Saturday, May 19, 2012

WOUNDED WARRIOR TOURNAMENT

What an awesome week! I got to spend two days straight blastin' 'em with my parents and then today I had the opportunity to take a soldier, Tyler Schaffer, fishing in the Wounded Warrior Tournament out of Paris Landing on KY Lake.  Tyler was 21 years old and awarded a Purple Heart when he and his team were hit by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan.  He was a great guy and though he does do some recreational fishing, this was his first time on a big lake in a bass tournament.  He wasn't familiar with baitcasting reels so I rigged him up a couple of ABU Garcia Veritas spinning rods with a shaky head and a 5xd crankbait.  Our first stop was loaded with fish and we caught at least 50 keepers out of the school.  Tyler was matching me fish for fish and even caught two on one cast which he'd never done before and he was pretty stoked over that.  After an hour of catching 2 to 3lb fish, I asked Tyler if he wanted to keep catching a bunch of fish or if he wanted to try and win and without hesitation, he replied "Let's win this thing"!  I told him we would have to fish a little differently to target bigger bass and it wouldn't be as fast and furious as it had started out.  I made a run to a deep water school and scanned the area with my Humminbird.  I saw a small group of fish and immediately fired a Sexy Spoon into them.  I had two swipe at it but miss and then on my third rip a 5lber engulfed the spoon!  I netted the fish and culled one of our 3lbers.  We fished for awhile longer but couldn't trigger any more bites so I made a move.  I ran through several schools and we each caught a few 2 to 3lb fish but none that would help.  When I reached my most southern school I didn't see them on my electronics.  I hated to run that far and not even make a cast so I decided to make a few throws for the heck of it.  As soon as my 6XD hit the water, I didn't make three turns of the reel handle and a 4.75lber choked it.  We could only weigh in 3 fish in this tournament and I had a feeling we needed another fish in the 4 to 5lb class to have a shot at the win.  It was only a 6 hour tournament and time was running out.  I ran back north of Paris Bridge to a place where I've caught some key fish in the past and they were stacked.  We caught 'em on every cast for the last 30 minutes and I hung at least ten 3 to 3.5lbers on the balance beam but none would cull our smallest fish which weighed 3lbs 9oz.  We ended up weighing in 12.88lbs and finished 2nd just a little more than a half pound shy of the win.
I wanted to win this thing badly but to have a guy like Tyler say on stage that he'd had the best time he'd ever had in his life was worth more than any win in any bass tournament ever could be.  For those that didn't get involved with this event this year, you really need to check it out next year, it was a great experience. 


I've posted a link to a Channel 2 News clip and interview with my partner below.


www.wkrn.com/category/175880/video-landing-page?clipId=7305055&topVideoCatNo=128407&autoSt




Tuesday, May 15, 2012

FISHIN WITH THE PARENTS DAY 2

We got on the water at 11 am today and I immediately noticed the current wasn't running which had me concerned because I knew my parents were expecting another 100 fish day.  The first couple places I looked at were void of life.  I finally scanned a ledge that had a few lingering around.  I caught a 5.25 and a 4lber on a 6XD but they weren't interested in my mom and dad's spoon offerings. I ran around a little and finally found a stock pile of em and it was on again.  Long story short we hit three big schools today and we caught em and caught em and caught em and then caught em some more. At 5pm my mom said she couldn't believe what she was about to say but she was actually tired of catching bass!  Now that's what I wanted to hear.  I made one more stop on the way in and we finished the day with my dad catching a 3.5lber, my mom had a 4.25lber and I caught a 3.5lb largemouth and a 20lb striper on one cast on an umbrella rig loaded down with Shadalicious swimbaits! 

Another awesome day with my two favorite people in the world, I'm truly blessed!

Monday, May 14, 2012

FISHIN WITH THE PARENTS DAY 1

I was fortunate enough to get to spend the day on the water with my parents.  They love to fish and taught me to love to fish when I was two years old.  Unfortunately, we don't get to fish together nearly as much as we should.  When they get a chance to go i'm usually practicing for a tournament and as soon as we catch a good one or two, I'll pull us off of the place. I called my mom during Everstart practice last week and told her they had to get up here after the tournament because I knew during the week with the current running and no fishing pressure we could catch no telling how many fish.

