We didn't have much of a turn out with only 64 boats but all it takes is a 60 boat field for the $7000 Triton Gold money to be in effect so I wasn't complaining. I had the best practice I've had since February and felt good about my chances to finally seal the deal in one of these things. I was boat 62 and made a short run to the very back of a creek to gamble on the shad spawn bite. A friend of mine had caught 25lbs off of this bank the previous weekend which made it an easy choice of where to spend my morning. Apparently my buddy cleaned them out because after an hour and a half and two passes up and down the bank, I had one small keeper. I headed out of the creek and down the river to hit my schools. I was a little concerned about the river fish because the water was stagnant and it was still fairly early in the morning. There was a boat sitting dead on my first school so I headed to the next one. It was open and my Humminbird showed a pile of fish close to the bottom in 16ft of water which is exactly what I wanted to see. I started winding my 6XD through the school and caught two short fish on my first two casts. I knew it was about to get dirty but after 15 minutes, I never caught another bass, just a few white bass. I packed it up and headed further north to my next school which, of course, had a boat sitting dead on it. I ran into the creek where my spinnerbait banks were and the first two I came to had boats on them. I was getting a little concerned about having a place to fish but luckily had scouted out several banks that had the right ingredients in practice and one of them was open. I dropped the trolling motor and started down the bank with a spinnerbait. I immediately notice shad swimming with my spinnerbait which was a very important part of my pattern. I was catching a fish every few casts and when I reached the end of the good stretch, I’d added two small keepers and a 4lber to my creel. The bank across from me had big ones on it in practice but there was a boat working it back and forth. I finally headed that way and just fell in behind him. I eased down the bank and caught a 3lber right behind the other boat which gave me a limit but that’s the only keeper I caught there. I headed to another stretch and caught a very small keeper and some short fish off of it. I ran back towards the mouth of the creek and my other two banks were then void of other fishermen so I pulled in and started fishing. The shad were still courting my spinnerbait and the wind was picking up which were good signs and I pretty quickly popped a 2.5lber. I cut across to the other side of the pocket to where I’d caught a 6lber in practice but there were no shad and I never had a sniff off of that stretch. I ran back across to make one more pass down the other side and caught a 15.5”er that culled a 15”er on my first pass. I turned and fished my way back out the same bank and I told my co angler I was going to make one more cast and I caught a 4lber on that cast. I obviously had to make a few more casts after that but they were unproductive. I noticed the fish I caught early were just loading up on my spinnerbait but those last two hit it like a freight train so that made me think they were getting more active and I should run back through all of my stuff. Unfortunately, everything I’d fished and wanted to fish had boats all over it so I decided to head back south, check my schools and eventually finish out the day flipping. All three of my schools had boats on them so I just kept my Mercury wound out and headed south of Dover to a slough. I had about 15lbs and it was 12:00 which gave me a little more than two hours to work the area over and get a couple of big bites. I slowly flipped my way to the back of the slough picking apart every piece of cover. I caught eight keepers during that time but only one helped my cause and it was just a 3lber. I weighed in 16lbs 8oz and finished in 5th place.
After a phenomenal practice, I really felt like a had a good shot at winning this tournament but I had told myself if I didn't at least make the top 5 then something bad was wrong. The funny thing is, as good as Barkley was fishing for me and a lot of other people I talked to, I thought Id need at least 20lbs to make that top 5. Even though I achieved one of my goals I was still disappointed with the fishing overall. It only took 19lbs to win and I thought it was going to take that to make the top 10. I talked to the guys that were sitting on the schools I'd found and one of them had 14lbs and the other only had three keepers. Any one of those schools wouldve produced at least 18lbs earlier in the week in just a few minutes. I'm not sure why the bite got so tough, probably a combination of the pressure all of the good places were getting and the lack of water movement didnt help the deep bite at all. When the day is done a top 5 is a top 5 but I was really pumped up thinking this was going to be one of those slugfest's where everybody catches them good but that wasn't the case at all. A positive note was that my game plan worked to perfection other than the fact that I didn't get to hit my deep stuff and my 4 to 6lbers turned into 2 to 4lbers. Barkley is still a nice change from massive KY Lake and I'm looking forward to fishing a BWS over there next weekend.
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