FAN Championship – WIN!!! (Play by Play)

If you are reading this right now, odds are you’ve already heard about the win that my partner, David Bueche, and I recently received at the Faith Angler Network Championship tournament this past weekend. Most everyone that may actually read this blog is either a friend or family member, so I’ve probably already told you. 🙂   Well, the prize money may not have been a huge amount (although certainly not a minuscule amount either), but the most important part of this win for me (and I’d be willing to bet David as well) was just the fact that we were finally able to put together a win in a fairly significant tournament.

I know we’ve both worked really hard over the last few years, and we’ve both had a lot of really close calls. So to finally have things go our way, and for the chips to finally fall in our favor, was a relief and a huge shot of confidence for the future. Here’s the breakdown of how things panned out:

Tournament Prep

Both David and I had done quite a bit of preparation before the off-limits period.  Mostly in the form of spending a lot of time on Lake Austin for the weeks beforehand trying to find key locations, habits, and patterns of the bigger bass out there.  David was able to get out a couple of days before the official off-limits period, and I was able to get out there just before it as well.  Unfortunately, David was going to be out of town during the official practice day, so it’d be up to me to test our patterns and theories and try to develop us a winning pattern.  We kept in touch during the off-limits period and discussed strategy and bounced ideas off of each other comparing notes of our trips before the off-limits period.

The day before the official practice, I made a stop at Beau Reed’s house (of Papa Chops Rod and Reel Repair) in order to hopefully design a tournament jersey he’s working on for me.  As we chatted, I remembered a TTZ Wednesday night tournament that he had recently done well in a few weeks earlier with Garland Abernathy.  I asked Beau what their primary pattern was (it should be noted that Beau had not been on the tournament waters during the off-limits period, so this was completely fair info to receive), and without skipping a beat, Beau was more than willing to share more than I had asked for.  He drew out a map of an area of the lake he’d found where they’d caught their fish and explained how they were positioned in the area.  After leaving, I didn’t really have any intentions of trying the area that Beau had shared with me, because I’d pretty much already had a game plan for pre-fishing in mind.  I went home and got everything ready for tomorrow’s practice day.

Official Practice Day (Thursday)

As I was driving to Lake Austin early in the morning, I began giving a little more thought to what Beau had shared with me the day before.  Coming into practice, I had given quite a bit of thought of the winning pattern being offshore somewhere, and as I continued to think, Beau’s area really kind of fit the bill of the sort of thing I wanted to find.  I figured I could start off in that area, throw a few different baits around, and be out of there within 30 minutes to go try the other things David and I had discussed.

When I got to the area at daylight, there were already four other boats/teams in the direct area.  They were all, however, up fishing tight to the shoreline.  I idled around the area in the middle of the lake for a few minutes looking at my graph to get a feel for the depth contours and weedlines and such.  The area consisted of a creek channel extending out to the middle of the lake connecting with the main river channel, and on each side of the creek channel there were some pretty big grass flats.  I put down the trolling motor, switched it to high, and started fan casting the flat with a topwater bait, a Lucky Craft Sammy.  About 3 or 4  minutes later, I had my eyes off the bait when I heard… *KAWOOSH!!!*  I looked back just in time to see a giant toilet bowl flush strike and boated a good bass just under 4lbs.  I immediately removed my hooks from my bait to prevent hooking any more fish and continued to throw the Sammy to see how many strikes I could get.  I worked the area for about 20 minutes, covering a lot of water, and had a total of 8 blow-ups.  I had a couple of strikes in the specific area Beau told me about, but the bulk of them came from an area a little ways away from it.

About that time, the boat that was working the mouth of the creek left and I decided to check it out while I was there.  I made a cast with a Spro Bronzeye Frog at an inside grassline right at the mouth of the creek, and once again… *KAWOOSH!!!*  That fish weighed 4lbs 15oz.  

I skipped over the rest of the mouth of the creek not making any casts and worked my way into it.  I skipped my frog under and back into 3 boat slips just inside the creek… in 2 out of the 3 boat slips, again… *KAWOOSH, KAWOOSH!!!*  I shook both of those fish off of the frog and left them for game day.  I spent maybe 15-20 minutes in that creek and left.

