What a year it's been! From big catches to unforgettable tournaments, even tying the knot, there's no shortage of stories to share. Grab your tackle box and join us as we recap our year on the water, including the exhilarating highs and humbling lows of participating in fishing tournaments such as the MLF Invitationals and Toyota Series events. Hear firsthand accounts of navigating the waters of Lake Lanier, Lake Eufaula, Lake of the Ozarks, Okeechobee, and more, sharing the thrill of landing a big catch and the frustration of empty nets. So whether you're an experienced angler or just getting started, there's something for everyone in this episode.
What a year it's been! From big catches to unforgettable tournaments, even tying the knot, there's no shortage of stories to share. Grab your tackle box and join us as we recap our year on the water, including the exhilarating highs and humbling lows of participating in fishing tournaments such as the MLF Invitationals and Toyota Series events. Hear firsthand accounts of navigating the waters of Lake Lanier, Lake Eufaula, Lake of the Ozarks, Okeechobee, and more, sharing the thrill of landing a big catch and the frustration of empty nets. So whether you're an experienced angler or just getting started, there's something for everyone in this episode.
What's going on. Everyone bringing back the podcast is August 2023. I've had a big, crazy time consuming year and things are kind of slowing down and I want to get this going again and you can see I'm pretty serious about it. Got a new mic, haven't have a new setup, so I got an office, haley, and I have just finished really getting everything done, our new house moving in, getting everything put together. So got a new desk, this new office. I'm really excited about it and I'm looking at getting a lot more guests on for future podcasts.
Speaker 1:But this first one I really just wanted to kind of recap my season go through, how everything has gone down. This year has been just wild. I mean just myself. I started fishing the Invitational's. Haley and I got married. We went on a honeymoon, moved into a new house, haley graduated this year and started a new job. So there's just been so much going on and it's been busy, but it's been a great time. Just want to recap a little bit of how that year has gone for us and it's been a lot of fun, stressful at times. It's been a fun journey.
Speaker 1:Last year, thankfully, I was able to get in through the Toyota series. Mlf gave out quite a few invites to fish the Invitational's and somehow I managed to figure it out. I really want to thank my sponsors Breeden Shelter, insurance, proschoice, marine, modern Outdoor Tackle, picasso Lures, abu Garcia, berkeley, gorilla Grip Gloves, harry Salon, mcbride Land Solutions, aegis Group, don's Truck Towing, independence State Company, and there's a lot more people too. But all these people have really made it possible for me to be able to fish the Invitational's, because 30 grand and entry fees alone and then you got to add in all the travel, hotels, gas station stops, truck and boat gas. Both it adds up and so I'm thinking around 50 grand is what it is for the year. Then you add in all the expenses and stuff so huge. Thank you to all those people. I wouldn't have been able to do without you guys. I really just want to jump into my season. How it's gone.
Speaker 1:February has been my busiest month so far, or it was this whole year. We had two Invitational's events, I had college national championship and, just to make it easy, there was a week in between tournaments there where I just stayed in Florida. It made it a lot easier instead of driving back and forth and burning that extra gas. So February 1st is when I left for Florida and I went and stayed at Lake Lanier with Drew Gill and his grandparents. We went out for a day before we head down to Florida and Drew and I together had 24.66 pounds in our five best spotted bass, which is just insane of a spotted bass bag. That was the first time I've ever fished at Lake Lanier phenomenal fishery. That wasn't even one spot. That was like I don't know. We caught one, four to five pounder on five different spots. Seriously, I broke my PB, which I think was 5.26 pounds. Crazy place. I can't wait to actually fish a tournament there and hopefully I get to at some point, because that was just. It was like Table Rock, except they're all big spots instead of little bitty spots. We had a phenomenal day there and first tournament that we had in Florida was Okachobi.
Speaker 1:I don't want to say scared of this event, but I figured it would be a tough one. For me. Florida has always kind of been my weak point, fishing in college. It was a really cool place to fish. It was. I actually liked it more than like the Harris chain where I'd been every time before, because like Harris chain there are so much vast offshore hydrilla coontail. You know, different types of grass, whereas Okachobi it was like mud bowl in the middle and then there was, you know, certain stretches that were clean around the rim but there is just shallow grass really. You know there was reeds and there were some like hydrilla mill foil mixtures but there was definitely some areas that just very healthy, lots of different types of grass. I actually liked Okachobi more than any Florida lake that I've been to so far and I would love to have another tournament there and be able to go apply what I learned in that event.
Speaker 1:So practice was pretty tough in general for me. I found one area that I went through and had probably 10 bites and so I felt pretty good about being able to catch fish in that area, and there was a couple of those community areas that had clear water. There was boats everywhere and it's like you know that's going to be a player in the tournament, right, but I just could not stand fishing around that many boats and I really didn't get that many bites in those areas because I just I didn't even fish them for very long. I just couldn't make myself stay around people like that, and so in the tournament I had, so this area that I had bites in was in South Bay and it was kind of on the east side of South Bay and that's that's always a really popular area where lots of tournaments are won.
Speaker 1:And so I thought you know, that's how it seems like it is in Florida, like you pick an area and you just spend your whole day basically and just go really slow and the guys that catch them in Florida always fish a weightless Senko or a really lightweight Senko and they just pick stuff apart and a lot of times it's like guys that know how to fish that way, like Northern guys that fish grass for Florida guys are a lot of old guys do really well because they move a little bit slower. And so I decided hey, I'm just going to hunker down in this area that I got a lot of bites and try to make it happen. It was really just clean bottom. It was kind of dirty water was the only problem and it was just reeds and that was about it and there'd be patches of reeds out.
Speaker 1:And then there was kind of like a hard edge on the inside and the first day I pulled in there and there was actually like five or six, seven boats that started in like a 200 yard stretch and I'm like that's good, you know, like there's not, it's not super crowded, but there's boats in here that tells me that there's, there's fish around. And so I started throwing a six inch swim bait. Just, you know, I don't know, I just felt right, like that cloudy morning, you know, it was kind of dark, and so I just want to kind of start with the moving bait right. And so I caught two or three keepers on a swim bait weedless swim bait super early, I mean like first 15 minutes probably, and that got my confidence, you know, pretty high for the rest of the day. I was pretty hopeful at that point. After probably 30 minutes, I would say a lot of those guys had left maybe 45 minutes. You know, not many of them hung around, they decided to leave pretty quick, but since I had fish, I wasn't really second guessing at all.
Speaker 1:And so basically what I did for the rest of the day was I would power pull down and I'd flip every thing around me. I mean I'd flip every patch of reed several times, hitting, trying to hit every base, every stem, and I would pick up the poles, I would move probably 20 or 30 feet, put them down and do the same thing and I caught a decent amount of fish. You know I probably had 12 pounds for a lot of the day and there was this one stretch that kind of joined. There was a kind of a canal or an opening of reeds that kind of led out to the main lake and right by where that hit the bay that opened up. There was a hard edge that kind of ran into the bay and I had got bites like kind of in that area but off. So I started moving in the thick stuff later in the day trying to, you know, change it up and try to catch maybe some bigger fish. I get on that hard edge and I'm kind of going down, I'm catching fish, just like the rest of the day little two pounders and I flipped to this. I'm not kidding, it's one stock of reeds, a reed, not even reeds. I flipped to it and I catch like a four and a half pounder. I flip in the boat and it gets me like over 14 pounds.
Speaker 1:Well, going into this tournament, looking at past tournament results, 13 pounds a day was typically in that check range on every Okatobi tournament 13, 13 and a half per day. So you know that 26 to 27 pound mark and so I was going to be happy with like 13 pounds. You know, I thought that was going to give me a good chance to get a check. So I come in with 14 and a half, 1409. And I'm in like 60 something place. I come out of the cut still with 14 and a half and so I'm like man, those weights were a little bit, you know, better than the day before. I'm going to have to make something happen tomorrow, like I need. I'm looking at I need about 15 pounds if I want to make the top 50 cut. But you know, finishing or being in the 60s, you know, midpoint of the field, that's not bad for me in Florida, honestly, with my, with my history.
