Rattletrap Ramblings

OK, I’ve just fished 4 days in a row and I still feel like I want to go again today with it raining outside. If that doesn’t sound like a fish junkie then I don’t know what is. Reality is it’s time to make the donuts so I can afford to go again.

I fished the BWS and the ABA 150 out of Camp Mack this weekend and almost won enough money to break even on the entry fees but factor in gas, food, and lodging and you’re in the hole.

I practiced Thursday and Friday and should’ve been looking for beds the majority of the time. The winner of the BWS tournament had 35 pounds and caught two 9′s off a bed somewhere in the south end of Lake Kissimmee. I sure wish I knew where.

I myself concentrated on 3 areas for the tournament which included Seven Palms, Overstreet, and the School Bus area. They all had bedding fish but it was so windy during practice days that I mostly threw a search bait in practice and during the tournament. Lake Kissimmee is fishing so good right now that you can literally catch 50 fish in any descent area of the lake. Most of the time that’s a good thing, but most of the fish will be small. That’s what I did during the BWS tournament, caught lots of small fish which started getting aggravating after 11 o’clock. I should’ve just started looking for beds at that point, but I just kept on chunking for a whopping 6 or 7 pounds.

I believe the thing to do is find one of those areas in the shallows and then find a protected cove or protected pocket where the wind’s not hammering it and look for bedding fish. Almost everyone that made a check fished around bedding fish and caught a fish off a bed.

My next tournament will be the Xtreme on the Harris Chain and I am gonna spend an entire day just looking for beds. As long as a cold front doesn’t come in, then they will be there because it’s dang close to a full moon and the water temps will be in the mid to high sixties.

I fished the ABA 150 tournament on Sunday and made a little adjustment. My partner and I got a limit by 9 o’clock at my spot on Overstreet and started looking and found a bed with a 3 pounder and a 9.5 pounder.

By the time 11 o’clock rolled around, we decided to run to Seven Palms to look for bedding fish. I turn the key on my engine and it wouldn’t start. It turns out my partner kept the livewell on constant to make sure the big fish survived and it killed my battery.

We troll over to the dock at the Overstreet ramp and borrow jumper cables, a battery, and all sorts of wrenches for a few hours of adventure. We try to jump cranking battery off my trolling motor battery but it was too run down to give enough juice to start. We then switch the trolling motor battery and the cranking battery and it was still too low to start. Finally, someone actually had a spare battery that had plenty of juice, so we switched back the trolling motor battery and the cranking battery and jumped it again. Thank God it finally started. By that time we had a dozen people watching the big fiasco and we had to show them the 9.5 pounder they helped us save.

By the time we were up and running again, it was close to 1 o’clock and we decided to just go to the School Bus area where it was close enough to get towed in by another competitor if my boat wouldn’t start again. We catch a few small fish there and never did see anything on bed.

My boat did start again and we weigh in for just shy of 19 pounds and a $500 second place check.

I guess the moral of the story is to just replace your battery every 2 years and to spend a lot of time looking beds instead of fishing during tournaments around the spawn. It’s also dang hard to win a one day tournament during the spawn cause no amount of weight is safe.