

Well, I didn’t get them early and my sack was empty at the end of the day. My partner’s fish was 3^rd Big Bass of the day which was good, he got a nice check when it was all said and done. Richard was a good partner and fished hard all day. He said he wouldn’t have fished anything different, the fish just didn’t bite. Fortunately, the cut was only at 7.29 pounds after the first day. Harold Stark really sacked em up with over 15 pounds but the weights were pretty low overall. Charlie Edgar was in 3^rd using my Eiron Breaker roundhead jig. After talking to Harold and Charlie, I realized that I was fishing over fish. I was in the right place but not doing what I needed to do. Plus, I hurt myself by not starting in the creek that the shad were in. Don’t live in the past! Leaving a place that you have done well at in the past alone is so hard to do. Checking it in practice is one thing but if the conditions aren’t right, don’t force it. I tried to force it which turned out good for my partner but I was fishing to fast.

Tournament Day 2

With the top 12 cut at a little more than 7 pounds, I put my simple math to work and almost always the final cut weight is Day 1 cut weight divided in half plus itself or right at 11 lbs (dead on again). A limit would make that weight. Now the question was could you get a limit? Pretty hard but a kicker fish and three others would do it.

We went straight to the creek with the shad and I started with a crankbait while my partner used a spinnerbait. The wind was blowing into this area and the fish were biting. My heart was racing after the first 10 minutes and about 10 fish were put in the boat. I just knew we were going to get some keepers from this spot. We kept fishing and boating short fish but nothing would quite measure. I came to a big laydown and pitched in a PB & J 5/16 oz Eiron Breaker roundhead jig tipped with a Zoom critter craw. It didn’t stop and I laid into a better fish. Mitch scooped it in the net and on the board it went. Just over the line and at 7:30 am, I’m finally in the game. We fished up the channel swing and the further from the transition we got, the fewer bites we had. We went back to the other end and worked it over again. We caught nothing but shorts so we turned around and worked it over slowly with a jig and worm. This resulted in several more shorts and at 8:30 am, I caught my second keeper. This one just barely swept the line but I’ll take it.

We figured we had worn this spot out and went to another secondary point back in the creek but this wasn’t productive. We moved back further again to crank another rock area over but could only muster a couple shorts. I decided to switch gears and do what Harold had done the day before, crank some stumps. I put on a Timber Tiger and my first cast resulted in a nice keeper at 9:30 am. Great, a keeper bite an hour; surely I could get two more and have a shot at making the team. NOPE! That was pretty much it for the day. We didn’t have another bite from the stumps or the back of the creek. We bounced around to other creeks that my partner knew of but couldn’t make it happen.

I hit the scales with just under 6.5 pounds. Harold had some bad luck and only brought two fish in to finish in 2^nd place. One came on a 3/8 oz black/blue Eiron Breaker Hammer jig that I gave him early that morning. Great job buddy and good luck at Divisionals. Charlie blanked on Day 2 but still made the team in 12^th place.

I’m not happy with my results but I learned a lot about early fall fishing. I have never done well when the water temperature was falling between 80 and 70 degrees. Now I’ve got a good base of knowledge for next time. The fish were scattered but on secondary points and swings in the creeks with shad. I started at the wrong place on Day 1, forget about the past "good spots" and make a game plan based on current information. There was one place I didn’t fish that I talked about with my partner a couple of times on Day 2 that we should have checked. Mid-way in the creek with the shad was a big flat. The wind had been blowing into it since Friday and I could see birds along the shore there. There were two drains/fence rows that lead from deep water to the bank there and I passed it up on Day 2. My instincts told me to fish it but I didn’t. I couldn’t have done any worse and I may have caught those two fish I needed. Hard to say but I didn’t do it so I’ll never know.

The hardest part about fishing is making the right decisions. I definitely wasn’t on the right fish to win but I was on enough fish to make the team. I didn’t slow down enough in practice with a jig and I drove right over the fish. You can be around them but still not put them in the boat. Fortunately, there is always next year.

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ABA District #64 Championship

Lake Taneycomo

8-20&21-05

For a trout lake, Lake Taneycomo sure is a fun place to catch bass. There is such a variety of productive patterns to fish. I hadn’t been down there since our last ABA tournament there in June. Not much changes down there, the bite depends a lot on water levels and generation schedule. You can really load the boat or you can struggle all day.

Practice Day 1 8-7-05

My kids, Emily and Ryan, really wanted to go fishing so away we went for a partial day and we arrived about 10 am, just in time for the heat to kick in. The water was up a little bit and I looked for fish on laydowns but they would have nothing to do with my lures. The kids wanted to swim some but water temperatures in the upper 60’s to low 70’s kept them from staying in to long. They decided to open the lids on my Tracker Avalanche livewells and run the pumps on their feet. This kept them cool but not freezing. I wanted to try out a new tube set-up and catch some fish to get confidence in what I was doing. I moved to some docks and also caught fish on a Texas rigged 7" blue fleck power worm. That got Emily (my oldest at 9 years) interested and I put an Eiron Breaker 5/16 oz Hammer jig with a grub on her rod. She pitched her brains out for about an hour but couldn’t get the bait back far enough in the boat stalls to where the fish were. She did grab my rod a couple times to reel in my fish after I set the hook. She is really starting to get the fishing bug and understand the what and why’s of bass fishing. I couldn’t be more proud of her.

After several fish, I put the worm down and grabbed my tube rod. I gave up on mono and went to 50 lb Power Pro braided line to try to stop the lost fish problem. Mission accomplished. We messed around until 3 pm when the call of ice cream hit the kids. We stopped on the way home and they got their fix for the day. I had a fair limit of bass from boat docks that would run between 8 and 9 lbs. Two days of that would win most of the time at Taneycomo in the summer.

