Guide Trip/BWS Practice

I had a guide trip today which also turned out to be pretty good practice for my upcoming BWS tournament this weekend.  It was an awesome day to be on the water.  Not too hot, no wind and surprisingly no boats!  I got to fish every place I wanted to hit and every one of them had a big school willing to bite sitting on it.  I found two new schools too and we caught some 3lb chunks out of them with a few 4.5lbers mixed in.  We had 22lbs on our best 5 and caught about 40 keepers. 

I'd had intentions of fishing hydrilla on the south end of the lake this weekend but today makes me want to give the deep fish another shot.  I did check a few shallow places that produced a 4 and a 4.5lber so that was a good sign. I know it won't be as good on Saturday as it was today with no current and more traffic, but I'll just have to see what I find down south in practice before I decide how to spend my tournament.

Barkley Renegade Team Tournament

I fished the Renegade out of Barkley State Park today with Mike Story.  We headed south on Barkley and though I havn't been there since May, I can usually catch a decent limit shallow.  After 3 hours, we'd caught about 5 fish and only one of them was a keeper.  We didn't have anything located on the river so we just headed north and fished every place we'd ever caught a fish before.  We managed to scrounge up 3 pretty good fish in the 4lb range but our other 2 were just 16"ers.  We weighed in 15.87lbs and finished 7th just out of check range.

LBL BFL #3 Practice and Tournament

I had intentions of putting in three hard days of practice for my 3rd LBL BFL of the year.  I hit the water on Wednesday and decided to spend the day looking for schools on more subtle places.  Apparently everyone that owns a bass boat knows how to ledge fish now days and most of the river ledge schools have been found and have been getting beaten on pretty badly.  Schools that I could catch 25 to 50 fish out of a few weeks ago won't sit still long enough now to catch more than 5 or 10 out of them and to get a quality bite is almost impossible.  The day started out good and I found 4 schools on places I've never seen them and a couple of schools on old places but the fish had just gotten there.  I had about 19lbs pretty quickly just catching enough to check the quality of fish in them.  Unfortunately at about 3pm I had some serious pain set in in a tooth that ended up being an abscess!  I got off the water and started on pain medicine and antibiotics and spent the rest of the week in bed.

I was hoping my meds would've kicked in by Saturday morning but that wasn't the case.  I headed to the Paris area from KY Dam Village in serious pain only to find a boat or two on all but one of the places I'd found on Wednesday.  I caught a limit off an old place and culled all of them on a new place but only had 16.5" fish.  I hit a few shallow bars with no luck and by 10am I was hurting so bad I didn't feel like running around checking stuff anymore.  I got on place and sit for a long time trying to get my co angler a limit.  He never got his 5th fish but he did have one pushing 4lbs which was almost twice the size of anything I had in the box.  I made a tooth jarring ride back and weighed in a little early so I could get back on my pain meds and rest.  I had 11lbs 9oz and finished 42nd. 

This definitely wasn't how I'd hoped to spend my June tournament.  I'd been looking forward to this one for a while.  Good news is I have an appointment to have my tooth problem taken care of next week and it can't get here soon enough!

I'm not sure what I need to do to find some fish nobody else is on.  I really thought I had some subtle places I'd have to myself going into this one but it seems everybody knows where all of the fish are.  You'd think on a 150,000 acres of water you could find a place nobody else has found but I only have one so far and a boat watched me catch one there today so I'm sure that place is history. 

HULMES SPORTING GOODS OPEN TOURNAMENT

My good buddy Dr. David Gnewikow and I decided to jump into the Hulmes Open this weekend since we didn't have any other things going on for a change.

I hadn't been on the lake much other than a couple of electronics courses I'd done so I spent Friday in the Paris to 68 bridge stretch and G fished the Jville to Danville stretch.  I didn't do much fishing but did drive over a few schools to make sure they were where they needed to be.  I was hoping David would find some of those giant grass fish that have been showing up at weigh ins lately but unfortunately it didn't happen.

We fished a few deep schools in the tournament and caught two of our biggest fish off of shallow bars. We had 20.17lbs and finished 3rd.

We had a good day on the water and caught a bunch of fish but came up a few pounds shy of the win.  My friend Kenny Louden won the tournament with 24lbs.

Triton Owners Tournament

I was unfortunately ineligible to fish the TOT because I paid or should I say donated $4000 to fish the FLW Tour Open on Guntersville last fall (aka The Paul Elias Open).  The TOT has a rule where if you pay over $1500 to fish a tournament within the past two years your ineligible to fish.  I ended up working at the tournament for Triton and Odom's Blue and Gray Marine and got to see a lot of old friends and made a few new friends as well.

