Coming off of the worst tournament I've ever had on KY Lake I really wanted to spend some time trying to figure out what I'd done wrong before the upcoming BFL. Unfortunately between business, weather and a throbbing tooth ache that set in Thursday night, I only practiced one day and caught one 2lb fish. Having never done good in a tournament after a terrible practice and still in pain on Friday, I called BFL tournament director Daniel Fennel and asked him to take me out of the tournament and he said he would. That night I got a text from FLW Outdoors with my boat number and co angler partner for the tournament. Daniel immediately called and said he apologized but for whatever reason I wasn't removed from the system but he could still get me out of the tournament if I really didn't want to fish. I told him that maybe that was a sign from God that I needed to fish and I'd just throw back some Advil and tough it out.
Next, I talked to my partner Bryan Henry and told him I wasn't on anything, wasn't feeling very good and I had no clue what we were going to do the next morning. I told him to bring everything he had and be sure he bought a TN license.
We headed out of KY Dam Saturday morning and made a 45 mile run to the Paris area and I stopped on a place that I caught one of my two keepers the weekend before. I told Bryan if we didn't catch any there I was rolling the dice and going to New Johnsonville. We didn't catch a fish so I headed to another place close by and once again said if we didn't catch them, I was going to Jville. After an hour there we hadn't had a bite and I said one more stop and we're going to Jville and that's when Bryan said something you rarely hear from a co angler especially when it's 35 degrees outside, he said he wanted to go to Jville. He said he'd wanted to go for two years but his boaters never took him. I'd been wanting to practice in Jville for two weeks but hadn't made it up there and though I've made that run many times, I'd never done it without at least a small clue as to what the fish were doing on that end of the lake. Knowing I was basically throwing in the towel if I stayed around Paris I strapped everything down and made another 30 mile run to New Johnsonville. By that point it was already 10am and I had to leave at 2pm in order to make it back on time so I knew in order to salvage the day I needed to figure them out quick. Lake conditions were very similar to 2010 when I figured out a really strong pattern on that end of the lake. I headed to the first place I came to that worked that year but didn't have a lot of faith in it because like I said before, I've never been able to duplicate any of my past successful patterns or areas. I fired out a bait I've never even made a cast with, the new Strike King KVD 1.5 Flat, and caught a 3lber on my first cast. A few minutes later I caught another 3lber and then several 2.5lb fish. When they quit biting I only had about 14lbs. but I smiled at Bryan and said "I know where they are!" My next stop produced a 6.5lber and my next stop produced a 7.25lber and I basically ran as many of my 2010 places as I could until we had to go back. Bryan was a great guy and he'd told me that he'd never weighed in a limit in a BFL. I really wanted him to catch five but when I pulled up on our last stop it was 2 pm and he only had two small keepers. I told him we only had ten minutes to fish and I had a good feeling there would be a load of fish on this particular spot. I only had one spare KVD Flat in my boat but on my first cast our baits landed side by side and I had three bites and then hooked a 4lber and he never had a sniff. I grabbed my back up bait and threw it to Bryan and told him to tie it on. Over the next ten minutes we doubled up on 4 to 5lbers on every cast but unfortunately we were having to take time out to cull and finally had to leave. When the scales closed I'd weighed in 26lbs. 7oz. and won the third BFL of my career. Bryan weighed in 15lbs. 5oz. and finished 3rd on the co angler side.
What an amazing day! This was a really special tournament for me in a lot of ways. Number one, one of my old patterns that I'd worked so hard to figure out back in the day finally came into play only a few weeks after I'd written an article on how they never do. Number two, it showed me that I can figure out the winning pattern during a tournament which has always been my Achilles Heel.
It seems like every tournament I win there's a piece of equipment or two that really play a role in my success. I started using All Pro Rods exclusively late last summer. I weighed in over 75lbs of Sexy Dawg fish in three days of tournament fishing using the All Pro APX MH Cranking Rod. This was my first tournament to actually use this rod for what it was intended for, cranking, but I'm telling you I wouldn't have won without it. I didn't mention that my co angler kicked my net over board early in the day and I caught over 30 keepers and never lost a fish either swinging them in or lipping them beside the boat. The 7lber I caught made a run beside the boat and my drag was waaaaay too tight and my APX absorbed it and allowed me to keep that fish hooked up.
Another key to my pattern was staying way off of the bars and making a long enough cast that my bait had time to really dig into the bottom and I was out casting my partner by 25 yards.
The most important part of my pattern was that when I felt the bait really get into the roughest stuff around, I'd pause it and then it would get engulfed! I could feel every piece of gravel and shell that my bait hit all day long and I know that's why I caught so many more fish than my partner. I've always cranked with glass rods so this was my first go round cranking with graphite and this rod is the deal for shallow to medium diving crankbaits, lipless baits and obviously it's a pretty good top water rod too!
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