Practice Day 2 8-14-05

My nephew, David Kelley, wanted to get some time on the water so he loaded in with me for the day. The day started out partly cloudy and I wanted to try some new water. We fished a couple big pockets on the lower end and David quickly put a fat bass in the boat on a worm from a laydown. We didn’t have much more success in the pockets so we spent the mid-morning on deeper docks with a wacky-rigged senko. This was a pretty easy pattern, just toss the bait in the back corner of a boat stall and let it fall. They would grab it about half way to the bottom. Hooksets were easy with the exposed hook. We boated several keepers but nothing special doing this. I may have had a limit that weighed 7 lbs. Around noon it started to look like a storm was coming and I told David that we needed to fish some laydowns on flatter banks. We made the move and I quickly boated three solid fish on a buzzbait, one going 5 lbs 3 oz. That would have put a limit up around 13-14 lbs. I’d take that any day.

So going into the tournament, I really didn’t have anything new figured out except there were some keeper fish to be caught on a senko from deeper docks. The old standby of working docks with a tube was still holding up as well as laydowns. Nothing new and I figured 8-9 lbs a day would be enough. As usual, I over estimate and it messes me up as far as strategy goes. The length limit for the tournament was 12 inches but two limits of those wouldn’t get you more than 11 pounds, not enough to win in my mind. The better fish were biting for me in the afternoon, which isn’t unusual on Taneycomo. When the water is being generated, the fish bite much better. I was figuring on 3 quality bites a day and hopefully get 2 in the boat plus several small keepers to fill in. The wrench in all of this was the no-cull rule. You had to decide what you wanted to put in the livewell when you caught it or immediately release it. So from the practice results, I decided to dump any small keepers in the morning in hopes for a bigger bite later in the day. This proved to be a double-edged sword.

Tournament Day 1

If you ever had a day go completely wrong, this was one of those days for me. It didn’t matter what I did, it was wrong. I was always one step behind and couldn’t catch up. Taneycomo is not that big and the fishable areas are pretty obvious. Every time I moved, someone was either already fishing where I wanted to be, people were on the docks walking around, or boats were coming and going from the slips. I even towed a stranded pontoon boat back to a dock at one point. To top it all off, the water was dropping steadily all day and by the end of the day, most of the docks were nearly on dry land. I was very frustrated and in a way, glad for the day to end.

I started early on deeper docks with a senko but that didn’t produce but a couple of shorts. I knew something was different and the dropping water shut the dock fish off early. I did catch what looked like a keeper fish on a worm from a dock stall around 9 am but in keeping with my strategy, I tossed it back. In hindsight, I should have kept it but you can look back all you want. I made the decision I thought was right for the moment.

At noon I caught my only keeper of the day, a 2.58 lb largemouth. It came from a laydown on the edge of a flat on a black/blue tube. I bailed out on my better fish areas in hopes for a couple of keeper fish during the last couple of hours of the day. All I caught were shorts on a senko from deeper docks. At the end of the day, I was sitting in last place and everyone had a limit except me and one other angler. I was around 7 lbs out of the lead and had little hope for the win. Maybe I could pull out a second place if a few people stubbed their toes. I surely dug myself a deep enough hole.

Tournament Day 2

At the end of Day 1, I knew my problem was that I had a certain expectation and wasn’t fishing the current conditions. I expected to be catching fish and when the bite was a little tough, I didn’t slow down enough. Panic attacked and frustration set in. When you are fishing this way, nothing good will happen. I just couldn’t get in a groove. So at the beginning of the second day and being buried in last place, I had nothing to lose and would only keep quality fish.

We were held up by fog for an hour which was a blessing in disguise. We extended the tournament for an hour to keep equal hours each day. I didn’t catch anything until the fog lifted at 8:30 am. I fished an old spot that had a brushpile in a pocket. This one came on the black/blue tube and was a solid 14 inch fish. Good to be on the board early in the day. I fished docks the rest of the morning because the water had came back up overnight. Another 14 inch fish bit my tube and joined the other in the livewell. Fishing was slow but productive.

I pulled into a pocket that another competitor was in and I went behind him. I watched what he was doing, pitching a jig to the backside of the docks. He didn’t look to be hitting every part of the dock so I went in behind him and boated two more keepers on a senko, one I tossed back as it was just barely 12 inches. The other one was 13 ½ inches. Now it was around noon and I ran to a dock that had produced for me in the past. I dug out a shad crankbait and fired it along the side of this dock and half way back a 2 ½ lb bass nailed it. The front corner had a length of electric cable down into the water which, of course the fish rammed into but luckily, didn’t get hung on. I flipped it in the boat and on the next cast to the next slip, a 13 inch fish nailed it but I tossed it back. Not going to help the cause. I thought I was onto something with the crankbait and went to some other docks to try it. Nope, I didn’t get another strike.

At 3 pm, the water started to move from upstream. That was a good sign, a little current. I worked slowly down a shallow dock and switched to a black neon tube to show them something new. At 3:10 I pitched to the back of a stall that had a pontoon boat tied in the slip. I engaged my reel and immediately my line was being pulled out. I leaned into this fish and the fight was on in a very confined space. I finally got her drug out to the last rope tie and had to rod lift her over the rope and into the boat. Good thing I had that fish hooked well. That one was 2.83 lbs and Big Bass of the tournament. I had five fish and almost went down lake to fish other docks that I hadn’t hit yet during the day. I thought why not go back to the dock that I caught that crankbait fish from and see if it had rested long enough. I raced back up there and on the first cast to the same exact side of the dock as before, another 2 ½ lb bass drilled my crankbait. This time, a bass just as big was trying to steal the crankbait from the hooked bass. Remember the electric cable at the front corner? Yep, this time the fish got wrapped around it and was thrashing on the surface. I slammed my trolling motor on high and grabbed my net. She stayed buttoned up and slid into the net. I had to cut the line to get it loose from the electric cable. 3:40 pm and I was done for the day as I put my 6^th fish in the livewell, the state limit. I released my smallest fish (ABA rules state no more than 5 fish on board at any one time) and went back to the ramp early. I sure wish I could have fished the rest of the dock but those were the rules.