Speaker 1:So day two comes around and I decide, hey, I'm going to go back to that area, obviously, and catch fish and try to at least get a limit before I go, try to do something else, because I mean I caught that one good one, but that was the only thing in that area. So the next morning, you know, I go out and I kind of do the same thing. I'm just flipping around, flipping a Cinco. That's pretty much what I caught all my fish on was a five inch black and blue Cinco, and a mistake that I learned from day one to day two was I was throwing fluorocarbon 20 pound fluorocarbon, thinking that was going to be enough. But reeds are not forgiving whatsoever. So I went to straight braid the next day, which helped get those fish you know out of the, out of the junk, and especially if they get wrapped up in reeds it was it was pretty hard to pull them out. So go straight braid. I throw a little bit lighter of a weight. On day two I think I started throwing a 316th ounce or yeah, 316th I think which apparently was too heavy anyway, but I dropped down to that. I still caught a lot of keepers, but the size just wasn't very good at all.
Speaker 1:I think around 11 o'clock maybe 1030, I decided to go look at other areas that I had gotten some bites and I thought, you know, I had clean water. And so I go over into the east or the west side of South Bay and it's a place that I had fish and practice and got a couple bites, but I didn't think it was that great. So I go over there and everybody in the top 20 is just about is fishing that area and apparently you know there's so many guys fishing in there that the morning bite was really good and then it stopped about the time I got there and so I really learned and that in that area it was dead. Like all the reeds were were cut off and they were burned. They looked like they got sprayed, died, and then someone cut them at the water and I just counted it out kind of as that's just dead, like they're just dead reeds, there's not going to be any. You know good grass growing there, but there was, there was a lot of submergent grass that filtered the water and made it pretty clean. So I kind of just tried to expand on that offshore grass and catch some fish and I caught some little ones, but you know, it just didn't happen for me. I never caught another fish that helped my limit. But I really learned that in Florida, especially Okeechobee, you have to be around the crowds, you have to be where the fish are and there's certain areas that they just live and so that's why I'm looking forward to going back, because I know that they're not all. It's not always going to be like I'm not always going to be able to catch them or make a check hardly if I'm not fishing in those type of areas. So that second day I had 11-13, drop me down to 72nd place with 26 pounds. I mean I told you 13 pounds a day that was kind of like the right number, but it just the weights were pretty good.
Speaker 1:This time Our field was a lot of young rookies that are really good fishermen, so finished 72nd at that one. So Drew and I are staying together this week off. We were traveling throughout the season together and so we got to stay with Tommy Hubble, so thank you for letting us stay there. So Tommy lived in Plant City, florida, and which is like the strawberry capital of the United States has to be. There was just the whole county was strawberry fields, and so Tommy packaged and sold strawberries. It was a pretty cool operation.
Speaker 1:So while we had this off week in Florida, we decided to fish every day, you know, and jump around to different lakes. Well, the first place that we went was Lake Instapoga Instapoga, kind of weird name. It was just reeds. Like there was no offshore grass or anything in this lake, it was just all reeds. There's these hard stem. Some people call them bull rushes or tulis. They're just hard stem reeds. They're kind of like single buggy whips is something that people call them too. There's these thin single strand reeds. So we're fishing you know not long, and we decided to go over to a stretch of those and I swear we weren't I didn't make five casts on this new spot.
Speaker 1:Well, there's this little point of these reeds and I'm throwing a swim jig through them. It's like maybe three foot deep and my line is over a reed and so I'm reeling it and it comes up to the surface to come over this reed and this giant bass comes out of the water trying to eat my swim jig and just completely misses. So I really and real quick, trying to throw back in there. Well, drew is just standing here with this little speed worm, so he throws this speed worm up there. So I get my swim jig and I throw it up there again and I'm reeling it and Drew goes oh, there he is. He sets the hook and this fish just starts screaming. It's heavy, it's a big fish. It never comes up, but we could tell it was a giant. And so he's fighting it around the boat and we get it. I don't remember how I my mind and edited it.
Speaker 1:We get this fish in the boat and it's the biggest bass that's ever that I've ever seen with my eyes. We were thinking it had to have been a 10 pounder but it ended up being like 988. It was just shy of 10 pounds. I don't know how a 10 pounder just misses a swim jig like that. I have video of me saying whenever it came out of the water that that was an eight or nine pounder, so I was pretty accurate on my guess there, but that was by far the biggest fish that we caught all week. That day we ended up we like found out a little pattern of fishing those bull rushes and specifically like points that were leading into canals and stuff like that but ended up having around 25 pounds, which was a 10 pounder. Just about as mediocre, but still a fun day. Lure us that trip. We didn't like smoke them at all by any means.
Speaker 1:Probably my favorite part of that week was we got to fish. I don't remember what was called at this point, but this, this little lake. It was a chain of lakes and this one lake specifically had super clear water. You know it's February and we're live scoping them out. In the middle of the lake. They're suspended with a swim bait and we've had probably around 20 pounds or just under, but we saw some mega giants that were just out there, I mean these huge fish that would follow our baits and we just couldn't get those giant ones to bite. We caught a couple of five pounders, but fun week, but really just to kill time and kind of see some scenery in Florida. So ended up being a good learning experience, kind of to just see the different types of you know fisheries that are in Florida.
Speaker 1:So after that week was over, I got to do my last college tournament ever. So it was the major league fishing college national championship on Lake Toho and the week leading up to this they had the Bass Pro Tour event. All these guys were catching the biggest fish in Lake Kissimmee. Well, lake Kissimmee you have to lock to get there and it takes probably 45 minutes at least to an hour to get there through the idle time and the locking and all that, and so there's a lot of offshore grass in Toho and I really wanted to just stay there and figure out how to catch them and catch them offshore. And I'm not saying that I didn't care about this event, because I did, but I was laid back. It was my last tournament, you know, I wasn't stressed about it whatsoever, I was just there to have fun.
Speaker 1:So, me and my partner, hunter, hunter Bayard, we just have a blast all of practice. So the first day we just we start fishing around a little bit fishing shallow, and we're like you know, it wasn't that great. So we were like let's just, let's just go ahead and do it, let's go ahead and spend our time looking offshore. So I think the first or second spot that we kind of find we are idling on, this grass flat and starts to get like clumpy, and so I saw some fish kind of sitting on these clumps while I turn around, throw a jerk bait up there, like first or second cast, I catch like a five, five and a half pounder and I'm like landing this fish Hunter goes up to the front of the boat, he throws up there and has a giant follow his tune and he rills it in. He's like this is it? You know this is going to be one of them spots.
Speaker 1:And so for the whole rest of practice which we had, two and a half more days of practice at this point the whole rest of practice we spend idling around finding differences in grass so it either be um mixtures of grass or clumps of grass. Every time that we kind of found a certain mixture there was, there was kind of fish there and we had probably three spots that we were pretty excited about for the tournament. So first day of the tournament rolls around and we're pumped you know, we had caught some good ones in practice fishing that off for grass Get to that spot that I caught the big one on the jerk bait and it's just not happening. We maybe catch a couple little ones. We're not really seeing the fish there either, like were before, and so we go to our next back spot kind of the same deal Like we catch a couple little ones but they're just not really there, not really biting, and so we start running some spots that we never fish but we're just mixtures of grass that I marked on side scan.
Speaker 1:The first like mixture clump of grass that we pull up to we catch a couple little ones. I bomb a worm out there to this clump or I might have got a little bit past it, like I click over my reel basically, and this fish is swimming off with my worm. I set the hook and it was like a four, four pounder, four something. Like man. This is like brush pile fishing. I pull up to a clump of grass and throw a worm in it and fish is swimming off. I'm like man, we could, we could figure this out and do this. So we pull up to another clump that still hadn't fished so I power, pull down, bomb it out there, catch like another four and a half five pounder, like man. What is going on here? This is good stuff.
