Sorry for the late post, but things have been hectic. I prefished the for the tournament and decided to cover as much water as possible since I hadn't been to Apache Lake in years. I launched out of Burnt Corral and headed West towards the marina. I was fan casting a crankbait while looking for bedding fish. I caught fish shallow on crankbaits but none of size. I decided to keep moving and found a drop near shallow water that indeed held some bigger fish. The rest of the day I threw an Assassinator Spinnerbait for a search bait and bed fished. I found some decent bedfish and GPS'd them for the tournament.
Tournament morning my partner and I decided to head to the biggest bedfish I had found in practice. We made the long run and hit the cove where my biggest fish has been. We started casting prior to getting to the back of the cove and my partner had a fish within a few casts. We got to the bed, hoping she was still there. With the light low it was hard to tell but thought I saw some movement in the same place and on the 3rd cast she was on and in the boat. She was just under 4lbs. We decided that was the bite we were going to stick to. We headed to another decent fish I located but when got there, another boat was on the fish and they weren't leaving until they caught her, 4 hours later they finally did. We had a limit fairly quick and continued buring up shoreline to cull up weight. A smallmouth and an exploding life jacket made the day interesting for about 5 minutes. I had a fish engulf a Warmouth but never felt it so missed it on the hookset. Within the next minute I heard an exlosion of sort and hissing sound, which scared me enough to make me jump about out the boat. I look down and my partners PFD canister went off and his lifejacket was expanded. After we both calmed down for a minute, I threw back on a rock where I thought the fish had been and it was game on. The smallmouth went nuts, jumping out the water, ripping drag, and tackling up my line with my partner's, he was runnign to net the fish I was all over the deck trying to keep it from breaking the line it was something I would love to watch over and over. We got the fish in but it definately wasn't our best moment!!!
We ended up with a good limit but some of the other guys found a deeper prespawn bite and had some impressive weights. Two 9 pound largemouth were weighed along with one over 7 and another over 6. It was great to see that lake making a comeback and putting out some awesome fish. I will definately be going back!
My partner made this video of the time out there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-ZZ-G-R8E4