My limit of fish weighed in at 10.24 lbs and I was more than happy with that. It moved me up to second place overall after two contenders stubbed their toes on Day 2. I had Big Bass for the weekend which also helped out because my boat insurance company (Anglers Advantage) pays an additional $100 in ABA tournaments when you have their coverage and catch the Big Bass. At just under 3 lbs, it wasn’t huge but in a trout lake, I’ll take it any day. The difference between the two days was night and day. The first day, I couldn’t do anything right and on Day 2, everything came together. If I just could have scratched out a couple more fish late in the day on Day 1, I could have finished on the top shelf but I have no complaints.

The one thing I figured out was how to hook fish with a tube, at least I think. In four days of fishing, I lost one fish when my hook point buried into the middle of the tube on the hookset. I just pulled the bait clean out of the fish’s mouth. I lost another fish when my knot failed. I must not have tied it right, I guess that can happen with any line. I really would recommend Power Pro braided line to anyone. I like it better than Spiderwire, it is round and handles like mono except no stretch. Every fish I caught were hooked very well. I did move down to a 7 foot medium heavy rod to take away some of the power of a flippin stick. I also started using Strike King tube rattles and I think they help keep the tube positioned properly on the hook. You slide the rattle in the tube first and the upper end of the rattle has a hole to run the hook through when you Texas-rig it. No more tubes sliding down on the hook and balling up during the hookset. The rattle and tube stays put on the bend near the eye. I am very pleased with this set-up and I think it will solve my problem of lost fish on a tube.

One other help during this tournament was my Tracker Avalanche. The docks I caught better fish on were extremely shallow and all I had to do was slide my trolling motor up just too where I was sucking air with the prop. I can’t go as shallow as a small aluminum can but for a tournament rig, if I can get the trolling motor to grab water, the boat will follow. I couldn’t believe where I caught a couple fish from. They were just hiding in the shade of the dock walkway in what seemed like zero water. If you are looking for a rig that is durable (all aluminum), performs and looks like a fiberglass boat (press formed technology) and is large enough to take on big water, give the Avalanche a strong look. The price isn’t out of reach either for the aspiring tournament angler. Any time I am at the lake and you run into me, introduce yourself and I’ll be more than happy to give you a ride or let you dig through the compartments. I have a piece about the boat on my articles page or you can see them at www.trackerboats.com . With the price of gas these days, it would be a wise choice.

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Minnesota Vacation

July 2005

The last week of July my family and I went to west-central Minnesota to the cabin that myself and my two sisters own. We were met there by my parents and two of my three sisters with all of the family, boyfriends, adopted kids, foster kids, dogs, ect., ect. As you can tell, there were up to 30 people running around the cabin at one time or another. Not to mention the local relatives who dropped in from time to time. It was great to see everyone but how everyone got fed is beyond me. One morning we scrambled 42 eggs for breakfast burritos plus all the other stuff and everything was gone! I guess I forgot how much teenagers eat.

Back to the meat of the story, fishing. I pulled my Tracker Avalanche all 710 miles up there so we would have a boat to fish out of. Low and behold, my brother-in-law buys a nice aluminum V-bottom before we got there just to have as a camp boat but the younger and crazier relatives wanted my boat to pull the tube and kneeboard. Yes, I had fun dumping the kids (teenagers) off the tube and no, I can’t get up on skis anymore! A pulled groin muscle told me that but I can still cut it up on a kneeboard and tube.

The lake we were on is just a small pothole lake, 12 feet deep max and basically a big dishpan. The main feeder creek from the adjacent lake comes in the southwest area and a small dam is located to the southeast. There is a big shallow bay on the west side and another smaller one to the northeast. These bays are full of coontail, cabbage grass, and "spidergrass", thin long stuff that is hard to fish through. The entire lake is basically sand bottom with a few shallow docks but not many have more than 2-3 feet of water at the ends. Two tiny creeks come into the lake in the northeast bay. These areas were important not for the fact that they had water coming in but the sand areas in front of them were basically free of grass in a big V. This created an ambush edge. These places were also good for at least one 3 pound bass every day. This bay was also better then the rest of the lake because it had dirty water, maybe a foot visibility while the rest of the lake you could see 3-5 feet down. The water coming in from the neighboring lake was crystal clear, you could see the bottom in a couple 10 foot holes.

What we did mostly was fish the inside grass line and over the top of the grass patches. This was only 2-4 feet deep but I would hold the boat two cast lengths away from the bank. It was the simplest thing in the world, cast a jig out with a single tailed grub and slowly swim it back to the boat. I say simple but obviously there was more to it than that. The gear was important. The lake is full of toothy critters, northern pike. They loved to cruise these areas and can snip 20 lb line in a heartbeat. I even found that they can snip 50 lb braid but I was only clipped four times in a week. I watched my relatives get snipped at least that many times each day. (They used a lot of jigs!) I spooled 50 lb Power Pro braided line on a high speed reel with a 7’ medium action rad that has a little more backbone than the average cranking stick. It’s a Bill Dance Quantum rod that I’ve had for years and wish I had a spare. To this I tied virtually one jig, a 7/16 oz black/blue flake EB Hammer jig ( click here ) and trailed it with a green pumpkin single tailed grub. Early and late in the day or if it was cloudy, I would dip the tail in chartreuse. I had one jig that survived approximately 75 bass and pike! The pike chewed most of the skirt strands off it but with a new skirt, it will be good as new. The Mustad hook is still as sharp as a new one and I’d say I got my money’s worth out of her. I changed colors and jigs a few times to compare results but came back to this one. How I didn’t lose it to a pike is beyond me.

