My partner and I went out to prefish the week before and the weather was beautiful, high 80s light winds off and on. I did have motor issues first things so we just covered water back to the ramp with the trolling motor for miles. We had an awesome day with over 17lbs in the boat and lost a few big fish that would have put us over 20lbs. It was practice so at least we knew what to do. We went into the championship with a solid pattern but the weather was going to play a major factor. A severe cold front with rain and massive winds were going to hit us both days. We decided to stick to our game plan and hope would pay off.
Day 1 we started at the same area as in practice and within a few minutes we had our first keeper. We kept working down the bank and had 2 in the boat and made our first move to another secondary point. First cast and another keeper. We worked just the inside and outside of each corner going into the coves and we were culling by 8am. We moved all across the lake culling up all day long throwing jigs, dropshots, wacky rigs, and shakey heads. We caught close to 40 fish during the day even in the 50+mph winds that we suffered through the last 3/4 of the day. We didn't have the big bite we needed but we were still close to the leaders who only had 6 bites all day.
Day 2 we went with the same game plan. With the rain and wind were knew had to make small adjustments so we downsized to keep the bites and once again we were culling before 8am. Again we caught fish after fish looking to upgrade. We had 5 solid 2 pound fish but we knew we were going to need 17-20lbs. We saw our friends who were leading it and they only had 3 fish with an hour to go. We knew we had a shot and we once again went through 40+ fish but never the ones we needed.
We weighed in 10 fish for 22.44lbs and finished in 15th place. Our friends followed our pattern and caught 2 big fish at the very last minutes of the day and won the championship. Congrats to them and looking forward to night tournaments coming up.
