This weekend I got back out on the water after a 2 week hiatus and fished Saturday’s Full Throttle Tourney with Nate Gilkey (GrainBeltEyes). Neither of us had time to pre-fish so we just planned to be prepared for anything, hit a bunch of spots and try to get some fish. I heard the bite was getting tougher and it definitely has, especially for slot fish. After trying a few spots with no slot fish to show for it, we decided to troll crank baits the rest of the day in hopes of getting an over. The action was much slower than my last report but we still managed to put decent numbers in the boat. We fished a number of basin areas and structure while throwing a kitchen sink of crankbaits at them via leadcore. We kind of struggled to find good pods in the basin, so our success was actually better trolling the mud flat edges, keeping the baits 5-7 feet off the bottom.
We struck out in our attempt at an over 28, as the biggest of the day was a fat healthy looking 27. Actually all of the fish we caught were very fat, which is a great sign. We did manage a 16 inch football, which was our only slot of the day. We were the last one to weigh and were a bit stunned to learn our 1.74 lb fish was good for 4th place out of 30 teams and earned us a check! That shows how tough it was as there were some pretty good sticks among the competition.
On Sunday I spent the entire day testing a new Prototype lure that proved to be quite effective. I intended again to locate schools of suspended basin fish for a testing ground, but struggled to find them again. Fortunately I was able to locate them on mud again and did my testing there.
I also wanted to send out an invite to visit www.jollyrogertackle.com and sign up for our newsletter. To sign up, just click the link and hit the “Join Our Email List” on the bottom left hand corner.
Best of Fishing,
Shawn Flemming
Jolly Roger Tackle
Great report! It sounds like those slots are really starting to disappear or just not be hungry on tournament day. Can’t wait to hear about his prototype.
Very cool, and thanks for the report. Love the dive curves taped to the inside of the box!
Joel
Wow. One fish and you cashed a check. Thanks for the report.
Nice Recap Shawn. The bite was definetly tougher out there than the past several weeks as was noted with a 4th place finish with 1.74 lbs. That was the most money one 16 inch fish has ever made…
The leadcore bite seems to be the best as the fish seem really spreadout on the flats and off in the basin areas. We ran one rod deeper and one shallower until a pattern developed as some days the fish seem to want the cranks in their face and other days they will chase those cranks up in the water column. We set one rod where we were seeing fish on the graph and the other higher in the water column. Our slot fish came with 4 colors of lead out over 25 or 26 feet…#5 shad raps and #5 Flicker Shads both produced as did #7 shad raps.
that’s the way to stick it out and cash a check.
Jack