June 30th Report James River

[Tom Spence]

Had the tournament for the Outdoors in the Ozarks class yesterday out of Ahoys. For those of you that don't know what it is...its a 3 week summer class for junior high and high school kids held at Republic High School every June. This was its' 9th year I believe and the 4th year I've participated. It ends with a buddy tournament with the kids getting paired up with local guys. Don Berry brought his tourney trailer down and ran the weigh in for us. We had 16 or 17 boats this year and all the kids had a blast. My young partner and I ran to the James after an hour of delay for a storm. Don't know if it was a great decision on my part since we weighed in at 1PM, but oh well. I knew we'd hero or zero up there. Dragged a rig with a brush hog and lizard and threw a Bomber fat free shad. We only had two keepers, both over 2 pounds but we caught between 20-25 fish. All were caught on pea gravel points. The early fish were no deeper than 10 feet with some being caught in as little as 5 in front of bushes. As the sun got higher we followed the fish further out to 15-20 feet. The winners had over 15 pounds.

Monday I practiced around Kimberling City and tried to drop shot and spoon all day. It didn't work out so good for me with only 2 keepers but I'm not real good at drop shotting. Though there were 10 and 11 pound sacks caught on the drop shot in the tourney.

If anybody is going out to Grand anytime soon, I fished the Heartland Pro Am out there on Sunday. Lots of limits weighed in dragging rigs or flipping docks and bushes. I caught alot of fish in the 3 days I was out there with 2 over 5, 3 that went 4, and several 2 and 3 pounders. Couldn't get those fish in the tournament...go figure. I had a small limit throwing a medium depth crank on windy shallow points and throwing a square bill on shallow docks and brush up the Elk River. 16 pounds won it on a 4 fish limit.

[techo]

I know you help with the kids every year. Thanks for what you do. I know you have been a great help to me over the past few years.