I had to make a tough decision this morning. I left the biggest school I've ever seen biting on day yesterday and regretted not spending more time there. The bad thing was there were some pirates waiting outside the marina to follow me and see where I was fishing and that place was too special to give away, even for14 grand. I decided to do the same thing I did yesterday and start on my back up place. We started strong and my co angler caught a 5lber about 10 minutes into the day. A few casts later one blew mine up and about a 5lb smallmouth erupted from the water! I fought her all the way to the boat and she came unbuttoned! I shook it off, fired another cast out and caught a 15" keeper and that was all she wrote for my back up place. I ran and fished where I won the BWS and another place where I caught some big ones in practice and nothing! I headed back to where I started and made two passes without a bite and then I started to panic a little. Once again I was faced with the question to gamble it all on the mother lode and just hope they'd cooperate or try to scrounge out a limit before I went to them. I had a school close by that I guide on all the time but they were by far the worst school I have and I've never caught a fish much over 2.5lbs out of them. I realized I had such a big lead over 3rd place that a limit of 2lbers would at least secure me 2nd place. I decided to stop on them on my way to the mother lode. I scanned over them and they were loaded! I started catching 14" fish on every cast and I was beginning to think it just wasn't meant to be and then I popped a solid keeper. My next cast I caught a 3lber which was a giant for this school. My very next cast my bait never made it to the bottom when a 5lber smoked it. I knew I still had work to do, but when you start catching 5lbers off of places they don't live you get a pretty good feeling that its your time to win. I stopped on one more school on my way to the giants and caught two more 3 to 3.5lbers which gave me about 18lbs and a few hours to work my giants over real good. I pulled up and started down the bar and nothing ever happened. I left at 2:00 on the nose without a bite. Everything I caught today came out of 18ft of water. I weighed in 18lbs 4oz and ended up winning the by over 10lbs. We also had a enough boats for the full Triton Gold Bonus of $7000 plus $1500 from Mercury/MotorGuide, $250 from Toyota Bonus Bucks and $150 from Boat U.S. Weigh to Win. After bonuses I took home over $14000! Not bad for a couple days of fishing!
SUMMARY: Its been a couple years since I was as dialed in to what the big fish were doing as I was over the past few weeks. By the end of my BFL practice I could almost call my shot. This BFL win is really special to me because I'd only won one BFL tournament before this back in 2009. I've been very close to winning several since then but always come up a little short. I honestly don't think I could've caught the weights I caught in these two tournaments without a few very important pieces of equipment. Everything played a roll, my Triton/Mercury had to get me there and back in some brutal conditions and my Sexy Dawg had to do its thing, but without my Power Poles to hold me right on the juice in that rough water, it would've been very tough to have fished as efficiently as I did. Another very important component was my 7' All Pro medium heavy cranking rod. I've been using the All Pro Blaster big crank bait rods for several years because I believe its the best big crankbait rod on the market. I recently started using All Pro Rods exclusively and it couldn't have come at a better time. This rod isn't specifically designed for top water fishing but its the perfect rod for big walking baits! I walked that Sexy Dawg about 10000 miles the past few weeks and I never once had to lay it down due to fatigue. If you throw a lot of walking baits you know it can be grueling to stay with it all day and this rod takes a lot of the work out of it because it has the perfect action. Teamed up with an Abu Garcia Revo STX reel and 60lb Seaguar Kanzen braid, I can throw it a mile and I've caught giants from the end of my cast to right by the boat and only lost two fish out of probably 100 that I've hooked. If you like walking that Sexy Dawg you better give this rod a try, it'll make your job a lot easier.
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