Speaker 1:We kind of just work around this area and start kind of hitting these clumps. Well, there's one that's like real dense and I throw my worm to it, catch like a two pounder, a hundred throws, like exactly where I pulled that fish from and like as I'm messing around with this fish, he sets the hook on a big one and ended up being our biggest fish today, like I guess it was probably just under five or right around five. So after he had caught that last big one, we were kind of that was kind of our last fish, that kind of did it for the day. One important detail I just missed was that we did fish this clump of grass like earlier in the day and I was throwing a jerk bait trying to scope these individual fish. Well, I hooked like a pretty good one and this fish comes and jumps like right at the boat and breaks my line. He like goes back for a dive and breaks my line and so I was kind of mad about that. And then I pull out a Niko worm and I'm throwing six pound line number four, a finesse hook and a small hit worm like a normal size, a Berkeley Maxon hit worm, and I catch one like there was one that's swimming right to me at the boat and I flip my worm to it and it follows it down and I just hop it once and it eats it Like I swear 10 feet from the boat and I'm fighting this fish around just being easy with them, and ends up being like a five, five and it's just crazy that those, some of those fish were just like that was outside of that big clump. They were just kind of out there cruising in these certain areas. We ended up having 22, four and so we had, you know, several fours right around four pounders, had two that were close to five probably.
Speaker 1:So on day two we ended up having like a super long fog delay which really hurt a lot of people that were going to Kissimmee because, you know, shorten their day and they were already having lock troubles because so much of the field was going down there, I mean like two thirds, three quarters of the field was locking through to the other lakes that were in Kissimmee chain. So I don't remember what it was. It was around three hours that we have this fog delay. We had a shortened day but it was just. It was a tougher day and there was people that were starting to, you know, fish around us. Like day one there was not a single boat in sight, but that day two ended up being a lot tougher. But but Hunter does catch a giant one. That really got our bag up there to have a decent day, which ended up being only 17 pounds, which, for the fish that we were around, you know, I think that was pretty small, putting us in second place going into the final day. So after day two we're only down a pound and one ounce from second place and so, like we're like man, we really have a shot at this. You know, we're only a pound back and the leaders ahead of us only had 13 pounds on day two. So yeah, they had a shortened day and they're going to have a lot more time to fish on day three.
Speaker 1:But like we know that we're around the fish to win, we go out and it's kind of similar to day two, like we're catching a lot of fish still, but they're just lots of little ones and we're not able to really catch anything at all. I mean size wise. So I mean it's like noon and we have like 11 or 12 pounds, I'm thinking it's probably closer to 11. And I'm pretty sure we're weighing it like 230. So about one one, 30 rolls around. I'm like man, those, these fish are here. If anything is going to happen, it's it has to happen now.
Speaker 1:And so I pull out a drop shot and I'm like, I'm just like, just keep casting these grass clumps hunter. I'm just going to start flipping drop shot to the fish. I see the first fish that I see is like in this grass clump. Well, I flip my drop shot right to him. It goes down. The fish kind of swims away. Well, he makes a circle. I'm watching him. He comes back. He's just going back to the same spot he was in. So I flip my drop shot in front of him and he follows it down. I'm just sitting there waiting and he just I feel the tick and he's just kind of swimming with it and it's kind of close to the boat. So I'm kind of scared to say the two are. So I just kind of pull into him and I could tell it was a big one and I was fighting this fish everywhere. He was going through the grass, going around the boat. You know, we got a camera guy in the boat third day, since we're in second place, and so it was just kind of a cluster with this fish. So finally get them up to the surface after a couple of minutes and it ends up being like seven and a quarter giant fish Like this just drastically increased our chances of being able to win right, and so we're obviously pumped about that.
Speaker 1:But we only got like an hour maybe left to fish and so we're like, man, we can make this happen, we just need a couple more of those. And same deal like almost every fish that I pitched at for the for the remainder of the day bit, and so I ended up catching like another four and a half and a couple of three somethings. And man, we just needed, I needed to do that a little bit sooner and pull out that drop shot. And we ended up having, like I don't know, my scale said right at 20 pounds. So I'm thinking, man, the leaders need 19. Everyone else needs over 20 to beat us. Like they're going to have to catch them today and we got 20 pounds. And I mean Hunter and I were pumped running back to Wayne because we knew that we had a chance.
Speaker 1:Well, we get back to weigh in. Everyone starts bagging up their fish and I'm kind of looking around and I start to see a lot of big fish and I'm like, oh man, this isn't good. And we get to the weighing tanks and I'm like kind of seeing the size of everybody's fish and I'm like, man, there's no chance. Like everybody has 20 plus pounds. And, man, the first couple teams weigh in and they're ended up being like four bags over 25 pounds, with the biggest being like 27. And so we needed like 25 or 26 pounds if we were going to be able to win. And that was just.
Speaker 1:That was unbelievable day of fishing for everybody. I mean, listen to the, listen to the weights right here. The guys in first had 27 11. On the final day that place had 27. Third had 28. We got fourth with 20 pounds. Fifth had 25. So there was three bags over 27 pounds that day. I mean it was just insane how that turned out. We ended up getting fourth. It was still a crazy fun week we had. We had 59, 15. We had just under 20 pounds a day by an ounce. And so, gosh, that was such a confidence booster to me figuring out how to fish offshore bass, offshore grass bass, that is not just offshore bass, so that was a great like momentum roller to go into Clarks Hill. Clarks Hill was probably my.
Speaker 1:I was looking forward to Clarks Hill most because it's a spotted bass fishery. There's herring I thought I was going to be able to. It's February. I'm going to be able to catch them offshore suspended fish. Well, that didn't really like work out and practice at all. And so last day of practice I ended up figuring out that I was I could catch them shallow, like way in the backs of the creeks, like these fish had moved up, shallow, catch them on a buzz bait and stuff. And so first day of the tournament comes and I fish a lot of my like really shallow stuff and I'm like not getting any bites. And so, and I had a camera too and my buddy, canon, canon York, comes to video this tournament for me, which was really cool. I'm really glad that he did that.
Speaker 1:And so I have this camera guy and I'm like not able to catch any fish. And so I start like just working my way back in these creeks and I start flipping channel swing banks and I start getting like a couple bites. I think I have two or three keepers in the boat. Well, I jump across the creek to the next channel swing and like my second cast, like I flip up to this little bitty lay down and I hop it once and this fish eats it and I set the hook in it. It was a giant and it was a 612, I'm pretty sure, and six and three quarters, so that I'm a video on live.
Speaker 1:But I just kept moving down those channel swing banks that ended up being the biggest bass of the day. So I got a thousand dollar bonus and I just kept flipping those channel swings, ended up having like 16 pounds, 16 something that day, which put me in like ninth place. So you know, I kind of got a little bit of extra media attention to that day. So awesome start to this tournament. Right, I'm going to check my weight here. Yeah, it's 16, 15, so just shy 17 pounds. And I was like fired up to go the next day. Right, I'm thinking, man, I'm just going to hit all these channel swings and flip them, it's just going to go down. So I ended up running more water, you know, trying to catch some bigger fish, because, like I caught a four and a half in practice and caught that big one in the tournament, I thought, you know, this is like they're using these channel swings to move back and spawn.
Speaker 1:Well, day two like didn't turn out that great. I only had five little ones, I had 1110, and I dropped down to like 36 place, the 35th place. It was kind of a cloudy, like you know, rainy day, though, and I had two what I think were better bites that came off. But, man, day three rolls around. I'm like I can't, like I just need to move up, I can't go back any, I can't lose my check. Right, top 50 fish, day three, and make a check, and so I decided, you know what, I'm going to start in a little bit clear water. I'm just going to go throw a wacky worm around and see if I can't just catch as many fish as I can. And so the creek I started in one. I haven't fished really all week and I catch a limit before.