The main forage up there is bluegills. When the sun came out during the day, you could see hundreds of 3-4 inch bluegills meandering around on top of the grass beds. Their tails were a chartreuse color and a Kalin grub was perfect to match this. I tried brown jigs but they weren’t as effective as the black with blue flake. I tried numerous jigs and I can say that the tapered head design of the EB Hammer Jig ( click here ) was the best for swimming through the grass. Forget anything with shoulders. The only other one that performed like that was a Terminator jig. What I didn’t like about it was the collar on the skirt and this had to do with all collared jigs. I was continuously pushing the skirt back up on the jig after a bass or pike mangled it. The EB Hammer Jig skirts ( click here ) are wired on and I never had one come loose. That’s the very reason I started doing my skirts that way 10 years ago. I didn’t have rattles on the jig either. One, the fish ate it just fine without and secondly, they would catch the grass. The holders I use are the "rabbit-ear" type that is great for rocks because the jig lands on them every time when working the bottom. If you want rattles while grass fishing, the type of holder you would need would be the rubber arm type that flows with the skirt. I’ll have to build some that way for my next grass trip.

The real secret to catching them was the presentation. I honestly could catch a 12-15 lb limit in an hour or two with about 20 bass and half a dozen pike. You had to pay attention to hitting the grass with the jig. You had to reel it slow enough to tick the grass. The braided line was important also to "pop" the jig free from the grass, feel strikes and hammer the hook home at the end of a long cast. Several times the strike would come when the lure hit the water. A high speed reel was also needed to keep the fish moving and not let it bury in the grass. You knew when you had a pike because your line would go screaming away from you. I had one that I never budged or saw; it just grabbed my jig, ran in front of the boat and kept going to deep water before the hook pulled out.

So in addition to the weedy bays, the area that the main feeder creek came in is a huge lily pad field. In the middle of it is the creek which is just a trough as wide as the boat but it creates an edge. I had a 4 pound pike about pull me out of the boat when it thrashed my jig as soon as it hit the water. Honestly, pike hit like a freight train! Dad really got a good laugh at me. We would swim a jig down the trough and work the edges of the pads with a frog early and late in the day. One morning I went through a pack of white tubes. I rigged them weightless with a 5/0 hook and worked it just under the surface like a zara spook. The fish up there don’t see many lures and you can just about do anything you wanted at the right time of day and catch fish.

One morning Dad, my niece, and I pulled the little camp boat over to the feeder creek with my Avalanche. At the entrance of the lake, there are two concrete footers from an old bridge that keeps bigger boats out of the creek. We tossed the 14’ aluminum boat over the obstruction, tied my Avalanche up, and worked our way up the creek with the trolling motor. These fish have been unmolested most likely since last year when we were on vacation. Time for a fish fry! There was about ½ mile of fishable river and after a trip up and back, we had our limits of bass and several pike. My Dad is "old school" and has a hard time letting a fish go. This time I put them on the stringer and we filleted every one. We had almost 3 gallons of meat and had a big fish fry for everyone that night. Honestly, only one piece of fish wasn’t eaten!

Dad and I were able to fish quite a bit during this trip, which was nice because he lives in Montana and I don’t get to see him very often. One morning, we pulled my boat out of our lake and went to another lake just a few miles away that I have never fished before. Remember this is the "Land of 10,000 Lakes" and there are about a dozen lakes in the area that I haven’t ever fished. A huge cold front blew through the night before. The wind was blowing 15-20 mph out of the north and it was 46 degrees. Nice weather for the end of July! I wanted to fish out on the main lake for some smallmouths with an EB Football jig but the four foot rollers changed my mind. We found a little backwater slough that doglegged back out of the wind. What was funny was that the slough we fished was overlooked by numerous high-dollar homes and the grass is clipped right to the water’s edge. Not a single fishing boat was tied to any of the docks. I’ll bet they don’t have a clue as to the great fishing they have right at their doorsteps. It had a bridge going over it that was lined with rocks. A 3 pound walleye hammered my jig under there. In the back of the slough, I caught a 6 ¼ pound pike. We caught several other pike and bass as well. We fished for a few hours and then went to my Aunt’s house nearby for lunch. She was surprised by the number of fish we had. We kept some out for lunch (walleye!) and the rest went into her freezer. She doesn’t get a chance to fish much but loves fried fish. She’ll have plenty for the winter now.

One other trip we took was a float trip down the river draining the lake. I went with my wife and kids plus Emily’s friend Brooklyn. Dad helped me drop the small boat in the river and promised to pick us up in a few hours at the next bridge downstream. There were a few deep holes along the way and we pushed the boat up on the sandbars to do some casting. The water was clear enough to see the bottom in the narrow areas and the kids had a great time watching the fish scoot around the boat. We saw largemouths, walleye, pike, suckers, carp, bluegills and even a smallmouth along with various minnows and shore birds. On one sandbar, the kids spotted the tracks of a raccoon. Sara caught a very nice bass and after I hooked a fish, the kids would grab the rod out of my hands to crank it in for me. It was a great time and brought back numerous memories for me because I fished that very river as a youngster. It was great to give my kids some of the same experiences I had when I was young. Hopefully it is something they will never forget.

So that in a nutshell was the fishing side of my vacation. We also had a great time camping, visiting relatives, playing games, lighting fireworks, and just generally relaxing. I can’t wait to do it again next year.

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ABA District #64

Pomme de Terre

7/17/05

This was our last one-day tournament of the year and I hoped for a decent field, if not full, to try to make up some points. I still haven’t decided what I will fish this fall. I am fishing the MOBASS State Championship at Truman but depending on how things go, I might fish the BFL regional in late October or the ABA Championship at the Red River. The only reason to go to the ABA tournament would be because I have fished it before and I have an idea of what to do. A decent finish there might mean a good payday. The only problem is that I would have to leave right after the end of the MOBASS tournament and drive all night to Shreveport, Louisiana for two days of practice. I’ll just have to see, I have a two-day ABA tournament coming up that I have to do well in first.

We only had 10 entrants, two more showed up to late to fish unfortunately. Of those ten entrants, three are in the top 50 of the ABA nation-wide points race. Plus, two of them won a tournament the day before on Pomme. Not an easy task to win to say the least. I sent everyone on their way and went to fish some of my old areas as I didn’t have a chance to practice. Most of the better bags of fish have been coming from the main lake, which is typical for the summer up there. I know the river pretty well and knew going in that if I fished up there, I would only get a limited number of bites. The middle of the summer just isn’t the best time to catch shallow bass. But, if you have been following along with my "Bassin By the Numbers" series, you have read that some fish can be caught in shallow water. To read this series, check out my articles page.