By this time I was pretty stoked and decided to move and check out a new area.  The next area I went to, was another area near the mouth of a creek with some good grasslines and deep water nearby.  I put my hooks back on the Sammy and fired away. A few minutes later I got another blow-up and set the hook into another toad.  This one went 7lbs 1oz.

I took my hooks off again, and within the next 30 minutes I had 3 more blow-ups and was feeling really good.  I felt pretty good about what I’d found so far and decided I needed to start running some other patterns that David and I had talked about.  For the next several hours, I ran to a lot of spots and tried a lot of different techniques/baits.  I picked up some dinks here and there and a couple squeeker keepers here and there, but nothing as good as the morning offshore topwater bite.

Towards 2:00 it was getting hot, boat traffic was increasing, and I was getting pretty tired and thinking of calling it a day.  Thinking about it though, I had just a handful of more spots to try and decided I needed to stick it out.  The next spot I went to was a rocky shoreline with some overhanging trees just outside the mouth of a creek  on the lower end of the lake (below the 360 bridge).  My first pitch to the bank with a drop-shot rig produced a 2lber.  I covered my hook and continued pitching to the rocks.  In the next 10 pitches, I shook off 6 fish that all felt fairly heavy.  I figured it’d be a good area to round out a limit real quick if we needed to.  That was pretty much the end of my pre-fishing day.

That night, I went to the pre-tournament meeting as David was still on a plane coming back into town.  During the meeting, looking around, I saw a lot of REALLY good anglers.  And yet, I think it was the first time I’ve been at a pre-tournament meeting like that and didn’t feel a little intimidated.  I felt good, and I called David after the meeting when he had arrived at the airport and told him, “We can win this thing, man.”

Day 1

David and I got a pretty good draw for our boat number the night before at the meeting (boat #5), and we were optimistic about being the first ones to get to the spot.  I figured nobody would try and start on the offshore stuff outside of the creek, but someone might try to start at the mouth of the creek and fish in the creek a bit.  We wanted to try and beat anyone to the mouth of the creek, fish it really quick, then move to the offshore grass.  However, even with being boat #5, someone had already beaten us to the mouth of the creek.  No worries though.  We started offshore just outside of the creek.  Quickly more boats lined the shorelines close to the mouth of the creek, while we stayed a long ways offshore.  After a couple of missed blow-ups and a dink or two, David put the first keeper in the boat on a Pop-R that was probably just shy of 3lbs.  We kept fan-casting the area for quite a while, getting an occasional missed blow-up.  For some reason they didn’t seem to be eating it as well as the day before.  We kept at it though and then suddenly I had one just absolutely EXPLODE on the Sammy!  I felt like I was watching a Great White attack a seal during Shark Week on the Discovery Channel!!!

She buried herself in the thick hydrilla several times, but we eventually got her into the net: a solid fish probably just under 5lbs.  We gave each other a few high-5s and kept slinging our topwaters.  As we covered a little more water, and as I was beginning to become almost hypnotized by the rhythmic “walk-the-dog” action of my Sammy, I was once again snapped back into things when I saw…

Another hellacious strike nearly taking the rod from my hands!  I didn’t even get to set the hook before the fish immediately began peeling line off my reel.  Once again, she buried herself in the grass several times, but applying steady pressure and tiring her out, she finally made her way into the boat.  This one was pretty close to 6lbs.

Now David and I were really stoked and things were looking good.  We fished the area over another time or two with no more strikes.  The team that had started at the mouth of the creek had left, so we decided to hit the creek really quick before we moved.  We fished it pretty quick, but it didn’t produce anything for us.

We then went to the area where I’d caught the 7lber the day before, but there wasn’t much going on.  As we were fishing the area, a school of bass began busting shad out in the middle of the channel, and I started firing my Sammy out there.  I had a fish blow up on it a few times, but it wasn’t connecting with the hooks.  When the Sammy made it back to the boat, there was one of the biggest schools of bass I’ve ever seen following my Sammy!  There must’ve been 30-50 bass all from 1-2.5lbs that followed it all the way to the boat before disappearing below us.  Several minutes later, they surfaced again.  Firing my Sammy out to them again, this time I connected with one.  Keeper #4 was a squeaker right at 14″ (the minimum length).  The area didn’t produce anything else for us.

