Practice: I had been guiding at least three days a week leading up to this one and I felt like I knew where every school of fish on the lake was living. The good news was I for some reason had been catching some big ones out of a lot of the schools Id found and really felt like a 20 to 25lb stringer was possible. My ol buddy David Gnewikow was heading up to fish with me and was only going be able to practice a half day so we decided to spend that half day trying to figure out a way to catch some really big fish! Our half day didnt go so well and when we put it on the trailer we hadnt even caught a limit of bass! We decided to run my schools that had been producing the biggest fish and then just hit as many places as we could think of where we might catch a big fish.
Tournament: It started off slow and the first couple schools we stopped on werent grouped up very well and we only caught a few small keepers. I pulled into a bay and fished a hump that produces some big ones this time of year and we ended up catching a 3lber and about a 17”er there. I headed to what had been one of my best schools all the way down by Paris and they were nowhere to be found. We made our way south and Dave suggested we hit a place on the river that we had both fished in the Everstart and neither one of us had fished it since that tournament. I drove over the ledge and they were laying right where they were a month earlier and while they werent just jumping in the boat we did manage a 3lber and a 4lber out of that school. We kept working our way south and were catching a few here and there but nothing spectacular. I drove over a school that I hadnt seen in awhile and I had caught some big ones off of it last year but nothing much over 2.5lbs this year so far. I didnt see a huge number of fish but it was enough to fish for and once I got us lined up we caught em every throw for about 20 minutes. They were nice fish all in the 3.5lb range but I kept telling Dave this spot owed me a big one. Not long after that he set the hook and called for the net. I grabbed the net and he had the fish coming towards the boat and then she went air born! About a 6lber launched into the air and Daves worm came flying into the net! We were both really bummed out because we knew that would be hard to make up but we kept our heads down and kept fishing hard. We made our way a little further South than wed planned on fishing but our final stop was worth it when David popped a 5.70lber on his Rage tail Thumper worm! We made our way back towards KY Dam fishing a few places along the way but never manage to cull any along the way. We ended up winning the tournament with 20.81lbs and had Daves 5.70lber was good enough for big fish honors.
SUMMARY: Wow! David and I finally won a tournament together. We havent fished together a lot but weve had some really good days when we have weve just come up a little short on our previous attempts. Now that weve got the monkey off our back maybe we can get a few more Ws under our belt before the end of the year!
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