AZ Head to Head Bracket Tournament - Round 2 - May 10th - Lake Pleasant

With the random draw system, round 2 was at Lake Pleasant. It isn't one of my favorite lakes, but it does have a few predominate patterns. So my game plan was to hope I guessed right on a starting area and then bounce around the rest of the day. I was going to stick with topwater early then dropshot for the most part later. I threw a whopper plopper most the morning covering water looking for spawning fish while covering water. I caught one on the plopper early and made a move to an area had caught them on in previous years. While throwing the topwater I saw a fish holding in tree limbs, I decided to toss a dropshot out and it was instantaneous. I caught that fish as well as the next fish in a scattered tree as well. I stuck with that pattern for awhile and had 4 fish. I moved into Castle to find active fish in the stained water but it ended up being a waste of time. I decided to run the tree pattern again all over the main lake and it produced fish after fish. I the decided to try some shallow reefs and kept catching them as well. I ended up with 9.5-10 lbs and it was good enough to take the win.

JML Outdoors Weekend Warriors Championshp - April 28th/29th - Roosevelt Lake

Well Fred and I qualified for the JML Championship and I was able to get some prefish in and found some areas but hadn't found the winning fish in practice. We were boat 34 out to launch and reverse order the next day.
Day 1 was a blast. We started on an area had found practicing and threw whopper ploppers and small crankbaits. That topwater bite was on fire, as we caught 2 pound fish one after another just burning bank. Later in the day after it slowed we moved around to main lake cuts with some deeper dropoffs and it produced our best fish of the day, a 4.13 lb largemouth. We finished the day in 10th place with 14.40 lbs. We were looking forward to the next day and with the patterns that were emerging figured we could duplicate or better our day 1 weight.
Day 2 was a completely different day. The wind was blowing 15-20+ and there was a full moon that night and when we got to our spot, there was a full on shad spawn that had been going most the night. The first cast of the day was a heartbreaker as we watched a giant smallmouth explode my topwater 3 feet into the air and miss it. We continued to throw it and caught a few smaller fish, but could tell the bite had changed due to the wind and full moon. With some quick thinking we changed up tactics for the wind and threw jerkbaits and spinnerbaits. We were able to start catching fish again but we never got a big bite. With 5 minutes to go we found a monster school of smallmouth that followed in a 2lb smallmouth that caught but we ran out of time being in the first flight. We finished the day with 9.22lbs and a total of 23.62, which was good enough for 15th place. It was a bitter sweat ending to the season, we had a great pattern and it fizzled due to mother nature but we hung in to figure out options  C,D, & F. Looking forward to next season.

AZ Head to Head Bracket Tournament - Round 1 - April 18th - Bartlett Lake

This is the first round trying to defend my championship. I drew Bartlett Lake in the random draw and my competition and I agreed to fish 2pm-7pm. I hadn't been out to Bartlett in awhile and definitely haven't fished in the afternoons to dark at all since last year. My game plan was to keep it simple and throw a carolina-rig and crankbait most the time and mix in a dropshot etc. when needed. I caught a few small keepers early and kept burning bank all afternoon until they really started biting before dark. From 6-7pm I culled 7 or 8 times and caught my biggest fish all on crankbaits super shallow. I ended up getting the win with 8.5lbs, it was ugly but efficient. On the bright side, the new Ultrex had made fishing certain areas in the wind a little easier.

Century Marine Demo Days - April 6th - Lake Pleasant

Had a blast at the Century Marine Demo Days at Lake Pleasant. We had the new Bass Cat Boats on display along with the new Lynx for demo. These boats are absolutely gorgeous and showed extremely well on the water and off. We were out at the lake from 4pm-dusk.