My Electronics course business was booming last week and I had three trips a day some days which was a good thing.

Larry and Verna Odom had introduced me to a good friend of theirs, Mark Westbrook, earlier in the week and he had just bought a new Humminbird 1198.  I helped Mark get his unit dialed in a few days before the tournament and I had dinner with him and the Odom's several nights.  Mark was a great guy and ended up winning the draw boat after the 2nd day weigh in which was really cool.

Rusty Rust and Pat Anderson won the tournament with 48lbs and some change and my buddy Scott Mansfield took Big Bass honors with a 10.38lb freak!

It was a good week and another successful TOT put on by Triton and Randy Sullivan and his Bassmaster Weekend Series crew.

WOUNDED WARRIOR TOURNAMENT

What an awesome week! I got to spend two days straight blastin' 'em with my parents and then today I had the opportunity to take a soldier, Tyler Schaffer, fishing in the Wounded Warrior Tournament out of Paris Landing on KY Lake.  Tyler was 21 years old and awarded a Purple Heart when he and his team were hit by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan.  He was a great guy and though he does do some recreational fishing, this was his first time on a big lake in a bass tournament.  He wasn't familiar with baitcasting reels so I rigged him up a couple of ABU Garcia Veritas spinning rods with a shaky head and a 5xd crankbait.  Our first stop was loaded with fish and we caught at least 50 keepers out of the school.  Tyler was matching me fish for fish and even caught two on one cast which he'd never done before and he was pretty stoked over that.  After an hour of catching 2 to 3lb fish, I asked Tyler if he wanted to keep catching a bunch of fish or if he wanted to try and win and without hesitation, he replied "Let's win this thing"!  I told him we would have to fish a little differently to target bigger bass and it wouldn't be as fast and furious as it had started out.  I made a run to a deep water school and scanned the area with my Humminbird.  I saw a small group of fish and immediately fired a Sexy Spoon into them.  I had two swipe at it but miss and then on my third rip a 5lber engulfed the spoon!  I netted the fish and culled one of our 3lbers.  We fished for awhile longer but couldn't trigger any more bites so I made a move.  I ran through several schools and we each caught a few 2 to 3lb fish but none that would help.  When I reached my most southern school I didn't see them on my electronics.  I hated to run that far and not even make a cast so I decided to make a few throws for the heck of it.  As soon as my 6XD hit the water, I didn't make three turns of the reel handle and a 4.75lber choked it.  We could only weigh in 3 fish in this tournament and I had a feeling we needed another fish in the 4 to 5lb class to have a shot at the win.  It was only a 6 hour tournament and time was running out.  I ran back north of Paris Bridge to a place where I've caught some key fish in the past and they were stacked.  We caught 'em on every cast for the last 30 minutes and I hung at least ten 3 to 3.5lbers on the balance beam but none would cull our smallest fish which weighed 3lbs 9oz.  We ended up weighing in 12.88lbs and finished 2^nd just a little more than a half pound shy of the win.
I wanted to win this thing badly but to have a guy like Tyler say on stage that he'd had the best time he'd ever had in his life was worth more than any win in any bass tournament ever could be.  For those that didn't get involved with this event this year, you really need to check it out next year, it was a great experience. 


I've posted a link to a Channel 2 News clip and interview with my partner below.


www.wkrn.com/category/175880/video-landing-page?clipId=7305055&topVideoCatNo=128407&autoSt

FISHIN WITH THE PARENTS DAY 2

We got on the water at 11 am today and I immediately noticed the current wasn't running which had me concerned because I knew my parents were expecting another 100 fish day.  The first couple places I looked at were void of life.  I finally scanned a ledge that had a few lingering around.  I caught a 5.25 and a 4lber on a 6XD but they weren't interested in my mom and dad's spoon offerings. I ran around a little and finally found a stock pile of em and it was on again.  Long story short we hit three big schools today and we caught em and caught em and caught em and then caught em some more. At 5pm my mom said she couldn't believe what she was about to say but she was actually tired of catching bass!  Now that's what I wanted to hear.  I made one more stop on the way in and we finished the day with my dad catching a 3.5lber, my mom had a 4.25lber and I caught a 3.5lb largemouth and a 20lb striper on one cast on an umbrella rig loaded down with Shadalicious swimbaits! 

Another awesome day with my two favorite people in the world, I'm truly blessed!