Saturday morning I headed south out of Kuttawa harbor to my first stop 30 miles away. Upon my arrival I noticed one of my friends and competitor’s, Mike McDonald, was already in the area. He wasn’t on the bank I wanted to fish but he was working his way towards it. I idled to the bank but didn’t start as far down as I would’ve liked so I wouldn’t crowd Mike. I started picking every piece of cover apart with a Rodent. I fished for a few minutes and hadn’t drawn a strike when I noticed small bass flashing just below the surface. I knew then that the shad were spawning and I needed to switch to a reaction bait. I grabbed a KVD 1.5 and caught four short fish on my next four casts off of one piece of wood. Once I thought I’d cleaned that piece out I moved on to the next one and my co angler threw a spinnerbait on the same piece of wood and caught a 3.5lber! I immediately picked up a black and blue Pure Poison and quickly caught a 3lber. Just as I thought it was about to get good, another one of my competitor’s rolled into the creek and started fishing about 25 yards ahead of me. By that time, Mike had made his way to the bank I was on and that made three of us about 25 yards apart on a 100 yard stretch of bank. We were all three catching fish but the rest of mine were short but the guy that cut in front of me was steadily catching keepers. I finished out the stretch slowly following the other boat but never caught anymore keepers. I had another stretch in the same creek I wanted to fish so at 9:30 I headed that way. When I got within sight of the pocket, I saw Mike working his way down the stretch I wanted to fish. Not wanting to move in on him for the second time, I decided to totally change gears. I headed to the river and made another 30 mile run south of Dover. I knew if I ran that far I may have some company but it wouldn’t be anyone I was fishing against. I pulled into a slough and started flipping any piece of wood I could find with a black and blue Rodent. My co caught two short fish right off the bat on a spinnerbait and then it seemed like we went forever without a bite. It was 11am, I was 65 miles away from the ramp and was starting to think what a bad decision I’d made staying on Barkley. I finally caught a short fish off of a piece of wood and then things started picking up. The next piece I flipped on, my line swam off, I set the hook and drug a 4.5lber over the first of several limbs on the tree. I got her to the next limb and she got hung up and came unbuttoned. In the next 15 minutes I caught several short fish, a bowfin, a 3.5 and a 4lb largemouth but then went on another 45 minute dry spell. I fished about a half mile back into the slough and was running out of targets in enough water to house a fish. Just as I was getting to the last few pieces of good cover, I felt a thump! I set the hook, called for the net and a 5lber rolled to the surface! That gave me four fish and all I could think about was the 4.5lber I’d lost and how I wasn’t going to have time to catch a limit. I needed to head back at 1:30 and I had one more slough I wanted to hit. It was 12:45 and just as I was about to pack it up and head to my other stretch, I popped a little 16”er which gave me a limit that I was proud to have. I left there and hit my other slough along with a few quick stops on the way back to weigh-in but only caught one small keeper and some short fish the rest of the day. I weighed in 17lbs even and finished in 8th place.
I love fishing Barkley and should probably make the run over there more than I do. I’ve managed top 10’s in the past several tournaments I’ve fished on Barkley but though I’ve had the fish hooked to have a couple of giant stringers there I’ve never actually caught a really big stringer over there which makes me think I can’t win unless I go to KY Lake. It only took 21lbs to win and if I could’ve landed that fish I lost I would’ve been flirting with a 20lb bag. It was a grind to catch what I caught and a little stressful but I was very pleased to make the top 10. That good finish moved me up to 13th from 48th in the points and hopefully the next three tournaments won’t be as tough as these first two were and I can stay in the top 40.
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