We left right at day break so I figured I might be able to catch a small fish or two on a topwater. I like to throw a ¼ oz shad buzzbait, one that I make myself. It has the right profile for this time of year when the shad are a little smaller. Most buzzbaits are to long, I pour mine with a shorter arm to make it more compact. The number of strikes this bait creates is unbelievable. It works in stained water as well as clear. Just ask Ben Henderson how well this bait works. It will be up on my lure page soon along with my line of jigs. Check them out by clicking on the "EB Fish Dude" on my homepage or clicking on this link: http://www.mwbt.com/eironjig.htm . If you need something special made, drop me a line.

So, not within 5 minutes of takeoff, I had a fat 14 ½" largemouth hammer my buzzbait and was deposited in the livewell. I was paralleling the bank with the trolling motor on 50% just to cover water before the sun got up. I fished the entire stretch of bank without another bite and I jumped to another bank that looked similar but I had never caught much off of. It just looked the same and half way down it, another solid keeper jumped all over my buzzbait and straight into the tank. This was by 6:30 am and I was more than happy with that start. I hit several more banks and caught one more short before the sun got up to high. One wouldn’t expect bass to be in shallow water when the temperature is 89 degrees but there was plenty of baitfish.

Once the sun got up, I knew it would be really tough to catch anything until around noon. I had a good start but three more to finish out a limit would be tough. I picked around, fishing a mixture of stuff with crankbaits and tubes but never had a sniff. I went to some docks and worked them over with a shad colored crankbait but didn’t find anything. I turned around with a tube and hit all the good stuff again but didn’t connect. I approached an old dock and watched a monster bass slowly swim out from under it and disappear. Man, that would have been nice to catch!

I pitched my tube to the back corner of the stall and my line just kept going out. I leaned into this fish and a nice 3 pound fish come thrashing out from under the foam. Just then, my line was grabbed by a piece of heavy wire sticking out from the side of the dock. The fish was sticking half way out of the water, thrashing about and giving me a good look at her. The wire was to heavy to bend and I didn’t want to lose this important fish so I had no choice but to crash in after it. The problem was the there was a big log underwater in the stall and my trolling motor couldn’t go any further. I yanked it up and grabbed a post on the dock to move the boat forward but couldn’t get moved in close enough to unwrap the line. I grabbed my net and reached out as far as I could but didn’t have enough handle. And the fish was flopping around the whole time! Finally, I shoved the boat ahead just enough so I could lie across the trolling motor and reach the fish with the net. Whew! It seemed like 10 minutes but I’m sure it was only about 30 seconds to get to that fish. I had to cut my line to get it off the wire but at 10 am, I had three decent fish in the livewell.

I fished a few more docks but never had another bite. Ben Henderson came up the river and I went to talk to him. He was having a tough morning with only a couple in the well and several lost fish. I told him I had three but didn’t let on that I had three decent fish. They weighed as much as I expected a limit to go up there. I left Ben and went to start hitting some wood cover as the wind was picking up.

I alternated between a black/blue tube and a shad crankbait and only had one short by 12:30 to show for it. The wind was really starting to blow but I just couldn’t get bit. I told myself that I would fish one more area before bailing out and going down the lake to some deeper water. I worked a series of laydowns and came to one near the channel drop. I pitched my tube in there and gave it a couple of hops. I didn’t feel a bite but my line headed right into the middle of the laydown. I swung hard and this fish had some good weight to it. She pulled me around the boat and I finally corralled her in the net. This was a very solid fish, someplace in the 4+ pound area. She had the hook buried in the top of her mouth and at 1 pm I had a decent sack of fish for the middle of the summer.

So now I had a choice, stay here and maybe get a couple more bites in 2 hours or bail out and try to find a keeper fish down the lake on a small worm? I figured 10 pounds would do pretty good and I had around that so why not chance it and stay put. Never leave fish to find fish! I went back to a laydown that I fished earlier. I hopped my tube down the side of it and felt the tap of a bite. I swung hard but all I got back was my hook and weight. The fish got the tube. Ok, I missed that fish but I think I figured out how they wanted it presented. I had to pitch on the up-wind side of the laydown and hop the tube out into deeper water. There was a lot of baitfish around and that may have been what they were keying on. I fished around some more without a bite and had time to make a couple more moves. I went even further up the river to a new set of laydowns. I hopped my tube down the side of one and sure enough, when it got to the end of it, I saw a green swirl and my line headed off in another direction. It was close to the boat so I paused for second before setting the hook. Whoosh, and back came my hook and sinker again. MAN, I HATE LITTLE GREEN FISH! My time was limited and my bites were few. I picked apart the area and picked up a short fish. I had time for one more move before going in.

I went back to the dock that I hung that fish on the wire hoping to catch that big fish that swam out from under it. I pitched back into the very same stall but in front of the wire. Sure enough, a fish had my bait but I didn’t realize it because the fish was swimming towards me at an angle. I basically hopped my bait and felt the fish tug twice before spitting out the tube. Way to go dummy, out of time and you blew your chance at a limit.

Back to the ramp and I hoped I had enough fish. John Gorman had a nice bag of fish from deep water but had a hard time keeping them alive. Four limits of fish were brought in but the guys who won the day prior were not able to bring anything to the scales. I weighed everyone and then fished mine out of the livewell. I thought I had around 10 pounds, just about the weight that John had. Ben measured and weighed them. I finished in first place with 10.76 pounds and had Big Bass. My 4 pounder was a little bigger at 4.96 pounds. What was nice is that she was worth an extra $100 from Anglers Advantage Insurance since I have their coverage on my boat. They are a board sponsor and I couldn’t find a better premium out there. Check them out when you need to renew your boat insurance.

