BARKLEY OPEN PRACTICE AND TOURNAMENT: The Fire Fighters
were having an open Good Friday tournament out of Bumpus Mills, TN and it
guaranteed $1500 for first place. I normally wouldn't gamble on a long run in a
small tournament but I know south Barkley fishes tough that early in the year
and I didnt think anybody would be crazy enough to make the run to KY Lake so
it seemed like a good idea to jump in this thing, make a 75 mile run, catch
about 20lbs. or so and make 1500 bucks. The Jett-A-Marine tournament was also
coming up and I was going to use Wednesday, Thursday and Friday as practice for
that as well. I was pretty confident when I hit the water on Wednesday as my
good buddy David Gnewikow and I had just caught a 26lb stringer the week
before. I figured out pretty quickly the current was nonexistent and
unfortunately thats what our entire pattern was based on the previous weekend.
I spent two days Umbrella rigging and cranking my way from the Blood River area
towards KY Dam and the only places I could catch any decent fish were on the
places wed found the week before. It was a little further than I wanted to run
but I still felt confident we could win the $1500 first place prize money so on
Friday morning, my buddy Mike Hardin and I set sail for a 75 mile one way trip
to the Blood River area from Bumpus Mills. We had smooth sailing all the way to
the canal but once we hit KY Lake she was rolling and I immediately started
dreading another 30 miles in those big waves. I shut down outside of Moors
Resort on a place where David and I had caught some 3.5lbers the week before.
After about 15 minutes there we had only caught one 2.5lber so I knew then we
had to commit to the Blood River area. We finally reached our first stretch and
after 30 minutes wed had one bite, a small keeper Mike caught on his rig. I
headed to the next stretch that had been so good to us the previous week and
when we got to the end we hadnt had a bite! I was feeling pretty bad that Id
talked Mike into making this long run with me for nothing but I decided to fish
a little further down the stretch and it was a good decision, I popped a 5lber
and as soon as we dropped her in the live well we hit a school of 17" fish! We
filled our limit with those and culled the two small ones and then it was over!
We fished our way back to where wed started the morning outside of Moors and
hadn't caught a fish since that group of 17”ers. With time running out, we were
going to spend or last few minutes on this place at Moors and I just happened
to start about 10 yards away from where we started that morning and wouldnt you
know it, I caught two 4lbers on my first two casts! By the time we culled and
got everything strapped down, we were out of time and had to head back. We
ended up in 3rd place with 18.51lbs and made enough money to pay for our day. I
did find out 2nd place also ran to KY Lake and they had a little over 19lbs and
Im not sure where the winners caught there fish but they ran away with it
weighing in 23+lbs.
SUMMARY: This was a fun little tournament. I love fishing
on weekdays and I dont get to fish with Mike that often any more so over all it
was a good day. The only thing I wouldve changed would have been to spend a
little more time on that starting spot outside of Moors, if I couldve relocated
that school that morning, I believe we couldve saved a lot of gas and milked
them all day and probably weighed in more than we did by running all over the
lake. Oh well, you live and learn. I did opt out of the Jett-A tournament the
next day and it was probably a good thing because it took 18lbs just to get a
check and I dont think I could've caught much more than that with what I was on.
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