The season finale with big payouts to the winners was finally upon us. With the tournament I fished the week before at the same lake I was looking forward to the tournament with an idea of what was working and how to capitalize on the things I missed the week before. The weather was supposed to be in the 90's and light winds, but I knew better, I expected the winds to pick up throughout the day and brought the gear I was going to need when it did.
Day 1 we started throwing reaction baits early but they didn't produce. We made a move and switched to carolina-rigged worms and dropshots to find a limit. It produced some smaller fish that we knew we would need to cull. The next move we made paid off and we filled our limit and caught some quality keepers off a deep rock point with a nearby reef. After that we decided we would stay fishing the steeper rock banks in hopes of finding the better quality fish. We caught nice fish throughout the day on both carolina rigs and dropshots. We finished off the day on the same area I fished the week prior and made a decent cull with about 10 minutes to go. We weighed in 14.33lbs without a kicker and had a game plan for day 2.
Day 2 we started where we finished day 1 in hopes of a few bigger fish early. The spot produced 3 smaller fish and we decided we needed to run to same areas we fished the day prior to catch the quality to stay in it. The next spot we went to was where we finished our limit out the day prior and it didn's disappoint. We caught a few smaller fish to fill the limit and a few minutes later we caught our big fish of the tournament a 4.29 lb largemouth. We finished fishing out that spot and decided to hit the steeper banks again down the lake. It was the right move as we caught another fish over 3lbs and a couple more that culled out our smaller fish. With the wind picking up and knowing we were on the pattern we fished a deep pocket with the wind pushing into it. We kept getting the bluegills bite so we knew the largemouth were hanging around with such an abundant food sourse available. Once we hit the back of the cover we caught another quality fish that culled. The next cast I hooked into the biggest fish we had that day. After a long battle and tons of jumps I got the fish next to the boat and it decided to make one last run, it went straight under the boat the proceeded to make a last second run to the other side of the boat, jumped, hit the deck and just came unbuttoned. It was heartbreak and frustration, that was the bite we had been looking for and we had it within reach. We had to put it out of our heads and keep fishing, as it was still early. We fished that spot repeatedly for most of the day and every trip through it produced fish after fish somewhere on that cove. We caught over 50 that day and weighed another quality bag of 14.58 lbs.
We ended up 4th for the tournament with 28.91 lbs and missed a top 3 payout check by .11 lbs, but we did take 3rd big fish of the tournament. We figured out the bite but over the 2 day period we lost 3 big fish, and a few others that really cost us. All in all it was a fun tournament and I'm looking forward to next year already. Thank you to all of my sponsors, without your help none of this would be possible.
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