weekend report

CadeWompus-

I also fished in the tournament this weekend with basscatfan. We were lucky enough to finish in 2nd place behind them. We fished in the Indians on Friday looking for fishable water that wasn't chocolate milk. Caught a couple solid 3lb largemouth and a 3lb smallmouth all on different baits...wart, swinghead, and spinnerbait. All were caught where the water transitioned from murky to clear. Then we went out on the main lake between Baxter and Big Creek and hit some grub spots. Immediately caught a keeper Kentucky on the grub. Went to another spot and I caught a 3.5lb largemouth on the grub. Hit some spots in Big Creek with the swing head and just caught shorts, but it was getting late, so we headed in.

Decided to start tournament Sat on the main water since I had some good spots that we didn't hit Fri. Our thought was that with the cold night, the main lake fish may be less affected by the cold night than the fish in the shallower dingier water. Our plan was to fish some dingier water in the afternoon after it warmed assuming we had time. We hit a jerkbait spot that was a channel swing bank first but just shorts. Found a good area with a couple points between Baxter and the James that was holding fish. Caught our limit of 15inch spots and a 6lb largemouth all on the grub. Lost another good fish in a tree. It took us until afternoon to do it. We ran back towards Big Creek to his some of those main lake spots. The spot where I caught the bigger one yesterday on the grub by Big Creek was overtaken by the dingy water making its way downlake, so it wasn't fishable with the grub. We tried a couple other spots before heading in. Ended the day with 5 keepers that weighted 14.20lbs.

Second day proved tougher with the grub. We switched to the spot where we caught the better fish on Sat and started throwing the jerkbait. Partner caught a solid smallmouth and then I hooked up with a 3.5 largemouth. We kept milking the spot all morning with various baits and ended up catching another largemouth and a 4lb smallmouth on the grub. That made 6 solid keepers off of a spot of about 40yds in two days that included a 6lb largemouth and 4lb smallmouth. Awesome spot! We couldnt get our 5th keeper there and the wind shifted off the spot, so we decided to end the day back in the Indians in the warming stained water. We hit several good looking areas but just shorts. So we came in with 4 keepers weighing about 12.5lbs giving us about 26.5 lbs total for 2 days. 2nd place out of 15 was a good finish for us, but basscatfan really humbled us. Good job to them for putting together two good bags that would do well in any of the tournaments on the lake this weekend.

Our grub fish seemed to bite well in the clouds and low light conditions. Bite suffered in the afternoon sunny days. What happens to those fish? We tried adjusting by backing out, counting deeper, etc. Even fished on the bottom some with split shot and ned. Couldn't seem to get them to bite, but we know they were still there. Btw, almost all of our grub fish came with boat sitting in 30ft and 5-7count. At least a few scattered trees were critical.