Speaker 1:I had a keeper the previous two days and I'm like I'm just going to keep doing this. You know, I'm going to keep just going down the bank in this creek and catching fish and I was just catching them randomly here and there on lay downs and I ended up catching a four pounder just off this little bush, and so you know that gives me I don't know 12, 12 something, pounds, 12 or 13. So it gives me probably 12 or 13 pounds. And so you know I just catch a bunch of fish throughout the day. I run some other creeks and I never can catch another like good fish. Well, I run down like and I had marked some docks in clear water that had fish under them and so, like last 30 minutes of the day, maybe not even that pulling in this pocket with some docks in it and I see this fish just spending over a brush pile but under a dock and I skip my wacky worm to him, kind of like this Florida deal. I flip my wacky worm to him and he kind of, swims off and makes a loop. He comes back and I throw it to him again and he falls it down right behind the brush pile and I let it fall down there and I just start watching my rod and I just barely twitch it one time and he eats it. So I reel and set the hook, ended up being another four pounder and so that jumps me up to like 14 and a half pounds. So I'm able to jump like 10 places and make a add two grand onto my check. So I made 10 grand of that and then 11 grand total because the big bass on day one. So 25th place. You know, I was really pumped about that.
Speaker 1:Second turn of the year. I got my you know season rolling in the right direction. So after Clarks Hill we go to Grand Lake. Super cold, everything is brutal on Grand Lake in early March whenever the water's cold, and a couple of years ago 2021, cameron and I won the college national championship on Grand Same kind of deals First week of March. It was super awful. It was just such a tough week. We ended up finding just a couple of stretches that had fish on them.
Speaker 1:What I do is I'm just putting my trollmutter down and I'm finding individual fish at Grand I mark. If I get one to follow my jerk bait, I mark it, I move on and that's pretty much what I did in the tournament is I was fishing a lot of like shallower brush from six to 12 foot probably, and I'm throwing a jerk bait at them and I go and catch like just about every fish that I had marked. In practice there were certain areas that had like bigger populations of fish but basically I was just catching those, those couple fish, and I wasn't catching very many fish in a day. The first day I caught seven keepers didn't have my first fish until 1230, which was a 614 giant fish which was in like seven foot of water and it was suspended up in this in this brush pile. First day, like you know, I had 22 pounds or 20 in a 20 upper 22s I think, which I had almost seven pounder, and I broke off another giant on a on a dang drop shot. It was just under the boat and I just tried not to set the hook too hard. But I did.
Speaker 1:Day two, I just run the same stuff right and I get six bites and I catch another 18 pounds, 18 even I think. But I had two five pounders by. Just I didn't have that big bite. You know like get me up there a little bit more. And day three, like I'm feeling good, like I still have, I saw a fish left and I'm like I'm in second place, like a pound back from the leader and I'm pumped. I'm like going down the lake on day three I am like have like an emotional moment because I'm like this is the first like big tournament that I could actually win. Like I feel like I have a serious chance to win.
Speaker 1:And things were just going my way. Like I caught that big one on day one. I watched her follow it out real slow and just eat it. Well, there was this one that was following her in that same pile. I come back on day two and catch that fish that was following my six pounder and it was a five pounder. Man, I was just excited.
Speaker 1:So I continue to do the same thing. I just run these fish that I'm finding and the first like two or three bites that I have. I'm twitching my jerk bait, fresh hooks right. I'd pull into them. I'd get a couple cranks on them coming my way and they'd pop off like three in a row and I'm not getting enough bites for this to happen, like for fish to be coming off. And I think, like the fourth fish that I had bite I caught ended up being a three and three quarters. It's like late in the day I'm getting really down, like it can still happen. You know, I got like an hour and a half left, two hours, but man, a bite is so tough and slow that it just slipped away from me because of that.
Speaker 1:And so I got this one fish in the boat and I'm like man, way back in this creek I have one fish marked. Let me go see if I can catch it First. Cast I throw to it, this big fish just kind of waddles her way up, eats it, same deal. I pull into her, get a couple cranks comes off. It was just one of those days. It was cloudy, windy. You know they should have ate it decent.
Speaker 1:I had fresh hooks, I have a right jerk bait rod and I don't know, man, it just doesn't go your way sometimes. And so I ended up only weighing in one fish on day three and dropping down to sixth place. I think I only needed like 12 pounds if I wanted second or to get second place and then I think around 20 or 19 something would have got the win for me and all these fish out here, I mean, every day I only got five, six, seven bites and they ended up being 22 pounds, 18 pounds, and then, you know, one, three and three quarter pounders. So I was definitely around the right quality, but it didn't happen for me, which, hey, that was meant to be. You know, there's plenty of times where you can get frustrated and say that should have happened, or you know the chances that. I mean, dude, it's just not your time for it to happen. If it's not your time, so I'm not worried about it too much. I was a little upset, obviously, but sixth place I can't complain about too much.
Speaker 1:Next tournament was Toyota series at Dardanelle, which was a Southwestern division, but I decided to fish it as my wild card event. So, dardanelle, I just spend a lot of time just like life, scoping around looking for individual fish, kind of the same deal. I was at Grand, but this was in April, right, these fish were kind of spawning. So I, on a little piece of cover, I'd mark a fish or there'd be fish spawning. So what I ended up doing is catching fish on spawning flats and I was just life scoping them so you couldn't see them spawning with your eyes because they were like three to five foot deep but they were. I really think I was catching pre-spawn and post-spawn fish all in the same places and some of these fish were definitely on beds. You'd see two fish kind of swimming around a certain spot but I caught. On day one I was in third place, I caught two five pounders, had 18 pounds. And then day two I caught one five pounder, had like 14 pounds. And then on day three I caught zero five pounders and had like 12 pounds. And so you know that dropped me down to sixth place slowly over time. But Dardanelles definitely a good fishery. It's on its way back. I've only ever fished it in the fall and it's always been tough. But man, the quality of fish that were caught, I mean it took 18 pounds every day to win. So I'm looking forward to going back to Dardanelles in the future.
Speaker 1:Next tournament was the third stop of the Invitational's at Lake Euphala. That tournament, like man Lake Euphala, it doesn't have a ton of fish but the quality is really good and I caught a six pounder, a six something large mouth. In practice I caught a five pound smallmouth. I was fishing like a lot of offshore rock piles is what I was doing a lot of rock transitions like big chunky rock, and I was catching like a decent amount of fish. I was excited about this tournament so I actually had Carter Woodjanko come and video for me and so he was in the boat all three days for me. I have that video up on YouTube. It's a pretty good video, so go watch that.
Speaker 1:But day one I just started kind of running the spots that I had some of my bigger bites on and I think I ran two spots where I'd caught, you know, big largemouth and I might've caught a couple little ones or it just wasn't very good. And then I went to the stretch that I caught the five pound smallmouth, which was kind of like a rock seam coming off the bank and no bites still. So I worked around the corner to like another long point that had chunky rock on the tip of it. So I'm working my way over to this point and on the other side of the pocket from me is Brock Rinkamire and I see him catch a fish or two and I kind of get up to this point where we're pretty close, like we're talking distance, you know, and he catches a good one, maybe like a three and a half four pounder, and I finally get up to my spot. It was kind of like this long point kind of came out and it was like chunky and a little bit high on top, and then it kind of dropped off into the gut of this pocket and like first cast I make up there, I catch a pretty good one, like a three and a half four pounder, and I'm like, okay, we're starting to get going and I sit there and catch a whole limit and me and Brock are just sitting there trading blows, basically, but his fish are a little bit bigger than mine and so I think both of us sat there for at least three hours probably just catching fish.
Speaker 1:I kind of worked over to the next point down, first cast up there I caught another three, something pretty good one, and Brock ended up having 19, three, which put him in seventh place. So he caught him pretty well and let's see, I had like 14, I had 14, 14. So just under 15 pounds. I was in 41st place. I had those two good ones and a couple of other solid fish. And so I I sat there for, like you know, three and a half hours or something and ran to another stretch that kind of the same deal was just that chunky rock leading into a spawning pocket and I broke off a good one and caught another couple fish. And so after day two, or going into day two, I thought, okay, I had a pretty good day.
Speaker 1:I feel like if I ran more of my spots because I had a lot of these similar type of stretches, if I run more of these spots, maybe I'll be able to catch more keepers in a day, rather than sitting on a spot and trying to catch what's there, because every time I'd go to a spot I would have, you know, between one and three or four bites pretty quick. I mean, if I got a bite, it was right as I pulled up. And so day two I was kind of doing the same deal, except I started on that spot that I caught basically my whole bag off for the first day. I started rotating through as many spots as I could and I just wasn't able to get the bites and it was really windy to one day two. And so I rotate to that second stretch that I caught some on day one and I just really fished it really slow once I got there because I wasn't really catching much on any other spot.