The next few hours became pretty brutal.  We bounced around to several areas, only putting a few dinks in the boat.  Finally, sometime around 1:00, we were trying to decide our next move.  I reminded David of the shoreline I’d found during practice where I’d shaken off several drop-shot fish down the lake.  I told him I was uneasy about going down there though because I felt like it was just a freak thing the day before.  I said, “Well, David, you’ve done pretty well this year at making decisions about what you need to do to put five fish in the boat, so I trust your decision.  You make the call.”  He decided we needed to at least try the drop-shot bank.  We wanted at least two more bites, one to fill out the limit and one to cull my small 14″ keeper.

We pulled up to the rocky shoreline and started pitching out our drop-shot rigs.  On my 4th or 5th pitch…”Fish on!”  This one was a solid 15.5″ keeper.  As I was on the back of the boat holding my fish and trying to grab a culling tag out of the livewell, David yells “Fish on!”  I chucked my fish in the livewell without a cull tag and ran to the front to help net David’s fish.  This one was a solid chunk probably a few ounces shy of 3lbs.  Within minutes we were right in the position we wanted to be!  Good choice on moving, David!!  We made a couple more casts, but decided we should probably leave the area without beating up on it too bad in case we needed it again for day 2.

Now it was time to try and start culling up with just a little under 2 hours to spare before weigh-in.  To finish out the day, we ran to our starting spot and decided to try fishing the deeper grasslines in the area in order to get a good bite with some slower techniques.  We tried several baits getting a few dinks here and there.  I picked up my flipping stick rigged with a full-size Brush Hog and a one ounce tungsten weight for punching thick grass.  My first flip was to the edge of the deep grassline in about 18ft of water.  *Thunk!*  I swung back at the bite and quickly put another solid fish a few ounces shy of 3lbs into the boat.  This culled out my smaller drop-shot fish, and added almost 2lbs to our weight.

Soon after that David hooks into a monster fishing a drop-shot rig on the edge of the grassline.  Fighting it for several minutes, it kept peeling off line and burrowing itself back into the grass.  Finally, it found something solid though in the grass and got David hung up for good.  We had to break that one off.

As 3:00 neared we ran back to the weigh-in a little early to get the boat on the trailer and weigh our fish so we could hopefully go home early to get some rest.  As we hauled our fish to the scales we figured we had 16-17lbs.  The bag hit the scales and popped straight up to 19+lbs.  Surprise!!!  We took the lead and kept it for the rest of the weigh-in.  Freakin’ sweet!

Day 2

The morning launch ramp banter was pretty entertaining.  Seems like the rumors floating around were that we were catching our fish on topwater frogs.  David and I have both kind of been big frog fishing fiends all summer out on Lake Austin, and so that’s probably where that rumor derived from.  But after not weighing in one fish on a frog after day 1, the frog bite was just a rumor.  We played along with it a little bit though.  🙂  Actually, David had driven down to Cabela’s after day 1 in order to buy a couple of Sammys, so we could hopefully capitalize on that bite on Day 2.

As things got underway and we raced to our area, we were extremely optimistic.  After all, I had caught 20 lbs in practice, and we weighed in 19lbs on day 1; why wouldn’t we be able to do it again today?  Getting settled in our starting area, again, we found a boat at the mouth of the creek, and a couple lined along the shoreline.  We again started in the middle.  Within a few short minutes, we put 2 or 3 short fish in the boat, and our expectations were raised for a great topwater bite to get going.  After another short wait, David put a good keeper in the boat.  All right!  We finished covering that half of the grass flat with maybe one or two more missed blow-ups.  It seemed like the fish were just slapping at the bait.  Hmmmm?  As we continued to cover the second large half of the flat, we had a few more missed blow-ups that simply didn’t really eat the bait.  We kept rocketing those Sammy’s out there, but it got slow really quick.  We didn’t boat anything on the other half of the flat.  Nervousness was starting to set in.  We went back to the other half of the flat.  As we kept walking our Sammys, the tension began to mount, and we both started talking about what our game plan was going to be from here.  Neither of us seemed to want to admit it, but the topwater bite was less than stellar this morning.

