LBL BFL #3 MAY 2, 2015: I had made up my mind that I was going to start on a place I caught some fish last year about the same time of year. Normally a run to Jville in a BFL is pretty risky as local tournament anglers usually have everything on lock down before I can make it up there but with the big tournament of the weekend launching out of Perryville which is 35 miles south of Jville, I thought I may just have a shot at getting on a place or two. Just before take off a blanket of fog blew in, covered the lake and for the second time in 3 events, we were stuck sitting out a fog delay. While most of my competitors were worried about a big tournament out of KY Dam taking off and getting first dibs on most of the best real-estate, I had the Perryville crew on my mind.
After two hours the fog lifted and the day was underway. When I finally reached my destination I could see a boat sitting very close to my waypoint. A couple hundred yards up the ledge sit another boat. I recognized both boats and have a great deal of respect for both anglers and I didn't want to intrude but at the same time I didn't want to run that far and not even make a cast. I decided to pull in between them both and try and get an idea if they were camping out on specific spots or covering water. Not long after my arrival both boats were netting fish. I slowly worked my way towards the boat that was where I wanted to be until I could get close enough to verify that he was indeed sitting right on my waypoint and he didn't have any intentions of leaving anytime soon. I turned and worked my way back down the ledge hoping to run into a straggler or two and all the while both boats were steadily netting fish. After about an hour of watching the beat down I couldn't stand anymore and was packing up to leave when the boat north of me left. I wheeled in and caught a couple of 4lbers pretty quickly on a Strike King Shadalicious but after another hour I never had another bite.
Last year when this pattern was working there were several good ledges that fit the bill and I had a good feeling that if they were on that particular ledge I could find a few more that had them as well. I spent the next several hours swimbaiting and burning a 5XD over shallow ledges and never had a sniff. With time running out I decided to run back to the Paris area and make as many flips as possible on a milk run of likely bushes I've compiled over the years.
With about 20 minutes to go I drug a 4.5 lber out of the heart of a bush that fell victim to a Strike King Structure Bug. A few pitches later I hooked up with a chunky keeper that got wrapped around a limb and pulled off.
Then, with just minutes left before I had to head back, I pinned another 2.5 lber to a limb and just as my co reached for it with the net, it came unbuttoned. My co asked me what I thought about the size of the fish and I said "it wasn't the kind you win with but anything is good when you only have 3 in the box!" Little did I know that those two small keepers would've been worth about 13 grand had I been able to get them to the boat. The field struggled and a measly 16 lbs won the tournament. I managed a 10th place finish with my 3 that weighed 12 lbs 9 oz.
SUMMARY: Apparently the fog delay, much like the first BFL of the year, really took a toll on guys getting to fish where they needed for the amount of time they needed. I'm still pretty disgusted that I couldn't put a limit in the boat and can't believe that 16 lbs. is all I would've needed to get the job done. To add insult to injury, before I'd even made it out of the ramp parking lot I got a text informing me that my buddy who was on the place I wanted to start on had won the Perryville tournament with 26 lbs! Oh well, you can't win 'em all but this was a rare opportunity for a handsome pay day with a really low weight and those are the ones you have to take advantage of.
RAYOVAC PRACTICE: I've always believed that in any sport, the better the competition you play against, the better you become. The FLW Rayovac on KY Lake has normally taken place in peak ledge season and the best ledge fishermen in the business always show up for that event. After narrowly missing the top 10 cut the past few years, I felt like there was a little something I was missing that separated me from those guys.
I worked hard last summer studying how fish positioned under different conditions and the best approach to catching those fish. I really felt like I learned that next level stuff I'd been missing but when I saw that the Rayovac was scheduled for early May, I didn't think this would be the year to put it to use.
I knew the ledge masters would put all their chips in the ledge basket whether the bass were there or not and I had to make sure they weren't going to find something I missed so I spent several days idling around staring at my Lowrance. I scanned from creek humps to main river ledge and everything I looked at was either completely void of life or just had a few scattered bass on it.
Knowing the majority of my competition would live or die on the few scattered bass I decided there wouldn't be enough fish out there to go around and believed they would all be beating on the same few fish. I decided to shift gears and spend the rest of my time on ledges in New Johnsonville that are too shallow to scan.