Speaker 1:So I ended up catching like three decent ones there and I got to another rock pile. That was kind of a culvert drain pipe and had a rock pile right at the base of it and I got probably 10 bites off this little rock pile and I would feel a bite and they'd start swimming with it and I'd set the hook and they'd just pull my plastic off or, you know, I'd miss them, they'd just have the tail. And then I ended up catching like one keeper off that spot in like five or six shorts and I ended up only having four fish. So I had eight pounds and 14 ounces dropped down to 73rd place. So I finished 72nd at Okeechobee and this one was a 73rd. So, man, that was kind of difficult. That kind of sucked to only have four fish whenever I was sitting in the cut after day one. But man, it was extremely windy that day.
Speaker 1:We were the waves that there was, so coming into weigh-in. On day two I gave myself like three times the amount of time that I thought I'd need, and just because it was windy. I thought, you know I better be safe than sorry. I gave myself like 15 minutes to go five miles and I made in with 30 seconds left. I mean I had to go like 15 miles an hour and these were the biggest waves I've ever seen on a reservoir outside of the Great Lakes. It's the biggest waves I've ever seen and it was pretty wild. But yeah, it was just tough day for me and so I think I learned a lot about that lake and about that type of fishing.
Speaker 1:A lot of the guys that did catch them were fishing the same, like similar types of stuff, but it seemed like a lot of stuff that was either close to the main lake or a little bit chunkier stretches of bank. I mean, I was fishing like small stretches and transitions where there might have been a couple of good fish on each one, but I wasn't around a good enough population. In a lake like that, where there's not a huge population of bass everywhere, I think you really have to put yourself around the biggest population that you can, and there's gonna be good ones around, and I don't think that I did that well enough. I didn't cover enough water on a place with not enough bass and so that's. I think that was my mistake, because there was a lot of guys, especially on the windy day, that really caught a couple big ones or upgraded their bag or had a better day too than they did day one, that were just fishing down the bank fishing windy banks covering water, and so I mean you get to learn every time that you go fishing and that was kind of my takeaway from that tournament and I would love to go back to you follow it. I mean the quality was awesome and it was a fun place to fish and so, yeah, that was stop number three of the Invitational.
Speaker 1:Then, pretty much right after that, we're going to Kentucky Lake. It's the next week, you know, and the lake was kind of low, not in the bushes, enough to have that traditional Kentucky Lake bush bite like there usually is, and you know the population. It just hasn't been great over the past four or five years and there hasn't been, you know, many tournaments. But this is the first tournament, first big tournament that they've had there in a while, and really practice for Kentucky Lake was very good. I was fishing brush, stumps, metal, any kind of cover in the water and what I would do is throw a swim bait or a drop shot or a worm or something and either see those fish or get them to bite, shake them off. I just didn't catch them, but I'd mark every fish that I saw.
Speaker 1:And in that tournament it was pretty much just, you know, like brush fishing, picking off individual fish. And you know Kentucky Lake, it's always known it has good largemouth and smallmouth, but typically largemouth are going to win the tournament, and so I really focused on the backs of creeks, spawning areas. You know a lot of these fish not a lot, but some of them were definitely like bidding fish early post-paw and they just moved out and so it was anywhere from like four foot to maybe 10 foot. And you know some of these fish were betting, where you can see both of them kind of swimming around. So day one, you know, I caught a lot of fish, but not really the best size. They were kind of biting a swim bait like a hollow body swim bait in practice Pretty good, there's thumping it. But then by the time the tournament come around, I just caught a lot of them on a drop shot.
Speaker 1:Niko worm caught some on a big worm, and that first day I had 11 pounds, 12 ounces and 36 place. I knew that I could probably play the averages game and get myself in the top 25. But I knew I needed to upgrade and the size just wasn't really there. You know, it was a lot of like small males it seemed like, and that was kind of a calm, sunny day, whereas day two we had some rain and some wind and it was cloudy all day. And so I just started throwing a mag draft on some secondary points and I actually caught.
Speaker 1:The first fish I caught was a pretty nice smallmouth and I'm like man, I'm gonna have to like keep doing this. So I was like, you know, I'm gonna give myself another hour to smallmouth fish, because I hadn't really caught any smallmouth in practice at all. And so I start focused on smallmouth a little bit and I'm like, okay, I'll run some different kind of rock stretches, whatnot, and see if I can't catch one. So every hour, basically, I was catching smallmouth and so ended up being that I just smallmouth fished all day and I ended up catching, you know, another one, probably on a mag draft, and the rest of them were on a 2.8, on a probably eighth ounce head.
Speaker 1:I started fishing like transition points on or close to the main river. So where it went from chunky rock to pea gravel or the best spot that I found was a little point that was like it was like a rock pile. It had really chunky rock on it and a gravel stretch and I saw several big fish on it the first time I passed. So I turned around and threw the 2.8 on it and ended up catching like a 3.5 pounds smallmouth and a couple other little ones. But I ended up having 13 pounds and nine ounces of all smallmouth on day two and that was enough to move me up in 23rd place and make the day three cut. So that was, and that was a fun day too, getting to catch smallmouth.
Speaker 1:And then on day three I just went back to fishing, brush fishing, basically everything that I hadn't already hit. I was fishing all the stumps and brush that I hadn't been to yet. And day three I caught probably the most keepers that I did of any day and I only had 12 pounds, 15 ounces, so just shy of 13 again. But that moved me up to 13th place. So consistency really did show and I had 38 pounds for three days, which isn't that great, you know, but Kentucky Lake was fairly tough and no one really figured out the smallmouth, except for the guys in first and second who absolutely kicked everybody's butt. They caught. I mean, the guy that won had 19, 19 and 18. The guy in second only lost by just over a pound, pound and six ounces. So smallmouth really, really dominate Kentucky Lake right now. That's what's winning, that's what won all the winter tournaments and I think some people figured that going into the spring, as things are warming up, that largemouth would start to take over. But that's not the case. Smallmouth are still winning throughout the spring, summer, even till now. It's August and I know that smallmouth are still dominating out there. So, going forward For a long time, I think smallmouth are going to dominate any Kentucky Lake tournament that happens and I guarantee within the next year or two there's going to be some big trails that hit Kentucky Lake because of the potential that it has up until this point. So I'm actually looking forward to going back to Kentucky Lake and fishing it the correct way fishing for smallmouth, and I think it could be a lot of fun. So looking forward to going back to that and and I think this is a Almost the next week after Kentucky Lake we are Going right to Lake of the Ozarks.
Speaker 1:I only grew up, you know, like 45 minutes from Lake Ozarks, so you know, have some experience. It's not my most fished Lake by any means, but you know I was looking forward to this tournament. It was the first week in May and Fish, like fish on Table Rock, for example, they they seem to spawn the second week and third week of April real heavily and they spawn, you know, until May 2, but it seems like those same class fish spawn later at Lake of the Ozarks. So it's typically like that first week of May that they spawn. You know a lot of big ones spawn at Lake of the Ozarks and everyone knows that. You got to fish down Lake Clearwater and site fishing is is dominating way to fish and I knew that everybody in the field would know that and be kind of Piled in to that end of the lake and I did not want to just fish around Competition the whole time or fish around pressured fish.
Speaker 1:I thought it would make it fairly tough and so I decided to fish further up Lake and I fished from. I I fished mid-lake all the way up to about the hurricane deck bridge and into the Nyingoa a little bit and you know, practice wasn't too bad. I caught some. I caught a five pounder. On a secondary point, I had one pocket that had some big fish in it and I Thought it was gonna be, you know, a good way to get away from the crowd and kind of have my own fish.