Obviously I was happy to figure out how the fish wanted the bait presented to make them bite and winning the tournament but still irked by a couple lost fish. Ben had an idea that made a lot of sense, maybe the fish sucked the lure in head first which would put the hook in their mouth pointed backwards. When you set the hook, it has to turn all the way around and grab something before exiting the mouth. Plus, the point is very close to the outer edge of the mouth. This may be why the tube was pulled off the hook but I didn’t get any penetration. Tubes jump and fall very erratically so this is a possibility and something you really can’t do squat about. I can live with that because of the number of strikes I generate with it, I guess it is something to live with if you want to Texas-rig a tube and fish it like I do in heavy cover. I do have an idea or two but haven’t had the time on the water to try it out yet. A tournament isn’t the place to try new ideas, not for me anyways. 

I am going to Minnesota for a week’s vacation and will get to fish everyday. Maybe I can figure some things out there.

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BFL – Ozark Division

Truman Lake

6-25-05

This was my fourth and final tournament in this series for the year. There is a two day tournament coming up in September but I will not be able to attend because my National Guard weekend falls on the same weekend. There is always a trump card when it comes to a fishing schedule.

I was in 9^th place going into the tournament and judging from the point standings from years past, all I needed was to weigh a single fish to guarantee a top 40 slot and an invite to the Regional. Go without a fish and I would be pushing it. Well, I’m going to shove as hard as I can and hope that I have enough points to survive missing the upcoming tournament. The fishing turned out to be very tough and I fell to 19^th when I didn’t bring a fish to the scales. Both my partner and I had a very difficult day.

Tracy Mitchell and I were paired up on Friday night and went over our game plan. I told him I didn’t care where we went or what we did, I only wanted one keeper to make my day complete. From the guys I talked to during the meeting I kept hearing how tough the bite was. The water was heating up, the upper rivers were muddy, and the Corps was dropping the water about 6 inches a day. I figured that if I didn’t get my keeper first thing in the morning, I was probably not going to get it.

Tracy had practiced the couple days prior to the tournament and he was only able to catch 2 or 3 keepers a day. His fish were on bluff ends and the points of cuts near the main channel. He caught practice fish on a crankbait and buzzbait.

We were boat 91, almost nearly the very back of the pack. We watched the boats leave and when our number was called, zipped to a spot very close to the marina. I started with a spinnerbait and on my second cast I felt a good thump but just a heavy weight after that. I drug in a crappie and knew right then and there it was going to be one of those days. We moved to a steep channel swing nearby and we kept switching baits to try to find a bite. I alternated between a tube and jig. Tracy was able to pick up a couple short fish on a brushhog rigged on a jighead. He didn’t feel the fish pick up his bait, they were just on. One was very near the 15" mark and was placed in the livewell.

We fished most of the swing and moved down to a small pocket in the swing. I switched to a Texas rigged baby brushhog and finally set the hook on a 12" bass. My one and only bass bite of the day came at 8:30 am. We moved around trying to cover water but hit key locations that should hold fish. We tried a little bit of everything, we just couldn’t get bit. Not even short fish. That’s how I knew we were in trouble, we couldn’t get anything to bite. We tried points and pockets near the channel swings, flooded bushes near deepwater, laydowns on bluff walls, drop offs, rip-rap, and suspended fish in hardwoods. Sometime around noon, we went to a place I had fished a couple years ago and flipped cedar trees. After about the 100^th cedar, I threw a tube into a laydown cedar and my line started to swim out. Finally! I hammered this fish and felt good weight but about half way to the boat the fish wasn’t fighting right. Well, it wasn’t right as a 3 pound drum started his circle dance. The fishing Gods were laughing at me. I really wanted to give up right there but only one bite from the right fish was all I needed. We spent the rest of the day fishing hard but it just wasn’t meant to be.

We checked in and Tracy pulled out his board to remeasure his fish to make sure it should go to the scales. The heat must have sucked the life out of his fish as it was a good ¼ inch short of the line. After flipping the fish over and over, it went back in the lake. I thanked him for the day and gave up some gas money. What else could you do?

We fished hard all day, not giving up and tried many different things in a rather confined area so we didn’t waste much time. It just was one of those days where you couldn’t figure out much of nothing. The place to be was the dam area or in the Osage arm. We didn’t see hardly any shad where we fished, everyone I talked to who fished the Osage reported a ton of shad running around. I have never caught much in the Bucksaw area and this tournament was no different. All I could do was put my hands in my pockets, watch the weigh-in, and hope I have enough points. We’ll just have to wait and see if I have what I need to reach the Regional tournament. If not, oh well. There is always next year. I know when I come back to Truman for the MOBASS State Championship in October I won’t be anywhere near the north side of the lake.

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Operation Homecoming Bass Tournament

6/16/05

Table Rock Lake

This was a special tournament to fish for me. The tournament and an entire week long festival was dedicated to the Vietnam Veterans to finally thank them and welcome them home from the Vietnam War. Central Pro Am ran the event and did it very smoothly. Being a Thursday tournament, I had to ask for a day off from work. After I explained what the event was all about, my boss, Dwight Leigh of Leigh Environmental had no problem with it. It wasn’t even counted against my vacation time. I also am a member of Elk’s Lodge #409 here in Springfield and when they heard that I was fishing it, they also stepped up and helped out on the entry fee. These guys are some true sponsors along with my regular sponsors, not withstanding MAO.

The pretournament meeting was held in Kimberling City and it was nice to talk to friends of mine who volunteered to take the Veterans out, many of which I hadn’t seen in some time. Kevin Bowling smoothly went through the rules and then started to pair up the boaters with the Veterans. You could feel the excitement of not only getting ready for a tournament but also just the Veterans in general. They were joking and cat-calling with each other, just as all soldiers do. Soldiers are a fraternity all of their own.

