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.
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