They showed up at 3pm today and we hit the lake.  The first school I drove over were picture perfect on my Humminbird and I dropped a buoy out to give them a target. My mom has never thrown a Sexy Spoon and was reluctant to try it. I assured her, it was simple and I made a cast towards the buoy.  I explained to her to make sure it hit bottom, which it did. Then I told her to just lift it up quickly, which I did. Then I showed her how I follow the bait back to the bottom with the rod tip and then....I set the hook and let her reel in a 3.5lber. I handed my dad a spoon and I grabbed a 6XD and it was on.  For the next 30 minutes we caught doubles and triples and I was running around lipping, unhooking, weighing and photographing fish like a chicken with it's head cut off!  It was awesome! When we exhausted that school we had caught about 50 fish and our best five weighed 19lbs.  The only negative thing about the hole deal is I struggled mightily to get 4lb bites in the everstart and we had two over 4lbs and one over 5lbs on our first stop.

We hit three more schools today and caught 20 to 30 fish out of each of them and most of them were chunky little 3lbers but we did get another 4lber or two.


Friday, May 11, 2012

KY LAKE EVERSTART DAY 2

UGGGGH! FRUSTRATING DAY!  I had forgotten how cut throat this sport was until about 8:00 this morning.  I stopped on my starting place where I caught 14lbs on 5 cast yesterday and I caught 14.5lbs there this morning in about 10 casts.  The difference was yesterday I had all 17"ers there, today I had two 16"ers, two 17"ers and a 5lber!  Don't think I wasn't feeling good about things knowing I had all day to build on that 5lber. That's when I started running my same rotation as yesterday and every place I stopped had boats on it that were in the vicinity yesterday while I was catching fish!  Even the topwater place, where nobody in there right mind would fish, had six boats Power Poled down on it.  I hate to sound like one of those guys that's crying about people steeling their holes but this was blatantly obvious.  I only fished five schools yesterday and they were all north of Paris.  I decided to run south of Paris and check some places and the fish weren't on the few I got to check.  Most of those places had guys practicing for the big open tournament out of Paris tomorrow on them.  I ran back north and a couple of my places had opened up but the fish were spread out and suspended because they'd been fished and the ones I caught were just small keepers.  I ran back by my topwater spot and only one guy was left but he was netting a fish and hi fiving his co angler when I pulled up!  All I could think about was that he probably caught that toad I'd seen following my bait yesterday.  I ran to my starting place hoping that I could at least get some of those 17"ers to bite but only short fish were there in the afternoon.  I finished the day on one of my shallow places where I'd caught about six 3lbers yesterday that wouldn't help.  I only got two bites there today but one of them was the one I was looking for.  With 20 minutes left in the day I hooked one on a jig on the end of a long cast.  She jumped waaaaaaaaaaaaay out there and I knew it was a pretty good fish.  I got it a little closer to the boat and she jumped again and I knew it was at least a 4lber.  Then I got her almost to the net and she jumped again and I knew it was at least a 5lber.....and then my jig popped out of her mouth!

I weighed in the first five fish I caught this morning for 14lbs 8oz and finished 13th.  I missed the cut by less than 2lbs which I could've made up with that big one I lost at the end of the day.  Oh well, I know I wasn't on the winning fish, but I sure wish I was fishing tomorrow!

Good luck to all of my buddies that are in the top 10.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

KY LAKE EVERSTART DAY 1

I have never in my life caught so many fish and not had a big one! I caught no less than 100 keepers today and weighed in 16lbs 1oz.  And to let you know how much time I spent in the floor of my Triton with the balance beam out, I had 14lbs in 5 casts on my first stop this morning!  My hands are a bloody pulp from unhooking and handling fish all day, but it was a blast.  The good news is, I figured with 16lbs I'd be somewhere in the 30's but I'm actually in 14th place only 4oz out of the top 10 cut. 

My plan almost worked to perfection but my shallow ledge fish moved even shallower and I didn't figure it out until about noon.  I was fishing a ledge sitting in 10ft casting a jig about a mile up onto the bar when I noticed a big shad fly out of the water another 50 yards past the end of my cast.  I dug a Strike King Sexy Dawg out of my rod locker and headed that direction.  When I made it up there I began fan casting around and a 2.5lber crushed my Sexy Dawg! As I reeled it to the boat I noticed about 25 more bass swarming it.  Most of these fish were 2.5 to 3lbers but right in the middle of the pack was a sure 'nuff GIANT swimming with them.  I stopped reeling hoping that another fish would get on the other end of my Dawg and the little one I had hooked jumped and threw my Dawg!  When my bait hit the water, that 7lber along with the rest of the pack made a bee line for it.  I just knew that big one was gonna smoke it and that's when out of no where, a 14"er zipped in, grabbed my bait and took it out of the school!  It was a heartbreaker for sure but at the same time I couldn't help but laugh when that little dude flew in there amongst those bigger fish and stole their meal!  I dropped my Power Poles and caught 8 fish between 2.5 and 3lbs on top but never got the big one.....She will definitely get a look tomorrow!

