LBL BFL #5 Day 1 Sept. 21, 2013

Well, the weather let me let me down! After a night of torrential down pours we were greeted with a nice 20mph North wind as we launched from KY Dam Marina this morning. Most people would think I'm crazy to pass by the best school I've ever seen but those fish were not going to get found and it was late in the day when I found them so I wanted to be there about that same time today. I decided to start on the giant school of 3 to 4lbers and luckily they were somewhat protected from the wind behind rip rap. The action started immediately when one blew my bait out of the water on my first cast. I caught a 3lber on my next cast and a 3.5lber on my third cast. I was pretty sure I was about to have a pretty good sack to start the day in the first few minutes and for whatever reason a school of 13" fish moved in and took the place over. I spent over an hour there and never caught another keeper. I left and headed to the place I'd caught them in the BWS and it had 4 footers rolling over the top of it and I knew then I had a decision to make. I knew that most of my top water holes were going to be blown out and it was so rough I couldn't run a lot of different places. I had my giant school of giants on the back burner but the catch was, if I got to them and they didn't wanna play, I didn't have anything to fall back on. I really wanted a limit before I went to them because I had to make it to tommorrow. I decided to give the deep fish an hour and then head to the promise land. My first deep stop produced a 2.5lber and I lost another keeper and that was it. My next stop produced nothing but 14"ers and my third stop was covered up with boats. At 11:00am I told myself that I'd planned on living and dying with the Sexy Dawg and thats what I was going to do so I headed north to the mother lode! As I made my way back north I glanced over at where I'd started the day and there wasn't a boat in sight. It was 11:15 and I still felt like that place had 20lb potential. I decided to make a quick pass through the sweet stretch before I totally committed myself to my giant school of giants. It seemed like the right move when I pulled in and caught a 3.5lber on my third cast which finally gave me a limit and took a little pressure off. I worked my way down the bar and picked up another 3lber. It was 11:45 and I knew I had to leave at noon. Just before I pulled the plug I saw a shad blow out of the water and I caught another 3lb class fish. That gave me somewhere around 16lbs and an hour and half to see what I'd been missing on my giant school of giants. I pulled up to the bar at 12:15 and started 25 yards shy of my waypoint. I was extremely lucky this place was tucked in behind an island because the wind was roaring. I was a little nervous about what was about to go down, would they still be there, would they be giants, would I be able to land them, did I have time to get back, everything you can imagine was running through my head and then BOOM! A monster blew it out of the water right by the boat! I looked down and there were about twenty 5 to 7lbers swarming around my Triton like sharks! I made a short pitch to them and a 5.5lber choked it! I fired out another cast and the school followed my bait in. I sat there working my bait in place and a 6.25lber slurped it up! The school must have scattered after that because I went awhile without bite but with about 20 minutes to go I made a long cast and all I could see were big green sides slashing at my bait and a 6.5lber smoked it. I really thought I was about to easily break 30lbs but when I finally had to head back, I hadn't caught another fish. I weighed in 25lbs 5oz and have a little over a 3lb lead heading into tomorrow. The wind is supposed to laydown overnight so maybe I can fish a few more places and bust 30 tomorrow!