Well, I’m fishing the PAA event on Lake Tawakoni next week.  I probably don’t have much business scraping with all those elite guys but it sure is fun.  I hope to do well and will practice and fish my butt off.  Wish me luck.

Funny thing today is that when I was passing the Little Elm Ramp I saw something that looked funny.  I swung over there and two ladies were unloading a 30 foot cabin cruiser and the unhooked it on the ramp.  It slid down the rollers and was setting on the ramp with no trailer.  I helped them get the boat down the ramp by pushing it with their trailer but it messed up the bottom of their boat pretty bad.  That took me an hour or so and I just loaded up for a short day on the lake.

The first day of the tournament I rotated holes all day.  I would pull up on it, make a few drops on fish and move to the next one.  In practice I noticed that you will either pull up and catch them right away or you would not catch them at all.  I caught a fish on my second drop but it took me a while to catch a keeper.  It seemed you had to catch 20 fish before you caught a keeper.  Around lunch time I only had one keeper and had caught over 50 fish.  My ratio was definitely off.  I decided to focus on a few brush piles I found.  The first drop and  a pile in 30 feet was the perfect scenario.  I dropped down and watched my weight and worm heading down and saw the fish on my graph come up and smoke it.  I knew right away it was a good one so I got on my trolling motor and tried to move him away from the brush.  I got him half way up 4 times before he made his final run into the brush and broke me off.  I really needed that fish because the weights were so close in this event.  I went on to catch two more keepers and weighed in 6.03  I was in 50th with that but only two pounds away from the top twenty.  That one fish hurt since I feel like it was at least 3 pounds.

I felt really good about the second day and wound up catching a fish on my second drop again but at 10 o’clock I did not have a keeper.  No problem though since the afternoon seems to be the best time for keepers and the fish were biting.  I pulled up on one spot and Mike McClelland was leaving.  We talked and he said they were there but he was not getting the quality bites he needed off it but I wanted to fish it anyway.  I dropped my trolling motor down and when I stepped on the pedal I heard a “SNAP”.  Sure enough, my steering cable broke and there is no fixing it on the water.  I did not have a back up.  Disappointment set in but I did not give up hope.  My only option was to drift points but realistically it would be hard to catch a limit doing this.  I wound up catching about 20 bass doing it but never got a keeper bite.

In all I was pretty disappointed in my self for not checking my equipment better.  I was in position to do well and I was definitely on some good fish.  It sucks to spend $4,000.00, drive 2,200 miles and have something simple ruin your tournament.  My thoughts, though, are that the experience drove home the need to really check and double check your equipment every day.

For the rest of 2010, my calendar is pretty full with second chances so I will keep my blog updated.

Thanks for reading.

Heading down to Toledo I figured that you would have to catch them on the deep drops or punching grass.  I love both so I was excited about the week.  It was really hot and surface temperatures were in the high 80s to 90 degrees.  The grass had not topped out good any where on the lake and punching only got me a few bites the first day of practice.  At that point I was convince that I needed to spend the rest of my practice offshore.  That was equally tough.  I got a few bites on 1 out of 10 spots and was getting discouraged.  I tried to shake one off and it swallowed my worm and turned out to be a 5 pounder.  Bummer.  The second day of practice a downpour came in and it rained like crazy for about 20 minutes.  I looked down and my Lowrance HDS went blank.  I could not get it to turn back on so my offshore practice was over.  I did not want to go in so I just went fishing shallow.  After about ten casts over some main lake flat pepper grass as 3 pound bass crushed my frog.  Hmmmm, was I on to something.  Yes I was.  I got about 6 more bites in about 20 minutes.  They were good bites but I had my hooked buried and shook all of them off.  The next morning I went to another pepper grass flat and got about 20 bites in an hour.  I shook all of them off.  The sun came up and I went toward the Pendelton bridge to see if there were any suspending bass on the pilings.  An old man kept trolling up and down the pilings and I saw him catch about a three pound largemouth.  I asked him how they were biting and he said that it was his 20th of the morning and he had one over 7 pound.  Hmmmm, am I on to something else?  That afternoon the Lowrance service crew cam in so I headed to the ramp to go and get my graph replaced.  I could not fish any more and went to the meeting.

The first morning of the tournament it was my plan to throw my frog for the first 45 minutes and then go crank the bridge.  I never got another bite on the frog and my non boater caught a short fish on the bridge.  At 10 o’clock I made a move to fish offshore the rest of the day.  I caught 2 for 5.11 and could not get another bite.  It was really tough on most people but a few guys, as always, busted their asses.  At dinner a friend of mine told me he got some mid day frog bites in the grass but I just blew it off.  That was a bad move.  I fished offshore the second day and could only manage one keeper by noon.  At one o’clock I told my non boater that it was time for me to just gamble and try to get some shallow bites.  We made a long run south to a grass flat at the mouth of Housen Creek.  My though was to fish my strength(swimming a Zoom Ultravibe Speed Worm in the shallow grass).  I had an hour to do it so what the heck.  Within that hour I caught two more fish and my non boater caught two fishing the speed worm.  I still don’t know if I was happy to have those fish or mad that I never pushed my strength in practice.  I could have caught 20 a day.  Another lesson learned.  I wound up 67 and qualified 41st for the year and made the championship, so all is good.