At length, we agreed that we needed a big fish in the boat, and our best chances for one was on a topwater early.  This spot wasn’t happening today, so we knew we had to find our big fish elsewhere.  We racked our brains for an area that would be similar to this first one, and finally agreed upon a location and took off while it was still fairly early.

Arriving at the new location, we stopped and began firing the Sammys away at the shallow grass in the middle of the lake.  We started covering water with the trolling motor on high, and then finally David got a blow-up; it didn’t hook up.  We kept going.  A little while later I got a couple of blow-ups; they didn’t hook up either.  Finally I got a blow up and it ate it!  Fish on!!!  David watched me fight the fish without even stepping towards the net, as if he somehow knew something was going to go wrong. I got the fish coming towards the boat a bit, and he suddenly jumped and thrashed wildly.  It was a solid 3lber, and the Sammy came flying out of his mouth.  Fish off.  Things were getting frustrating real quick, and we could both tell without really saying anything to each other.  I think we were both beginning to feel a little lost as our topwater bite didn’t seem to be going as planned.  This is what we were counting on to win the tournament.  Now what?

As we fished the grass flat, I kept eyeing a nearby shoreline with a good inside grassline that I’ve pulled some good frog fish out of.  During practice I even saw some fish in the 6lb class cruising it.  I could tell David was getting antsy and was wanting to make a move.  “Hey man, we need to go fish that bank, so I can throw a frog on it before we leave this area,” I told David.  David obliged by putting the t-motor on high and cruising toward the shoreline.  As we neared it, I picked up my frog rod and we started working down the shoreline.  About halfway down the shoreline section I wanted to cover…*KAWOOSH!*  The frog gets taken under!  I set the hook and start trying to fight the bass through the thick grassline.  David grabbed the net, but I told him the fish was getting wrapped up in the grass and we needed to get up there.  As he started heading the boat that way, the fish freed itself from the grassline and started heading toward the boat.  I scrambled to get the fish over the top of the net, and literally the instant that it went over the net, the hooks came flying out and David scooped the fish into the boat!  Whew!!!  This one went just shy of 5lbs.  “YEAH!  That was the right fish at just the right moment we needed it!” David exclaimed.  Instantly, both of us were pumped again and had our heads right back in the game.  We were still in it after all.

We kept working down the shoreline, and as we reached the end of it…*KAWOOSH!*…again!  My frog gets attacked in some super skinny water by a BIG fish, but this time…the fish missed the frog.  It was still floating right there.  We worked the bank over again to no avail.  With two big frog bites, we decided we needed to start running some of our better frog banks to see how the frog bite was.  We spent the next hour or more doing that… but nothing.

We were approaching the halfway mark in the day, and we started to get into panic mode a little bit. We only had two fish in the livewell, and we still couldn’t establish a pattern.  We started junk fishing hitting several familiar confidence areas with some confidence baits.  Nothing, nada, zilch.  We weren’t hardly even catching dinks and we were running all over the place.  Finally we determined it was time to go fish the drop-shot bank below the bridge.

We worked our way along the short section of rocky shoreline with our drop-shot rigs.  We caught a few dinks… but the keeper-sized fish we’d caught the day before had seemed to vanish.  We skirted over to the other side of the creek mouth where there was a similar rocky shoreline.  I felt a “tick” on my line and set the hook.  It felt solid, and I could feel a headshake, but I also felt my light line rubbing against what felt like a tree limb underwater.  I kept steady pressure when suddenly I felt it pop free from whatever it was rubbing against.  The line still felt really heavy though, so I couldn’t tell if it still had a limb wrapped in the line.  We soon saw the fish and realized nope!  It was just a good, solid-sized keeper!  In the net, and #3 in the livewell!!!  David and I started breathing a little easier realizing we just needed two more bites in the boat.  That was all we caught in that area.

Next David took us to a confidence area for him to fish some docks.  We began working around the docks skipping baits in there when David said, “you should work your drop-shot inbetween the docks along the shoreline while I skip back under the docks.”  “Sounds like a great plan to me,” I replied as I picked up my drop-shot rod.  A couple of docks later, I pitched up to the outer edge of a dock, and got bit several feet out in front of it.  We soon had solid keeper #4 in the boat!!!  We both started reminding ourselves, “One more bite!  One more bite!”