Speaker 1:So on day one they actually gave me a live camera, I think just because I was, you know, live close by and me and my partner, cameron, won a college tournament there in like 2019. So you know, I got the camera in like the first hour and a half probably. I was catching a couple little ones, but it wasn't really going that great. And so I was going to one of my best areas and I was like I limb back in this creek and and they bring the the camera boat driver and they pick up the camera guy and he goes off to, I think, drew actually because he was pretty close. But I mean, five minutes after they take my camera guy away, I catch like a three and a half pounder and then I start working down the bank and Jody White shows up in a camera boat taking some pictures and I think he sat with me for the next like two hours While I caught like 16 pounds, what I have 16 pounds, five ounces, and I caught that in probably an hour and a half and it was just in this, in this pocket.
Speaker 1:I was just throwing a drop shot. I think that's what I caught, all of them on except for one, and I was just fishing, you know, little pieces of brush. There was a couple fry garters that would Literally there'd be a little ball of fry and you can see them kind of swimming around in this little area and there'd be One or two fish underneath them. And so you know, I caught some some good size in there and I there was a lot of fish present, and so I thought day two is gonna be no problem for me to be able to catch, you know, maybe not 16 pounds, but have another good day fishing in that area. So after day one I was sitting in 13th place. 24th was 15 pounds. So you know, a lot of guys caught some good fish but like those are just Chalk full of three to four pounders and so that's not Unexpected at all. So I'm sitting in 13th place. Four, yeah, tied for 13th place, sorry, and you know I was pretty excited.
Speaker 1:So the second morning I decided to go start in that same pocket that I caught my 16 pounds in and so I started there. I'm island back there and there's like five boats in this area. There's like a couple crappie fish. There's three crappie fishermen sitting along the stretch that I had caught those fish on the first day, and then on the other side of the creek there was two just local guys bass boats in there and so I kind of like Tried to fish some stuff in there for like 30 minutes and there was. Just I wasn't able to really get anything. I didn't want to cut anybody off or anything, you know, and so I started just rotating through some other stuff that I had where I saw fish and it just wasn't really happening and I had some fish that were like pre spawn in the nine Gwa and catching them on like secondary points and stuff. And Both days of the tournament I ran a lot of that stuff and there was like no fish on them and I really think that a lot of those fish just kind of move back and move up to spawn and and so you know, I kind of go through without getting any bites and so, like it right at the end of the day.
Speaker 1:I mean I'm just exhausted, trying to run everything that I can, and I decide, hey, I'm gonna go run back to that area and see if there's anybody around. And so I run back in there and there's only like one crappie boat. And so I'm like I'm just gonna have to sit here the last hour and see if I can make it work. So I pull back in this creek and I have like 45 minutes left after I run over there to it and I catch, you know, two keepers pretty quick. I'm like, okay, I can fill out a limit. You know, if I felt a limit, I'll at least keep myself in the cut maybe. And so I Catch those two and I'm like, okay, it's, you know, I sit down, read the time I stuff. I'm like it can happen right now.
Speaker 1:I like work down a little bit farther into my stretch and I catch another keeper and catch my third one, and now I only have like 10 minutes before I really have to go and I end up like getting a couple more bites where, like they rip my worm off and there was a two Fry garters that were under fry that I could get to bite my worm a couple times and then they quit biting it and I saw I'm chase something like little fish would swim by and they chase the bluegill all the way to the surface. I mean I saw one of these bass bust a bluegill on the surface and it was probably like a three pounder and I just could not get those fish to bite and I ended up only having those three fish on day two, which was just a train wreck disaster, going from 16 pounds to six pounds and especially on a place that I would consider a home lake and Drop down to 79th place. So so I was pretty upset after this event, obviously, and that was probably like my lowest feeling of the season so far, and this put me Making only one check out of four tournaments. But you know my my two events for the rest of season, for the invitationals, were Potomac River and lacrosse, and so Two river systems.
Speaker 1:One's a tidal fishery. You know I'm not too sure about that one. I Like rivers but don't always, you know, do the best on them, but looking forward to them anyway. So here we go into June, so this is over, you know, like a month and a half later. So the Potomac River is just a massive, massive fishery and I think that our schedule this year, with the combined acreage, has to be close to one of the records, because all of these places that we go or just have a, so they're so vast and have so much Surface area to fish, especially like these rivers, because there's grass flats for miles, there's ton of shoreline, there's so much where you could fish or find fish, and so Potomac River is. It was kind of weird.
Speaker 1:You know, I searched for the first day for sure, looking for offshore grass of some kind, to find like a certain spot, and so I was looking for points in the grass, I was looking for hard spots out there. I was looking for something a little bit different and you know I caught some fish, but it wasn't really like great, and so I was. I was kind of talking to some people and I was like, man, I just need to go fishing. I need to go like find areas that there's fish. I need to do what I think I need to do during the tides. So you know, if the tides up, I need to go fish the inside grass lines and then you go fish the bank. When it's down, I need to fish like the, you know, maybe a little bit deeper water, the ditches Outside of the grass, flats, whatever. And so the next day that's what I do, I kind of just follow what I think should be happening with the tide, and so I actually found the first like good spot.
Speaker 1:I found was a lot of these big creeks would funnel down into like a small creek that would have a deep ditch in it. So, for example, these creeks might only be five foot max and they're just grass, you know all the way across. And then you get back to where it Nairs down, to the small creek and it might get to like eight or ten foot deep in the channel. And so at the mouth of where one of these creeks Big creeks and airs down and meets the small creek, it was probably like five foot, but it dropped off from like three to five and there was a defined ditch and I was throwing man first couple cast of through a chatter bait and I caught two bass. I caught a catfish, I started dragging a worm, I caught another catfish and other bass had a couple bites that I shook off. I'm like man, this could be a great place to like just come here and catch a couple keepers you know this could be like one of those spots and then I move up with with tide started coming up and I started moving up and fishing Some shallower stuff and I saw two good ones eat my frog and I shook them both off.
Speaker 1:I go to another big creek that's real well known for Cache and checks and a lot of people catch fish and I actually find a couple stretches that I get a lot of bites in and Just kind of fishing off shore grass and so I'm feeling pretty decent about it, like I I have some places to run with the, whatever the tide's doing and whatnot. And so the first day I kind of run to the big grass fly because the the, the tide starts high and so I Catch a lot of fish. I'm throwing a swim jig and I'm just working up and down these stretches and you know it's not a certain edge or anything, it's just kind of the right depth on these grass lots, and so it's really just out of sight where you can't see. The bottom Is what it was for me, and not that that mean means anything because I got a hundred and twenty second place, but that's just. I mean I caught a lot of fish still.
Speaker 1:So day one I catch 11 pounds, 13 ounces. I caught a lot of fish. I just, you know, I wasn't able to see any of that size. So on day two I'm thinking, man, I really need like a couple, three, three and a half pound bites. And so I start in the area that I had the big fish roll over on my frog and I go down the stretch and I fish it real thoroughly without a single bite and I go back to this big grass flat that I caught in the day before and again I catch a bunch of fish. But you know, this day they're even smaller, you know. And so I got a limit, a starting limit, for probably like five or six pounds.
Speaker 1:It was pretty pitiful and I sat there and and cold up till I got to nine, just over nine pounds probably, and I just called through so many times to get there and I'm like man, I have to go, like figure something different now. And so I went around and fish Some. I fish deeper grass. I fish like where the grass edge was, you know, where it kind of went to, like mud bottom. I went and fished offshore in the areas that I Got those big bites. I tried fishing up shallow. I just I did not understand the tide and where it moved those big fish. Like one day of practice it worked out pretty good. But besides that I Did not learn a lot from my own experience in that tournament. Now, watching those other guys and how they responded to the tide Really helped me out. You know I didn't make day three but I got to watch live and see kind of what those guys were doing the.
Speaker 1:When I first pull it up it's been about an hour. They've been fishing for about an hour and it's Nick Hatfield and he's throwing the top water around and he catches like a five pounder and the camera man's kind of moving around. I'm like man that looks Awfully familiar and I keep watching it for a little while. It is the exact stretch that I fished both mornings of the tournament and Without a single bite. But it's where I saw those good ones in practice and I watched them catch like 15 pounds off this stretch.
Speaker 1:It just it doesn't make any sense to me. I mean I was throwing a frog, a popper, I was flipping. It looks like he caught all those fish on a popper, or for the most part anyway. But you know he might have been like a little bit further back than I was, but I still fished. You know when I got those bites. I fished up shallow, I fished offshore a little bit right there and never caught anything. So you Tidal fisheries are still a mystery to me on when fish use that grass to move in and out of places.