The day of the tournament I started on that spot and to my surprise, my buddy Nick was only about 50 yards away.  I got lined up and made my first cast and caught a 2.5 and had a 5 fish limit by my 8th cast.  In that time my non boater caught 2 keepers.  I decided to pull up and hit some more stuff and let the spot cool down and hit it again later.  I went to my second spot and caught three and culled twice and my non boater caught his third.  I hit what I thought would be my best “Big Fish” spot and worked it for about 30 minutes without a bite.  Three spots later and no bites I decided to hit some stuff up the lake.  I went to a stretch about 100 yards long that had them in practice and it was loaded.  I culled about 4 more times and caught over 10 there.  My non boater got his limit and it cooled down.  I hit several other spots without a bite.  My plan was to crank the rest of the day and hope for one big bite.  It never came.  With an hour left I went closer to take off to a spot I found a really good line on.  It was an obvious spot but the line was the key.  It got hit a million times a day but I never saw one person line up on it right.  When I pulled up on it my buddy Nick was setting on it hoping he could cull in the last hour.  We fished it together and I caught three in a row but they were all just under 3 pounds and none of them would cull.  It was fun and I managed to catch at least 25 keepers.  At weigh in I had 15.9 pounds but one of my fish committed suicide in my live well so it cost me 8 ounces and I ended up in 21st.  I felt like it was a respectable finish and I did get paid so it was worth the trip.  If I could do it again I would not change anything.  The only thing keeping me from winning it was a kicker fish or two.

Now I would like to rant!!!!!  FLW should never host a summer time tournament.  The fish were deep and the outside temperature was really hot.  The fish were already stressed from the spawn and it made it an effort to keep them alive.  I have never seen so many dead fish at weigh in.  The release fish were floating everywhere.  At the tanks the line was so long that you had to wait 10 minutes just to get your fish in the aerator tanks.  Once you were able to get them in the tanks only 1 out of the 3 were pumping oxygen.  Now, I’m no tree hugger but I cant stand to see the fish treated in this manner.  It killed me and I wanted to just dump my fish back in the lake and forfeit my weight.  I’m not big on lodging complaints but I do intend on talking with FLW about the lack of working tanks at weigh in.  I’m sure if the locals saw all of the dead fish FLW would never get another permit on Grand Lake.  I hope they learned something.

The first day of the tournament I started out shallow but could not catch any keepers.  My non boater caught a bunch of short fish flipping a beaver but I was throwing a 10 inch power worm and jig and had only short fish.  I went out deeper and caught a keeper on my worm.  I immediately threw my crank bait in and caught several short fish.  The big fish eluded me.  I eventually caught another keeper and lost two more keepers.  The whole day I caught over 40 bass and only managed to weigh in two.  I was really upset because I’m better than that.

That night I decided that I was so far behind that it would not make sense to go out and catch a bunch of short fish or catch a 12 pound limit so I decided to change every thing and just go fishing deep.  I ran down the lake and fished some real promising deep drops but again could only catch short fish.  I had two keepers and should have gone shallow  but I did not have time to change everything again and just stuck with it.  My room mate caught the crap out of them and ended up 12th.  He fished shallow flipping shrubs with a gig in people’s back yards.

It seem that I have a good tournament and then a bad.  I really need to work on my consistency.  My next tournament is on Toledo Bend and I love that lake.  I plan on doing well and if history repeats itself I should do great.

On tournament day I decided to hit the bay I found until I had a limit and then go to the bedding fish I found on my third practice day.  I had a limit by 8am and was culling by 8:30am.  I stayed in there and improved my limit and went to the bedding fish around noon.  I should have gone to them earlier because I culled every bass I had by sight fishing.  My main battery went dead from running my pumps and graphs all day so I wound up loosing the best hour and a half of the day.  That was bad because I figured that I could cull a couple of more times.  I was in 19th place at the end of day 1 weigh in with 14.08 pounds.

The second day I returned to the bay and caught a quick limit.  When I went to the bedding fish I found there was another angler on them.  He caught a 4 pounder right in front of me when I was idling over there.  I left and went looking for others on the island on the main lake.  I found some and culled almost every fish but could never find a good one.  I saw a few but they were so spooky that I could not catch them.  I wound up with 12.02 pounds and finished 24th.  I got paid good and got some good points but was only 3 pounds out of the top 10 cut.  I really believe if my battery did not die I would have been there.  Lesson learned.  We head to Kentucky Lake in a couple of weeks and I am really looking forward to it.  I have never been there but it sets up for my strengths.  Wish me luck.