Perfect Practice Crappy Tournament
If you read my last post, you’d know I was pretty excited about the Xtreme Tournament on the Harris Chain yesterday. I had numerous 8 pounders locked on bed and an area where I caught 20+ pounds on Friday shaking most of the fish off. I mean the ones I hooked were huge with the smallest being 3 pounds.
I was so excited, I had to get a few drinks in me so I could fall asleep with delusions of grandeur.
Saturday rolled around and everything changed.
I went to my bedding area first and the bedding fish were in a different mood. What was once a lock turned into a struggle of wills. They would pick up my worm and take it out of the bed on Friday, but on Saturday they’d spook off as soon as I clicked my reel.
After about an hour of this, my partner and I went to Griffin where we caught all those fish the day before and there were 3 foot rollers on top of a spot that only had 2 feet of water. The fish were still biting although you could barely stand in the boat and we had about 9 pounds before we decided to head back and if it wasn’t for my Kistler rods, I would’ve never known I had a fish.
We decide to go to the bedding fish again but they were still spooky and never caught any of the big ones we were looking at. It’s one of those cases where the fish won, but they better watch out. I only wonder what could’ve been if there wasn’t 40 mph winds and a drop in water temperature by 2 degrees. I guess that’s why they call it fishing.
Once again, a perfect practice turned into a meager day of fishing come tournament time. I can’t think of any adjustments that I could’ve made to salvage the day so I’m dumbfounded at the moment.
Everyone that did well in the tournament focused on bedding fish and it took over 25 pounds to win. I guess I should’ve gone to some other bedding areas to see if those fish would bite. The only problem was there were 6 foot rollers I’d have to battle to get there and that didn’t seem like a good idea at the time.
Oh yeah, did I mention a boat capsized during the tournament? I don’t know if I would’ve capsized but it would’ve been a bumpy ride.