Speaker 1:So something else interesting is that a lot of the guys that did well and caught them were actually fishing around brim beds of I don't know what kind, but it totally makes sense that in those grass clumps and all the vast grass flats, that that's where those fish would kind of congregate around and it's not like they were catching these fish every cast, but they were hanging around these areas where these bass are kind of centrally located. You know these bass are kind of cruising around, not sitting on anything specific, but they were hanging around these, these beds and I should have like had the idea, you know I mean this is like mid-June, the water temperature was right now that I think about it hindsight's 2020. But you know I I should have been looking for that, but that's that's now experience. I mean, that's how guys learn to do that in the future and apply things quicker. I mean, you know learning bass fishing is not an easy thing, so you know I'm thankful for being able to learn at least that from that tournament. Now I'm like 60th in points.
Speaker 1:You know, in the Invitational's it's not going so great. But you know we got La Cross. I've been there two times before. I've got 10th and probably like 20th or 25th. I can't really remember what the second one was. But I was pretty excited about going to La Cross and what I missed out on last time is that the first time I was there, you know I caught him frog and I had a couple stretches that you know there was just good ones moved up in the grass. And the second time that I was there, those fit, the water level was a little bit lower and those fish were just kind of vacated from those stretches.
Speaker 1:So I really wanted to fish Lake on Alaska, figure out where those fish are at, up in pool seven, because that's kind of where I'd caught fish in the past, but kind of up shallower, not offshore, but I was thinking man offshore. There has to be some good stuff out there because it's so vast, there's so much grass. You know that's got to be the deal, and so the first, I think, four hours of practice the first morning, first four hours I spent out there in Lake on Alaska, fishing eel, grass edges, fishing current, doing everything that I could think of where those bass would be, and I just wasn't really getting any bites. I mean, I caught a couple little ones, but I was like man, I really have to like make a change. I have to go find some fish, and so from then on out the rest of the day I ran some previous stuff that I caught, caught him on around grass, and with no success, and so I started fishing wing dams on the main river and you know it's catching like a decent amount of fish, and I caught a four and a half pound smallmouth. You know I was pretty excited about it.
Speaker 1:So I ended up fishing all three pools in practice, because pool eight is not my favorite. I've never caught him very well, but I knew I'd need some somewhere to fish, coming to and from the locks or if I have to wait around, I need some spots to fish, and so I practice in pool eight for a day just to find a bunch of little ones. I found two wing dams that were decent. And then, day three, I go down to pool nine and I caught a lot of fish but it wasn't really consistent enough to make me want to go down there versus pool seven. I just had found too much good stuff in pool seven for nine to overrule it. And so halfway through the day or somewhere in the afternoon I decided now I'm gonna go back up to pool seven.
Speaker 1:I got the wing dams, I'm gonna go look around on Alaska again, just because I know it's got to be there, and so I go put in up there and I'm driving around like on Alaska just looking for, you know, whatever it might be, and I passed Tom Monsoor out there and I'm like man, this is, it's got to be right, you know. And so I fish it for another like two and a half hours and this time I get zero bites and it just really broke me. Like man, I know that that this is should be a deal and they should be here, but I just couldn't figure it out. And, man, come around to the tournament. We had the worst experience with barges and getting through the locks. Like all three mornings of the tournament there there was a barge that would beat us there to the lock and so I think this. So we launched at 6 30 I think. One day I actually started fishing up there at like 7 45 maybe, and so we only had to wait for like 30 minutes or 40 minutes for that barge. But the other two days, I think, I started day one I started fishing at 9 and then day three I started fishing at like 9 45, and so I was pretty rushed on, you know, going up there and fishing.
Speaker 1:But day one I fished like solely smallmouth wing dams, just because that's where I saw the size. You know, like you know, the there's probably a lot more large mouth than they typically win, but there's just some really big smallmouth that they live in pool seven. And so day one I had 13, 14 and just under 14 pounds is pretty good day and I caught four out of my five fish up and pull seven on a spook and just throwing flukes over the wing dams. And then I locked back down and had like an hour to fish and so I go to one of my one of two winged ends that I hadn't pull eight. I pull up to it and catch a two pound smallmouth. I'm throwing a, throwing a fluke on a spinning rod and then I catch another little one and then I get around to the other side of the wing dam and I throw up there on top of it and hook a pretty good one, get it in. It's like a three and a half pounder, and so that's really what kind of got my bag up there around that 14 pound range and so that was kind of a lucky or, you know, a clutch fish that I had. And then day two, you know, I actually got up to the lock a little bit quicker. I was able to kind of go through my small mouth stuff and pull seven. And then I started to fish some new stuff or stuff that I hadn't fished.
Speaker 1:On day one I pull up to this one wing dam, I make a couple casts one I haven't even fished yet and I make a couple casts and I'm catching a couple little smallmouth and I'm seeing them follow, and so I put my boat on spot lock and I cast like across the wing dam, like down it quite a ways with the crankbait I threw out there and I catch, I hook up with one and I get him in and it's like a two and a half pound largemouth and I'm like, okay, that's like a, that's like a good fish, you know. And I make the same exact cast and it's out there ways and I get like three cranks in and one just locks it up and I pull into it, get like two cranks and that pops off. So my rods like back behind me while I reel down my slack. And as soon as I get to the bottom and pull my slack tight, one smokes it again and I start pulling on like man, that has to be a big drum or something, you know. It's just real heavy, not fighting, it's just heavy. Well, I've kind of fired him around the boat and I get it up and it's a big, large mouth. It was like a four pound largemouth. And so I get him in and I'm like man, I might just found something like really good, you know. And so I sit there and catch a handful largemouth and then they stop biting and I'm like man, I don't know if I just broke them up or you know if there wasn't that many there, but they had to have been a school if they bit like that. And so I kind of go over there a little bit closer where I can actually see him fly the scope and there's like 30 or 40 fish on sitting on this certain spot on this wing. Damn, like there's no point or anything, I don't know. Somehow the current must have been hitting it, making a like current break on that specific spot. But it's just love, it's just a giant school largemouth and I'm like man, if I could sit here and catch these fish on day three, I could have a really good bag and really move up.
Speaker 1:On day two I had 14 pounds with another you know, four pound or pretty good one. I had a pretty good smallmouth to go with. That bag too is like a three and a half I think, and so you know two, two and a half pounders. Do you well on the cross if you have a three and a half and a four? So I have 14 pounds and so I'm sitting in like 18th place going into day three.
Speaker 1:Well, day three comes around and I'm stoked to go up there and I'm thinking, man, you know, please, let this be the day that there's no barge traffic, we actually get to fish a little bit. We have a fog, delay, and it's like pretty dense fog and it was a while before we got to take off and they finally let us go and so it's already, you know, shortened a little bit and we get up to the lock and there's an app where we can watch the barges and where they're at and stuff. And so we run up there and there's a barge that just beat us there and it was going in and it took this barge like two hours, maybe two and a half, I don't know. It was a long time. It took this barge a long time to get through the lock and so me and Jordan hurt. So shout out to Jordan for helping me out a little bit.
Speaker 1:But he had this little stretch of riprap that came to a point where he caught like a limits worth of fish on when he locked back down on on day two and my smallest I had two fish on on day two that were like one pound 12 ounces and one pound 13 ounces or 14 ounces, like I had two fish under two pounds and I said 14. So that hurt me a lot right there. But he said that he sat there in cold and his smallest fish was like two, seven on day two and so I was like, okay, there's a bunch of two pounders here, and so we kind of set there like side by side for the first hour and a half or hour and they just weren't really biting. So I pull out a real light, the meekie rig, and I think I had like three keepers before we got to lock up. So in like two hours on that spot I was able to catch three, like two somethings. And so I'm like man, if this is great, if I could go catch two you know pretty good ones up and pull seven, like I did yesterday. Finally, after a while we get to go back up to pull seven. So we all locked through and I think it was like out of the top, out of the top 50, I think 11 of us locked through to go up.
