This was the last tournament of the regular season and of course another post frontal with 3 previously cold days dropping the water temps over 5 degrees. The forecast was a gorgeous morning with nasty winds later in the day. The lake is in a weird spawn post-spawn time due to the stained water and quick warming water. We decided to cover water early with topwaters and swimbaits hoping to find the shad spawn going on like it was during practice.
Within an hour I knew the morning bite was going to be tough, I could watch fish darting after the swimbait and following it and not committing and also the shad were gone. After awhile with nothing to show we made a run to the Tonto end of the lake where I hadn't fished in years. We found some fish on beds and had two in the boat rather quickly. We did find others that would have helped but they just weren't quite ready to go yet. We ran further down lake but the water was bloomed out and made it tough to see and water was surprisingly colder. We fished our way back on every drop off but without any luck. We moved to our pre-spawn area from prior months and thankfully it produced some fish. We filled out our limit within an hour and were culling even in the 20-30 mph wind while dragging Carolina-rigs.
We finished with a limit for 9.71 and a big fish of 3.23 and placed 12th. We once again never had the big bite but did find some quality fish going back to the basics. The championships are in May and a lake that can put out some big bags or humble you, hopefully we figure it out before its over.
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