Well just rolled out of bed after spending the last 3 days on the HOT (literaly) Pool 4 with myself and a high school buddy of mine Drew(2 days pre fishing and one day fish the Port of Call) Day 1: Arrived to Lake City around 6 AM and fished till around 3 PM. My plan was to hit MANY spots and weed out some that were not holding fish and some I knew I would need to go back to on Friday to comb over a little better. My plan was to find the huge numbers of big Sauger around the 20″ range that are so well known in the lake as my “numbers spot” than after finding them look for some bigger eyes. Well Thursday went by very fast with a TON of 16″ to 19″ Sauger and eyes boated I honestly could not tell a number cause we lost count very early in the day with many doubles happening in our main numbers spot. After fishing till 3 we went back to Everets got everything unloaded into the cabin and swung into the bait shop to cool off a little than a quick meal at Liberty’s it was time to go to bed.
Day 2: “Friday” rolls around and were back on the water. Our first plan was to smack our numbers spot and see if they were still it the same areas I had marked on the Lowrance from the day before and man were they ever in one pass up and back we hit 9 fish all from 16″ to 21″ fish so right then I knew we needed to get out of there. We than spent the rest of the day Friday looking for good sized fish and it did not take long at all. 5 Minutes into the first pass on this flat we smacked a 27 1/2″ eye on Drews rod and no more than 5 more minutes later a double of 20″ saugers! 
Knowing we would need some heavy weight to compete with the wing dam guys we tried to comb the whole flat over. After another half hour I hooked up with something very heavy and that distinct slow thud in the rod but it was not meant to be saw her boil out the back the boat and she was gone. We worked that area a litle more but did not wanna draw attention to where we were from boats in the distance so we left it alone and went over the numbers spot for one last time quick around noon to be sure these fish would be there if we had to use it.
Saturday rolls around greeting us with lightning, rain, and humidity YUCK! Take off time though it cleared a little except for a few pesky 10 minutes showers to cool us off. We hit our numbers area looking for fsh and caught a TON of them anywhere from 16″ to 20″ and kept a few of the larger ones in the first 45 minutes!! i knew we needed to get to our bigger fish spot NOW and see if it was going the same fearing the wing dams would be going like this. Pulled up and were happy to see only 2 boats there so we dropped the leadcore out and no more than put the 3rd rod in the holder and WHAM fish on! Proceeded to bring in a 23″ eye. In the back of my head I was thinking man it is not even 8:30 and were on some decent fish and was no more than 5 minutes and whack FISH ON another eye and measure out around 21″. Knowing the size the fish that were in there from a couple good sources and pre fishing it the day before I planned to fish this spot for the next 4 hours. Than like a light switch a NW wind started and got some chop and man did it SLOW things way down for us we proceeded to boat a lot of fish still but only 2 more keepers that were 19″ sauger and a 20″ eye. I said we needed to run back to the big pod of fish and work them over and could not make the bigger one happen! 
We ended the day weighing in 6 fish for the tournament just under 15 pounds. With this tournament though we were in trouble but were shocked when we saw the final weights. Mulitple boats with 23 and 24 pounds never cashed a check!! Like Dean said last night these weights are Lake Erie or Green Bay type of weights 35 pounds winning it with many 27 to 32 pounds bags brought in! Overall over the 3 days we boated a pile of fish all fish were caught on leadcore line pulling shad raps in the lake everywhere from the very south end to the top of the lake and everywhere in between. I gotta throw few thank yous out there to Drew my buddy from high school fishing his first ever tournament and did an AWSOME job with everything helping me out. Dean for allowing us a place to crash down there and keeping the hot color baits in stock even at 4:30 in the morning I was able to run in there grab some yesterday 
and also for throwing quite few tips at me to help me narrow down my search and presentation a true first class gentleman. 
Overall had a great week down there nice seeing old and new faces Lenny, Jim, Jeff, Eric, Redneck Jr. and company always a pleasure to come down there and plan to get there even more and also great meeting you Stuart on Friday here are a few pics fromt he week. There now I am done talking 
June 17, 2007 at 3:18 pm
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