At the beginning of the year I wasn't even sure if I was going to enter the Rayovac due to the fact the 350 boat Triton Owners Tournament was going on the same week. I knew that 99% of the bass population would be schooled up offshore and nowadays it seems everyone knows how to find all of the schools and I also knew it would be a very frustrating tournament trying to find a place to fish that didn't have a boat sitting on it. I also do a lot of guide business before the TOT and I hated to gamble on tournament winnings as opposed to making guaranteed money guiding. A month or so before tournament time, I knew I'd be sick if I didn't enter, so I registered for the tournament.
As the end of May drew near, I'd thought a lot about how big of a cluster it was going to be with 600 boats trying to fish schools. I also knew the field would be full of the best school fishermen on the planet, the majority of which, in my opinion, hail from Pickwick Lake. Pickwick has a fraction of the schools we do at KY but they hold massive numbers of bass. Everyone finds them and they have 100's of baits rained down upon them every day and are at times seemingly impossible to catch. I really believe the Pickwick guys are the best school fishermen in the world and I also believe there are a couple different reasons why they're so good at what they do. First of all, they are experts at figuring out a way to catch the better quality fish out of schools that have been heavily pressured and secondly, they don't mind fishing in a crowd for the most part. I on the other hand, am not an expert at making the bigger fish bite out of a community hole school and I absolutely will NOT fish boat to boat with someone. With all of this in my head, I knew those boys would be hard to beat because it was setting up perfectly for what they're best at. At the same time, it hit me that if a guy had a smart game plan, he could possibly do really well. Once I started looking at it from that perspective, I couldn't wait to get practice underway and start putting together a plan to out think my competitors as opposed to out fishing them.
PRACTICE DAY 1: I had made up my mind that if I were to have a chance to win, a few different things needed to happen. I needed to spend the majority of practice searching for shallow schools that couldn't be found with a Lowrance. I also have a few places that aren't community holes that the fish use for short periods of time each year and when they get there, they're definitely the right kind. The catch to this is, I never know when they're going to show up and I don't know how long they'll stay when they do. I decided to only fish shallow bars and ditches during practice, scan a few community places along the way just to see how many schools were heading out and how many fish were in them and most importantly keep a close eye on these few "secret" spots I know about.
I headed to Paris Landing on Saturday of Memorial Day weekend and needed to get my Mercury broken in first and foremost. I headed towards KY dam and figured by the time I got back to the Blood River area I'd have enough time on my engine and I could start my search. On my way back south I got to the Jonathan Creek area and decided to scan a few places. I found two schools and caught 20lbs out of them pretty quickly. I knew immediately that if I could catch 20lbs north of 68 bridge, the north end had to be on fire because I don't think I've ever caught a limit that far north! As tough as the north end of the lake has been the past few years, I assumed that if it was that good, the south would be even better. I spent the rest of the day fishing my way back to the Blood River area covering as many shallow stump bars and creek ledges as I could and never had a bite. Before I called it a day I ran by one of the "secret" holes I mentioned and it was absolutely covered with bass. I never even checked up, I just put my Triton on pad and headed to the ramp. Finding these fish that early in practice would make for a stressful few days. I didn't know how long they would hang around and I knew the longer they were there, the better chance there would be of someone else finding them. I just tried to put it out of my mind so I could start fresh on Sunday morning.
PRACITCE DAY 2: I spent day two from Blood River to Danville and again cranked and jigged my way around every shallow structure I could find with no success. I did a lot more scanning that day and I was seeing some interesting things. One thing I noticed was that the schools that had been out on the river for a week or so were getting more numbers in them everyday and the creek schools were moving further out of the creeks. I also noticed that places that hadn't had any fish on them, had a few showing up. The thing that I was most excited about though, was that a lot of places didn't have any fish on them yet. These things told me that new fish were coming out everyday and they were moving a lot. I felt like this could play into my favor because most people wouldn't fish anything during the tournaments if they were void of life in practice and I could possibly find an untapped school once competition began.
PRACTICE DAY 3: It was Memorial Day and the lake was wild with pleasure boaters and fishermen. I figured this would be a good day to fish the shallow stuff from Danville to New Johnsonville so I headed out, picked up a 6XD and never let out of it until the sun was setting. It made for a long and at times boring day but I found what I'd been looking for, two schools too shallow to scan and holding the biggun's! On the way in that day the current was ripping and I hadn't made a single cast to a school of deep fish in three days. I decided to pull up on a giant community hole and make up for a long three days of not doing much catching. I caught them every cast for about an hour and had several 4 to 4.5lbers during the flurry.
With more and more Triton owners showing up on the lake everyday, I decided not to practice anymore the rest of the week. I was really disappointed in what a lot of them were doing during practice. I've never seen so many guys just pull up and almost run over the top of you while your trying to scan a ledge. I already knew if anyone saw someone else catch a fish that place would be history and that's why I chose not to make a cast on a school during practice and I caught very few out of the shallow schools I found. It's really sad that so many people find there fish by watching others and it's a little scary to think about where it's headed. It wouldn't hurt my feelings if GPS and Structure Scan were banned for life after what I saw that week.
So, heading into my biggest tournament of the year this is what I had to go on. One unobvious school of fish that I'd found five days prior to the event with a history of not lingering around very long, two shallow bar schools with some big ones in them but I wasn't sure how many and if all that didn't pan out, I had enough confidence in my Lowrance that I could find a fresh school during the tournament. I felt like I'd accomplished what I'd set out to do during practice and while it was somewhat of a risky plan and/or approach, I felt much better about it than relying on community holes like I have the past two years.
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