I was paired with Dan Althiser. Most boats had two Veterans but the other gentleman who was supposed to fish with us couldn’t make the trip from Minnesota. Dan was a great guy and a fine fisherman. He lives near Table Rock and I asked him if he wanted to show me what to do on this trip. He laughed and said that we could do whatever I wanted to do, I was the guide. Great, no pressure now! I told him I hadn’t been down for a couple of weeks and we would just go to the area that I fished then and see what was going on.

Dan served one tour as a Naval Corpsman in Vietnam starting in January 1969. He was assigned to the Mobile Riverine Force on the USS Colleton in the Mekong Delta. This was a host ship for patrol boats and the first line medical hold for area operations. He was then reassigned to Surgical Team Bravo on USS New Orleans. This was a primary medical receiving unit for injured Marines. One of the challenges while on the Delta was the soldiers did not know who the good and bad guys were, not unlike servicemen in Iraq. Numerous fishing boats could be in close proximity of their ship at any one time. "Zappers" were more than willing to pull along side the ship and detonate a bomb concealed in a fishing boat. Dan served a total of 4 years in the military but took a lifelong profession away with him. He has served as a paramedic for nearly his entire career. Whatever the military was or wasn’t for Dan, he is grateful for the training received and the start in the right direction for something that he has made a lifetime out of.

The day was perfect weather conditions, cool, light misty rain and cloudy all day long. For Table Rock, it doesn’t get any better but the usual topwater bite didn’t happen because we started at 8 am. We were in the second flight and shortly after 8 am, we dropped the throttle on my Tracker Avalanche for a quick run to the dam area. I wanted to look at a couple places near the mouth of some creeks but when we got there, the water color was drastically different from my last trip. I was surprised to see it had cleared up as much as it had but that’s what you get when you don’t prefish. Dan and I worked two areas over pretty good with spinnerbaits and topwaters but could only get a couple shorts to the boat. It was raining for the first hour before finally letting up. At about 9:30 am, I just didn’t feel right about what we were doing and I asked Dan if he had an Arkansas fishing license. "Yep", he said. I was glad he lived in this area because what were the chances of someone having a dual license? So off we go up Long Creek to find some stained water.

At just before 10 am we pull up to a bluff end and started fishing. I put on a homemade ½ oz pumpkin green flake football jig with a 5" Bass Pro twin tail trailer. Dan was fishing a black and blue ¼ oz hula grub and he quickly stuck a couple small fish.

As we reached the end of the transition, I felt a tap on my line but instantly a second one. I swung anyway and came up with air. The fish must have not liked it and blew it out before I could set the hook. I reeled in and made a quick cast right back where I was bit. Two hops and thump! I didn’t miss this one and she came right to the surface to show herself, what looked like a good 5 pound fish. She made a couple more jumps and then bulldogged under the boat. I thought she was bigger because I had to free spool my reel a couple times when she made deep runs. I couldn’t believe how strong this fish was, she fought like a smallmouth. After a couple of tries, Dan got the net around her and at 10:15 am, our livewells weren’t empty any more. That was a big relief. I didn’t have to worry about going back to the ramp skunked and not being able to take Dan up on stage during this event. Plus, that fish was a good start.

So, do we have something to go on or was this just a single lucky fish? We started to move from point to point, working the transition areas from pea gravel to chunk rock. We picked up several shorts on jigs but just couldn’t get another keeper. At noon the sun started to poke out a little and I mentioned to Dan that we should try to find some docks on pea gravel banks. That was something we hadn’t tried yet and the transition banks didn’t seem to be working. I should have listened to myself!

As we were coming out of the river, I remembered a bank that had held fish for me in the past. The wind picked up just a little finally and was blowing right onto this transition bank. We pulled in and on my second cast my jig took off from the bank. I set the hook and called for the net. After scooping this one up, the fish was just a little shy of the 15" mark. Back in the lake. We made a pass across the transition and both of us picked up several shorts but nothing to measure. So thinking this area may be holding a keeper fish, we wasted more time on a few more pea gravel transitions for a few short fish. So finally after breaking off my football jig in a brushpile, I looked around and saw some docks on a pea gravel flat.

Enough was enough. I tied on "Old Faithful", a 4" black neon BPS flippin tube with a ¼ oz weight. We had about an hour left to fish three docks before we had to run back for the weigh-in. We worked the first one over but didn’t get a fish out of it even though there was a great brushpile under it. The second one was almost up on the bank. I worked my way around it and on the last outer corner, I pitched my tube to the inside corner of the end. My mind was on autopilot and when I picked up my line, my lure was about 10 feet from the dock and slowly swimming away. I had a big bow in my line and of course, the hookset resulted in the hook pulling out. That fish must have been positioned right under the foam and grabbed my tube as it went by. Every cast makes a difference! We quickly moved to the third dock and worked the downwind side of it without a bite. As we came around to the upwind side, I pitched my tube to the end of a walkway and felt a familiar tick about 2 feet down. This fish didn’t get a chance to spit my tube and a 16" Kentucky was flipped in the boat. A couple casts later I hopped my bait down the side of the next stall and TUNK, another good bite. I hammered this fish and it came screaming out of the stall. This fish was heavy enough that it stayed down and went under the horizontal cross-bar at the mouth of the stall. Sure enough, when my line ran across the bar, the fish pulled off. I swear I will invent a hook setup for tubes that will have the action of a Texas-rig but will get hooksets like a jig if it’s the last thing I do as a fisherman. I have a couple of ideas and I will make them available to everyone when I get it worked out.

So we had enough time to refish the center dock and race back to the ramp area to fish one more dock before the clock ran out. If those two fish I lost would have been solid keepers, maybe we could have slid into the check line but I don’t know. What we should have done was fish docks earlier. We wasted 1 ½ hours on transition banks when my mind told me to find some docks. Even on a cloudy day the fish will set up around a dock, they just aren’t as predictable on location as when the sun is shining.