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Kentucky Lake Everstart Practice

Well, I decided to dedicate my entire practice to ledge fishing on KY Lake.  I had thought that Barkley may be a player for me but after last weekend I threw that out the window.

I spent three days scanning ledges from New Johnsonville to Moors Resort and located 28 shcools of bass anywhere from 6ft deep down to 26ft.  My best baits have of course been the Strike King 6XD and the Sexy Spoon.  Unfortunately out of all of these schools, a 4lber is a big one out of them and they average between 2.75 and 3lbs so I think I should be able to catch 14lbs a day pretty easily.  Knowing my luck it will take 14.5lbs a day to get a check!!!

I also found a shallow ledge pattern that's producing some better fish similar to how I fish in the late summer/early fall.  I caught two over 5lbs doing this one day and another 5lber the second day on the same type stuff.  Bad thing about fishing this way is you never know how many bites you may get, maybe 10 or maybe 0, but when you get bit there's a good bet it's a 4 plus pounder.

I plan on running my schools until I get 14 or 15lbs and then finishing out the day slow dragging a jig on the shallow bars and try to get a few big bites.  I figure out of 28 schools, half of them will have a boat on them and half of the remaining half will be gone.  So I'm going into it assuming I only have 7 shcools of fish. 

Saturday, May 5, 2012

KY WEST BWS #2 BARKLEY LAKE

Wow, I had a brutal day today.  I started on a bank about 15 miles south of Barkley State Park that's usually got some fish on it.  I flipped up a small keeper and lost a 3lber on a Strike King Rodent.  I left there and headed south with intentions of hitting my deep river fish on my way to the slough I've been flipping the past few weeks.  All five schools had a boat sitting on them so I kept on running south. I made it to my slough and picked it apart with a rodent and when the dust settled, I had two more small keepers and another lost 3lber.  I headed back north a little early so I could hit my schools if they were open but only one of them was.  I scanned over the ledge and the bass were thick in 28ft of water.  I couldn't get my crankbait to them but I did catch about a dozen keepers on a football jig.  When I left that school I had a limit of 2lbers and never upgraded the rest of the day.  I wieghed in 9.63lbs after an 8oz dead fish penalty which occured while I was standing in the bag line for an hour after I'd trailered my boat.  I finished a very disappointing 33rd place out of 79 boats.

I was really hoping to make a run at the points championship in this division and I was in 6th place coming in to this tournament but I probably blew my chance at that.  I narrowly won the points in 2010 and never finished worse than 10th.  So it will take a miracle to win it now.  I thought that I could possibly actually get to fish a few of my schools in this one since we launched so far north but apparently there are open tournaments out of Dover every weekend now.  Back in the day me and my buddies struggled to find any tournaments to fish on south Barkley and now it seems like they have two or three a day! 

Oh well, sometimes you just don't get it done and this was one of those days.

Friday, May 4, 2012

BWS KY WEST DIVISION PRACTICE

I spent Wednesday on south Barkley checking everything that was working last weekend and the shad spawn pattern was dead.  My deep schools were still hanging around and I located another school or two but with no current on the weekend I knew those wouldn't be very dependable. A couple of my buddies had found my best flipping area and were fishing the USA Bassin Classic on Thursday and Friday so I stayed away from that in practice because I didn't want to disturb any fish that might help them win a new boat.  I caught a limit running around checking new water but nothing to write home about.

Thursday, I headed north on Barkley to the Little River area and did a ton of side imaging on the main lake but never found anything that looked promising.  I fished a few places and caught a few fish but had only three keepers at the end of the day. My buddies had 18lbs in there tournament that day and a couple of them came from the area I had been fishing the past couple weeks so that let me know there were a few fish left in that area.

I spent a few hours in Little River before the meeting today and it was horrible. I didn't find anything deep and the shallow stuff I used to fish back in the day only had inches of water on it.  I talked to my friends tonight and they had 22lbs today and finished 3rd in the USA Bassin deal and won a boat which was good news. The bad news was that my area they were fishing has dried up and they caught there fish elsewhere.  I've decided to head south tomorrow and hope my schools cooperate and then go flip the area anyway and hopefully scrounge up a left over female or two.