Today was my first big tournament experience ever..and it was a blast. I fished with Ryan Johnson who is a great guy and we had a pretty good time. Unlike practice, where everything seemed to go wrong..
, we managed to pull together for the tournament and not have any major mishaps. we had some missed fish but that’s all part of the game. We had our limit of 6 fish by noon or so and spent the rest of the time looking for a big fish but just could not connect on one no matter what we did. We found fish pretty stacked up in a few areas but these places are just full of 12-13.75″ fish. It is a dark feeling when you think you just put your limit fish in the boat and it is 13.75. We ended up with a 2.03 lb average which isn’t all that horrible, but just wasn’t enough to compete with some of the massive sacks that were coming in today. Our bag weighed in at 12.18 which wasn’t the worst weight at all..It felt good to at least bring in a limit of bass for the first big time tournament ever. Details on the tournament: I believe there were 40 boats and there were only a few that did not have limits. The big bag of the day was from Scott Gartner, who happens to be the tournament director 
Not only did he win his own tournament, but he also won big bass! Talk about a good day for that guy. just shy of 24 lbs is not bad at all for 6 fish 
he had a largie that went 4.86 and a smallie that looked just as big.
*I’ll add some photos from the tournament as soon as my mom dumps them on the computer (could be a few days)
Well after the tournament was all said and done, Justin and I decided to take my boat and head out for about an hour and a half. We didn’t go very far from the landing, and we got into a shallow back bay and just started whacking fish. I caught 3 keepers in about 10 minutes all on a swim jig. We caught several dink fish and a few northerns, but the 3 keepers that I caught were the only legal fish for the night. I guess you could say that I am just a bit frustrated that I cannot seem to find the bigger bass lately. I know they are moving in to spawn because I have seen fish and caught fish on beds, however they only seem to be males right now. It seems that the bigger females must still be in typical staging areas because I am not finding much over 2 or 2-1/2 lbs in the shallows. Their beat up, bloody tails and lack of girth indicate that they are most likely males just fanning the beds. Now if only I knew where those females were……
here is one of the better fish from tonight…
