SPORTSMENS DIGEST TOURNAMENT: We launched out of Moors and David headed south. He had told me where his best place was during the BWS and I thought that would be our first stop. He pulled into a place a few miles short of there and said he had caught a few there as well. I hadnt even loaded my rig up with Caffeine Shads yet so while I was sitting in the floor doing that, David swung a 3lber into the boat! Not a bad start and I was fumbling around trying to get my baits on because I wanted in on the action! I finally got rigged up and for the next 15 minutes we put an absolute beat down on 2 to 2.5lb fish. We werent keeping any of them because we knew we couldnt win with that size fish but after a while when the size wasnt getting any better, we decided to throw a few in the box. When we exhausted the school, we had a 3lber and two 2.5lbers in the live well. We fired up the Mercury and headed to Davids best spot from the week before and there were four boats piled on top of each other right on the sweet spot. We passed it by and headed to one of the places wed found on Friday. We fished a good stretch without a bite but then ran into a school and caught ten or twelve in a row but the biggest one was about 3lbs. Our next spot was kind of the same deal; we caught several smaller keepers with a 3.5lber in the mix. We checked one other place from Friday and I stayed hung up in stumps the entire time and we never caught a fish there. We decided to go look at a couple of new places and managed another 3lber off of one of those but then we were kind of out of options on where to fish. We talked about it and decided to just jump back and forth between the two places wed caught the bulk of our fish and hopefully slowly cull up. It turned out to be a pretty good decision and after four passes down each of our two best stretches we had a 6lber, a 5lber, a 4lber and two 3.5lbers. That gave us about 22lbs and we knew we had to get rid of those two smaller ones to have a shot at the win. We decided to stop on a place where we only caught a 2lber the day before but it is one of the most unique looking places Ive ever seen. Its also a place where my buddy Zach Parker caught back to back 8lbers back in December so I knew big fish did like to hang out there. When we rolled up on the spot for some crazy reason, I picked up a jig. Wed caught 100 fish on a rig but something told me to try a jig on this particular spot. It took me a couple of casts to hit the sweet spot but when I did, I popped a 4.5lber! David was culling and I fired another cast out. I drug the jig one time and one knocked slack in my line. I set the hook and missed it! A few casts later I got hung up and broke my jig off. I laid my rod down and picked up my umbrella rig and then I stopped, asked David to take the trolling motor and sit down and tied on another jig. My next cast with the jig I hooked something big. I told David if it was a bass it was a giant! It came up under the boat and I just knew it was going to be a drum but when it swam out from under the boat it looked like it was four feet long! David scooped it into the net and it was a 7.5lb largemouth! We were pretty pumped up and knew we probably had a pretty good shot at winning the tournament because that got us up in the mid 20s range. We caught several more 3 to 3.75lbers the rest of the day but never culled anymore. When we got back to Moors I talked to another team and they said they thought they had mid 20s as well. We let them weigh in first and we knew it was going to be close. There bag consisted of three beautiful 5lb. smallmouth and a couple of big green heads to go with them and they weighed 26.85lbs! We bagged our fish and dropped them on the scales and wouldnt you know it, we came up just a bit shy with 26.41lbs! What an awesome finish, I wouldve loved to have won obviously but I like a close nail biter weigh in like that. We also managed big fish with that 7.45lber.
SUMMARY: Man, what an awesome day! Ive had a tough start to the year with mechanical issues, illness and just having the wrong game plans. This was only the second tournament Ive fish all year, my confidence was down in the dumps and this was just what the Dr. ordered, no pun intended! Dr. G is not only one of my best friends but hes one of the best fishermen I know. Even though a lot of our fish came off of places I found or picked out, without his confidence and mental toughness, I wouldve never caught that kind of weight off of those places. It was eye opening to be able to spend a day in the boat with him after a tough day of practice and see how you can make something out of nothing. Thats always been a weakness of mine. Im mentally tough as far as not getting psyched out by weather or because some big time pro is in the tournament but I really struggle putting a good day together after a tough practice and David has done it two weeks in a row and I got to be a part of it on that day and I think it will help my fishing tremendously in the future. Im still not sure how he knew we would have 25lbs on Saturday after a mediocre practice, I think it was coincidence but hell never admit it if it was! Congrats to Donnie Siress and Chris Jones for edging us out with a beautiful bag of smallmouth!
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