There was a big line at the weigh-in and we hoped our bigger fish would be close to Big Bass. Our best fish weighed 4.75 lbs, Big Bass for the day was 5.34 lbs. Our total weight was good enough for 30^th place, right in the middle of the pack. Where we finished really didn’t matter, the purpose of the day was to get out and have a little fun. Dan and I had a great time and he was a pleasure to fish with. It was quite apparent that everyone had fun and I heard several times that they wanted to have an open Veterans tournament every year. Count me in!

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Sorry I haven’t up-dated my journal in a while but I really didn’t have much to write about. John Gorman wrote about our day at the BATS event at Pomme two weeks ago. We had a good time and caught a bunch of keeper fish but were unable to put one kicker fish in the boat to bump us up into the check line.

I fished an ABA tournament three weeks ago at Table Rock. I had Big Bass with a nice 3.74 lb smallie and finished 3^rd. I went down around the dam and fished docks on gravel secondary points with a black neon Bass Pro Shops flippin tube for three keepers. They all came off the back corners of the docks in less than 6 feet of water and took my bait on the fall. When the smallmouth bit, I thought I snagged a carp because she just wouldn’t come up. After about a dozen very strong runs, I was able to get a net around her and dropped in the livewell. Smelly Jelly was really working that day as I hooked every fish that bit and even had one that swallowed the entire bait. I just didn’t know of enough docks in the right water depth to move around to finish out a limit. Once I fished a dock, I couldn’t get bit again by going back to it later.

6/11/05

Practice – BATS, Pomme de Terre

Only 4 boys from our club fished the MOBASS Junior Qualifier and I wasn’t sure if I would be needed to take anyone out for the tournament. Ricky and Travis Clemons volunteered their boats so I was the odd man out as one youth angler didn’t show up. John and I planned to fish the BATS tournament the next day so I went out to find some fish. John said he was going to structure fish so with the water up in the bushes, I went to find some small fish for a quick limit.

It was raining pretty hard at the launch and was cloudy all morning. I went to a bluff cut and started with a white homemade ¼ oz buzzbait. I quickly popped a keeper at the mouth of the cut. I worked my way into a creek and came to a pocket with a small point in the back. There were shad skipping around and I quickly put three more keepers in the boat, two on the buzzbait and one more on a Terminator spinnerbait. All the bushes were in a couple feet of water in this area. I decided to leave this area alone and went back out to some small indentions in the creek arm and put my 5^th keeper in the boat at 7:30 am on the buzzbait. Well, I guess we have a spot to start with. Nothing big but a limit is a limit.

I pulled up the trolling motor and went to the back where some dirty water was coming in. I fished all the way to the back and in a couple hours, only had one small fish to show for it. All of the shad were out in the middle of the cove, instead of up against the bushes in the clear water. That eliminated some water for me.

By mid-morning I went out to look for John on the main lake. I found him on a hump and he said he had caught some fish but nothing huge. I didn’t want to mess around deep so I went back to the bank and caught a few more shorts but didn’t find anything new. I went in around 11 am to set up for the Junior weigh-in.

Blake Felix brought in a nice sack of fish to easily out-distance the field but numerous fish came in. Our boys struggled but Dalton weighed a fish for 8^th place. More importantly, he is leading the Angler of the Year race for his age group. I heard that a big sack of fish won the Midwest Sportsman but 11 lbs something was second. After talking to John at the ramp, we decided to fish what I found early and then go deeper for a few better fish to up-grade.

6/12/05

BATS Tournament

At 6 am we raced back down the lake in my Tracker Avalanche to the pocket I found fish in the day before. After an hour of fishing my best areas and only two short fish to show for it, we knew the bite had changed. The weather was much different from the day before, clear sunny skies instead of clouds. Shaded banks didn’t even help. I didn’t feel like the fish had left the bushes because the water was coming up, we just had to change tactics. John tied on a brush hog type bait and I rigged up a tube, both in green pumpkin. John’s first cast resulted in a sweeper keeper but we’ll take it. A few minutes later I dropped another small fish in the livewell. We worked the bushes slowly and the fish seemed related to the center of the bushes. John and I pitched into the same hole by accident but my line kept going out. I hammered this fish as well to put a 14 ½ inch fish in the livewell. John hooked one more short here but that was it. We moved around some but by 9 am we decided to head out deep.

John took control of the boat. We fished several drops and brushpiles but were unable to connect with a single short fish. We graphed fish on the drops but nothing was interested in our baits. At 11 am we went back shallow in a large gravel cove up the Pomme Arm. There was a little bit of wind so John worked the bushes with a Terminator spinnerbait and I flipped behind him with a tube. I immediately stuck a short and lost a 2 lb fish in a bush. We fished the rest of the cove and John caught a short on his spinnerbait. We spent the next couple hours moving up the lake into the dirty water but were unable to find anything. At 1 pm we ran into Mark Taylor and he said he was struggling as well. We fished a little more up shallow but just couldn’t make it work. John suggested we go to a point that he knew of and try deep again. Might as well, nothing else was working.

We pulled up on a gravel point and we started to crank around it. The shad were more on the point here and the wind had picked up. As we came around the point, John hooked a decent keeper and I tossed out a marker buoy. We backed up to line up with where he hooked that fish and found a little rough spot on the point. John proceeded to jerk in three more keepers in about 5 minutes and I culled as fast as I could. I finally picked up my deep diving crankbait and on my next cast, THUMP, I had a keeper to cull with. I think John had a short and a small keeper that didn’t help us after that. In brief 10 minute period, we had our final weight.

We cranked the last hour but that was it. Our weight was 8 lbs 2 oz, nothing big but a good kicker fish from winning. It was tough for everyone as only 11 oz separated 2^nd from 5^th. That fish I lost in the bushes probably cost us a couple places but what can you do? That was really the only fish we lost all day. We just kept after it all day and didn’t give up. We were satisfied with a small check to cover our expenses. There were some small fish up in the bushes and looking from the results of the weekend tournaments, a few better fish mixed in with them. The best fish are out on the drops and brush piles in 10-20 feet of water but you can’t expect as many bites.

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