Speaker 1:So we go up there and I start on my small or my largemouth school. You know I catch keepers I fell out of limit but they're just not biting great, they're all little ones and so I go fish a couple more winged in. So I think two more winged in so that I caught largemouth on, and then I was gonna spend the whole rest of the day fishing my smallmouth stuff. And so you know, the first couple spots just weren't really producing and so I go to what was my best smallmouth winged in and I was catching them every cast for a little while. Just, they were just kind of mostly small fish, you know like pound and a halfers, and it seemed like it was getting better though as the day went on. So we're fishing for about an hour and a half.
Speaker 1:I look at my phone and there was a barge in La Crosse on its way up, and so La Crosse, where we take off from, is not very far from the lock of pull seven, and so I'm like crap, these, these big bars and it was a big barge these big barges take like two, two and a half hours to lock through and we have to check in at 230. So if this barges it's 11, 30, it's gonna be there in 30 minutes. You know, it takes us 20 minutes to lock through. Like I don't think we're gonna make it back if we don't leave now. And so I called Jordan hurt and we decided like yeah, we have to go where else we're not gonna make it back. And so I called Paul, I said told him because we were kind of communicating about and he's like you know what? I'm just gonna risk it, I don't really have you know anything. Anyway, I got nothing to lose. So it was just me and Jordan that locked back through, and this is like noon and this barge was gonna go through right after us.
Speaker 1:So I kind of fished up there around the lock for about 45 minutes in that barge. It took it longer than 45 minutes to get in because whenever I left it was still not all the way in. And I'm like man I mean Tom Monsoor he was up there Matt Stefan, steve Lopez, one, two and three were up there in pool seven and I thought there's no way they're gonna make it back. So you know, I fish some of the wing dams that I found fish on, try to fish some new stuff, but you know I didn't. I didn't really upgrade at all. I ended up with 10 pounds six ounces. You know I would, just didn't, wasn't able to spend enough time on my good small mouth stuff, and the small mouth is really what supported my bags all week.
Speaker 1:I get in and I'm the last one in and with like a minute left and these guys weren't checked in yet and I didn't see anybody. I was in front of me, the guy that was checking people in. He's like oh, it looks like there's some guys that are late and I'm like, oh no, they didn't make it and so I I'll all the way back to check in. And so pretty good, idle and I'm, I'm thinking that you know, nine of these guys got locked out and so that's gonna completely change the top 10, because there was, I don't remember, four to six guys in the top ten that were in pool seven. I get in and realize that they did make it back and what happened was they just really rushed the barge getting through and everything and they somehow managed to get back with like three or four minutes left. So they got extremely lucky that they made it back.
Speaker 1:But I mean I moved down from 18th to 32nd so I guess it wouldn't hurt me at all to stay up there too and just see if I could upgrade a little bit more. But you know it's real tricky with the lock system. I mean I could have came back down and pull eight and caught a couple decent ones and, you know, stayed in that higher check range. I mean if 30th place was 10 grand and you know 31st to 50th was eight, and so I only missed the the 10 grand check by two spots. So you know that's a. That's a real tricky game to play sometimes when you're when you're that close, but I'm glad I did it. You know, being safe and getting back on time didn't disqualify me and put me in 50th place for this tournament. So you know, strong finish.
Speaker 1:I had fun. I caught a lot of fish every day at La Crosse. You know I'm looking forward to going back. There's a lot that I learned about how to find these fish, how to catch them, what I need to have after practices over. So, man, that was a shallow fishing schedule and I ended up in, I think, 47th place. Top 75 get to go back for next year. So I get to go back and fish the Invitational, again based on points.
Speaker 1:But it seems like they typically rotate shallow and deep schedules. So, like last year, you know, they fished kind of the deeper life scopable tournaments, and then this year it was more of the shallow rivers. I mean Okeechobee, clarks Hill, you Follick and Tucky Lake Lake, those arcs around the spawn, and then two rivers to complete the year. So you know you could do a little bit of deep fishing, but not very much, you know. So next year I'm hoping that we actually get some smallmouth tournaments, you know, instead of having Potomac River in La Crosse maybe it'll be. You know two of the famous smallmouth places and then in the spring time, you know Okeechobee was fun but it would be better to start you know somewhere else in the south, maybe Texas. I like when they start on places like that. You know reservoir, it's just, it's just more familiar fishing. I mean, florida is a completely different animal, so it's it's fun to fish actual like pre-spawn wintertime stuff where they're in that, in that mode, like they are on the Midwest South, and so I'm looking forward to next season.
Speaker 1:I had some, I had some awesome learning moments from this season whenever I was at La Crosse I was at a gas station I think it was after day two and this kid. I get back to my truck and this kid comes walking over to me and is 11 year old. He was just asking a million questions about you know everything that I do, about you know my truck and boat and how I made it to fishing, the Invitational's and a lot of in-depth questions. And I feel for him because that's exactly how it was at that age, because I didn't grow up knowing anybody that professionally fish or anything, so I had a million questions on how do they get their money to do this? Do they have other jobs besides this? How do they get into the? You know, how did they work their way up into the next level? And there's just so many questions that I had about their personal life and whatever. And so I know there's a lot of kids out there because he was he was one of them, but that was a cool experience for me to be able to share my experiences with someone who was in my same shoes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm really looking forward to next season. We should be getting our schedules within the next month or two. I'm hoping. I know that the schedule set and at our last meeting for La Crosse, our tournament director, kevin Hunt, told us that this, it. This doesn't mean this is where we're going, but our tournament trail spans from Sam Raiburn to Champlain, so I would expect that Sam Raiburn is where we're starting and that will go to Champlain. And this week I'm getting to watch the Elite Series on Champlain and they're just destroying them under bait and that is my favorite thing in the world to do. You know there's just giant schools chasing bait around and you get to catch them on Demi-Kyraig and whatever. So I think that'll be a blast. I'm really looking forward to seeing what it.
Speaker 1:You know what the next season looks like. But we're still not done with this year. We still have Lake of the Ozarks Toyota series. That is towards the end of September and that is going to round out the Plains Division Toyota series and I'm in third place, drew Gills in second and Brad Jelnikson first and we're all really close in points and I think that whoever out of the three of us, whoever wins Angler of the Year, is probably gonna have to get a top 10, maybe top five, to take that. So I'm really excited about fishing that.
Speaker 1:But there's a BFL super tournament two weeks before ours. There's a Bassmaster Opens tournament the week before and then, like a day or two after the Opens are done, then we start practice for our tournament. So Lake of the Ozarks is gonna get pounded on. I mean the Opens have five days of practice, three days of a tournament, so that'll be interesting. And then obviously the Toyota series championship. That is on Table Rock Lake the first weekend or first week of November. I'm super pumped for that one. That's one of my favorite times a year to fish by far. So really pumped and looking forward to that. You know there's a nitro contingency that adds 50 grand to the winner. So if I were to win or someone with a nitro would be 250,000 the first place and you know the payouts are good. The rest of field it's no entry fee. So that would be a great way, a fun way to cap off the end of the year and get ready for next year.
Speaker 1:So I think hopefully here soon gonna have Drew Gill on and we are going to discuss this season, talk some more about what we learned.
Speaker 1:Obviously we were both rookies he's still in college but we both got the college fishing experience and how that really propelled us to being able to fish how we do now.
Speaker 1:And Drew and I kind of have similar fishing styles and you know we like to finesse fish and stuff like that. So I think we'll have some interesting topics to be able to talk about on, especially how Drew because he finished ninth in points, he had a lot of good finishes this season we'll talk about how he applied finesse fishing in forward-facing sonar to a shallow schedule and being able to dominate it really where the whole top eight that qualified for the Bass Pro Tour were good shallow fishermen, and they were guys that didn't catch them on forward-facing sonar very much throughout the season, but Drew worked his way up there doing what he does, so we'll have that one out soon as well. Thank you guys for watching. I'm gonna try to keep getting guests on here regularly, regularly, and hitting as much topics as we can, so we'll have this on Apple Podcasts, spotify and YouTube, so please keep following along and I'll see you next time.