PRACTICE: I had the opportunity to fish the Paul Steel benefit tournament out of Paris Landing with my buddy Triton McClain. Triton is 13 years old and this was our first time fishing together. We headed out Friday to hunt some new places and check some old ones to try and get an idea of what we needed to do on Saturday. Everything was pretty much the same as the last time I had been on the water, schools everywhere with size hard to come by. We managed a couple of decent bites in the 4lb range out of some of the schools wed fished and had about 18lbs for the day. On our way in I ran right by a place that I had found a giant school of fish on early last summer. Id been checking this place several times a week since early may and had yet to see a fish on it so far this year. I had pretty much written it off for this year but since I had to drive right by there I decided to scan over it just for the heck of it. As soon as I hit the top of the bar my Lowrance lit up with bass. I told Triton we were about to smoke em and I caught two 3lbers on my first cast! He made a cast with his 6XD and caught a 4.5lber and we packed up and headed for the house.
TOURNAMENT: We took a left out of Paris Landing and headed straight for our 6XD fish wed left biting on Friday. Last year when I found this school they bit early in the morning and I was hoping they were in the same mood this go round. I made a few casts around my waypoint and never had a bite and was beginning to think they had moved on. I trolled around to hit the bar from another angle and loaded up with a 3lber on my first cast! We caught them every cast for the next hour and when the dust settled we had right at 22lbs in the boat. We ran down south and did everything I could think of to try and upgrade and though we caught a ton of 3 to 3.75lbers we never caught anything that would cull. The wind had picked up and the pleasure boaters were out in full force and unfortunately by the time we made it to weigh in three of our fish and expired and we lost 1.5lbs to fish care penalties. We ended up finishing in 6th place.
SUMMARY: I had a blast fishing with my buddy Triton. We caught well over 100 keepers and unfortunately having those fish expire on us cost us a few places in the standings. I go out of my way to take care of my fish and Im not sure what caused this other than how early in the morning we caught them. Looking back on it we wouldve been better off to just weigh in at 6a.m. and call it a day!
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