As we finished out that area, we were beginning to get close to the last hour of the tournament.  I told David, “Well man, you make good decisions about were to go in order to fill out a limit.  You make the call, and I’ll do everything I can to help put that last fish in the boat when we get there.”  David quickly thought of a spot and said, “It’s gonna happen there.”

We ran back up the lake to a very specific spot that only really required a few casts to cover.  We made some pitches to it with various baits, but nothing.  The nervousness in our voices as we began to contemplate our next move began to show a bit.  Suddenly, as we were in the middle of talking about where we were going to go from there, David sets the hook!  “I don’t think it’s any good,” David grumbled.  As David fought the fish to the boat, it was looking pretty close to the 14″ mark.  He threw it on the measuring board and exclaimed…”15 inches!!!”  I don’t think either of us had ever been so excited to catch a 15″ fish before.  The tension and mood in the boat instantly lightened, and you could tell both of us felt like we could finally breath again.  We were giving each other high-5s, but we very quickly realized we still probably didn’t have the weight we need to win.  Just knowing we’d be going to the scales with a limit though was a HUGE relief.

After David threw his fish in the livewell, we looked at the clock and figured we had about 30-40 minutes left to fish before we needed to head towards the weigh-in.  We really felt like we needed a big fish, so we decided on a spot with big fish potential and decided to stay put there for the rest of the tournament.  We ran to where I had caught the bigger frog fish earlier in the morning.  We fished hard until the last minutes, but no big bite for us.  We were happy knowing we’d done our best, and I think both of us were ready to go weigh-in and were willing to accept most likely not winning.

At the weigh-in site, we brought our fish to the scales, and we weighed in for 12.85lbs.  Enough to put us into the lead with a total of 32+ lbs.  We were both happy to have the lead, but we really didn’t feel like it was going to hold up.  The few teams who were right behind us on Day 1 still hadn’t weighed in yet.  Soon though, we saw the 2nd place team from Day 1 walking to the weigh-in line.  Several guys eyeballed their bag from a distance and figured they’d only had maybe 8lbs in their bag.  I liked the  sound of that!!!  But until the fish were on the scales, we still had reason to worry.  Sure enough, they struggled and only had a small 8lb limit.  WHEW!  As we neared the end of the weigh-in, there was only one team that hadn’t weighed in yet that we knew had a shot at catching us.  They needed a 16+ lb bag to take over us.  As they walked up to the scales it looked like they were pretty close to that.  As we all watched the scales, they were bouncing around in the 15lb range, but would jump up to 16lbs every once in a while.  Talk about nerve wracking!!!  Finally, the scales settled just over 15.5lbs.  YEAH BUDDY!!!!   David and I patted each other on the back and were both grinning ear to ear.  Unbelievable!  We were both certain our weight wouldn’t hold up, but what luck!!!

Conclusion

It was a great tournament and a great experience for David and I.  We’ve both worked so hard this year in our tournament fishing, and we’ve had some finishes in the money, but we were both really craving a good win.  It was a huge relief to finally get it, and the circumstances around it were perfect.  To me, winning a championship tournament on Lake Austin means a lot.  There’s a lot of REALLY good anglers around here that are REALLY good on Lake Austin.  It’s pretty tough to get a win over some of those guys on Lake Austin.  Being able to do that is definitely something special.  After so many close calls the last couple of years, it felt good to finally seal the deal, and it gave both David and I the confidence we need to keep going and feel like we can actually compete against some of the more well known names around here.  As many bass anglers will tell you, confidence plays a huge role in this sport.  All this win has done for me is completely fuel me and made me feel even more competitive to get even more wins.  I’ve gotten a lot of 2nds and 3rds in tournaments the last few years, but winning is something completely different.  I fish to win now.  Second place is just the first loser.  Nobody cares or remembers about who got 2nd or 3rd.  First place is all that matters.

Thanks for everyone who has supported me and continues to support me in my fishing!  And thank you so much to all of my sponsors, friends, and family who believe in me!  This one was for you guys!!!