Well enough fish have finally spawned out for me to start doing well on the river again. Despite people still saying they are getting their 3 lb average with prespawn/bed fish, something came together last week for me that made me realize that I could compete with the postspawners. I spent minimal time on the water pre fishing for a tournament this weekend, but once I was aware that the fish were in their late may mode, I knew of a ton of spots that would be right on with good fish. Friday night in two hours of fishing a few different areas for the first time this year I put together 12 lbs for my best 4 and 13.5 for my best 5 with a 20″ kicker. I knew those fish would not be moving anytime soon and was very excited for monday to arrive. Today was the ACE Hardware memorial day tournament on pool 8, and instead of a normal 4 hour night tournament with 2 fish and 10 bucks, this tournament was 4 fish, 20 bucks and the launch time was whenever you woke up until noon. Arriving at the ramp around 5:30, apparently I woke up late 
as everyone was already out! The wind made things tough at first but the fish were snapping on my spots right away. My partner Carson whacked several keepers in the first hour or two while I played clean up in the back picking up a several keepers myself with a plastic flipped to key areas. As the day progressed, things just kept ripening for us. Every spot we made produced better and better fish and everything just came together. We caught a total of 25-30 keepers on the day with Carson and I being pretty evenly matched both with numbers and best 5. At the end of the day we knew we had a good bag judging by the fish we caught and how we eye’d them up, but Carson’s scale felt otherwise. We weighed 2 seperate smallies at 18″ a piece and one said 2.2 lbs and the other said 2.4. A couple of 17″ largemouth only read 2.4 lbs with one fat one of mine going 2.8 and Carson’s monster 20″ largemouth was only pegged at 3.6. I decided to trust my eye and tell myself that we had a bigger bag than what the scale said, but as the day went on and we petered out of spots, the nerves started to kick in. I felt in my head that we had at least 11.5 lbs, and only the official scales could decide for sure. 12:00 came, and we put our fish in a bag and off we were to weigh in. We witnessed several high 10 bags brought in with another one around 11 lbs before us. That put the nerves on high as we still weren’t 100 percent certain of our weight. After what seemed like forever our fish were finally weighed and there it read- 12-1.. Just over a 3 lb average, and the mile stone weight that we were looking for all day long. only one person remained after us and he ended up having 11-3, the second biggest bag of the day. Overall it felt great not only to win a tournament with some pretty decent competition, but to win against guys that our twice or three times our age and just as much in time on the water. My partner and I had a great day and we fished better as a team than we ever had before. With only one mis-hap on a 3-1/2 lber at the boat (would have been caught if we had a net :hah) , we really didn’t have a whole lot of mistakes, and it was a great day. Just thought I’d share my results as I haven’t posted much lately and to be quite honest- I’m pumped!
May 26, 2009 at 3:21 am
#1217369