My buddy Kevin Woodside practiced with me one day on the southern portion of the lake and he knows every bar and ledge where a fish has ever considered living on that end of the pond. After a pretty brutal day of not finding much we decided to make a cast or two on the place I had tried to fish in the BFL. My first cast produced a 6 lber and as I was reeling it in a giant of a bass blew a shad out of the water.
I spent one last day scanning around on the northern part of the lake and still wasn't seeing what I thought I needed to see and decided I was going to make the 80 mile run to Jville and just hope I could get on the one school of big ones I knew about and milk it for all it was worth.
RAYOVAC DAY 1 MAY 7, 2015: I headed straight to my one and only school Thursday morning just praying no one would be sitting there. When I got within sight I was relieved that I had it all to myself. I caught a 3lber on my third cast and I just knew I was about to light 'em up but after three more hours I'd only caught a few short fish and knew I had to make a change. I hit a few more similar places and caught a few short fish and I told my co that I was going to live or die in Jville and I was going to go flip bushes for awhile until the current started moving and then we'd head back to the river.
I pulled up on one of my favorite set of bushes and made a comment about how low and clear the water was. That had me a little nervous but I had to do something to kill some time until the current turned on. As I worked my way down the bank I made a short pitch to a bush and just as my Rodent hit the water I noticed a fish laying next to it. It had a green color to it but looked way to long to be a bass so I just assumed it was a gar. As soon as my bait sank out of sight I could see the outline of the fish heading towards it. I lifted up on my bait and it was swimming to the left. I set the hook and a big bass rolled to the surface. I thought it was about a 6 lber so I called for the net. The next thing I knew I was hanging on to an 8 ft All Pro Flippin' stick for dear life and 25lb line was being stripped off my reel like a spinning outfit. The fish swam around a clump of bushes, took a right and headed into another set of bushes. By that time I knew I had hooked into something special and amazingly I led the fish back around all of the cover and into the net. I immediately weighed her on a Boga Grip scale and it was a little over 10 lbs! To say I was excited was an understatement because I've never caught a 10 and to do it in a tournament was a pretty cool deal.
After catching that toad out of the bushes I totally forgot about the river fish and decided to flip the rest of the day. I caught another keeper pretty quickly and about an hour later lost a 3lber but that was it. As time was slipping away I was trying to plan out the rest of my day. I knew I had an 80 mile run and had to stop and fuel up in Paris but I also knew I had to put a couple more fish in the boat so I'd have a 20lb stringer and be in good shape for day 2. I knew of one school just north of Paris that had been out for awhile and they were mostly 3lbers. I also had my milk run of bushes in that area so I decided to head back, fuel up, hit my school and then make a few flips before I had to call it a day. We packed everything up and when I went to start my Mercury, nothing happened. We messed around with it for an hour trying to get it started and I was starting to freak out a little bit.
Not only had a lost a lot of fishing time but I had what I thought was my first 10 lber in the live-well and wasn't going to get to weigh her in. Just before I had a melt down my co angler checked my connection on my starting battery and it was hanging by a thread. We tightened it up and everything was good to go other than the fact by the time I got gas I had to head straight to weigh-in.
Unfortunately I only had 3 fish for 14 lbs 11 oz and my toad came up a little short of the 10 lb mark at 9 lbs 3 oz but was still good enough for big fish of the day.
RAYOVAC DAY 2 MAY 8, 2015: I couldn't believe what I'd seen when I looked at the results from day 1. The ledge masters had done the impossible. The top 10 was riddled with 20+ lb limits beside the names of the best ledge fishermen in the game. I was blown away that they had caught that kind of weight out of so few ledge fish I didn't even classify them as a "school".
I decided since I couldn't beat 'em, I would join 'em and I spent all of day 2 staring at my Lowrance in hopes of running into a fresh group of post spawners that had just made there way out to the ledges but unfortunately I only saw fish on three places all day. I fished for about a total of 45 minutes and ended up with a 12lb limit and finished the tournament in 42nd place.
SUMMARY: There's really not much to say about this one other than that the guys I already knew were the best ledge fishermen on the planet are even better than I imagined. Congrats guys, very impressive.
