The Unstoppable Rebel Force

The Unstoppable Rebel Force… that’s the name my friend, Will, and I came up with for ourselves back in high school.  Will and I pretty much thought we were God’s gift to women.  We felt like we could pretty much get any girl we wanted.  We were so enamored with ourselves and our “skills” that we even began writing a book.  Ya, we were pretty dumb.  Ha!  Looking back at it now, I realize we were just a couple of cocky kids who still had a lot to learn.  Occasionally though, I still have times in my life when I feel a little bit like an Unstoppable Rebel Force.  I’m feelin’ that a little bit right now in my tournaments, but I’ve since learned the error of my ways in truly believing such a statement.  Things can be good when they’re good, but you can get humbled REAL quick.  All I know right now is that I’ve got some good momentum going, so I’d like to ride it as long as I can before it slows again.  Let’s recap now my last couple of tournaments since my Media Bass win in February…

23 Feb 2013 – Bass Champs – Lake Travis:  Honestly, it’s been a while since this tournament so I can’t remember much about it.  All I know is that we didn’t win and we didn’t finish in the money.  We finished somewhere in the middle of the pack.  But we were on the right track with the fish we had.  Both David and I were pretty limited on our ability to pre-fish for this tournament, so we were going into it a little blind.  We weren’t too worried though because of the week off-limits period before Bass Champs tournament.  The conditions had been changing so much and so rapidly, that we figured even if we had pre-fishing before the cut-off period, things would’ve changed before the tournament.  However, we at least were each able to get out for a few hours before the cut-off just to check out general lake conditions.  After scanning much of the lake, we both deliberated during the off-limits period and we both agreed on where we felt held the most potential.  Up the lake in the river.

So that’s where we went and we pretty much stuck to our guns up there the whole tournament.  Our best guess was that it was going to take 12-13lbs to win and 9lbs to cut a check.  So either a 4lb average, or a couple of 3s with a 6+ for a kicker.  As the tournament started, I started off throwing a Frenzy Baits 5-Prong Bounty Hunter umbrella rig.    I had it rigged with some 4″ FishChick colored Big Hammer Swimbaits, and in the center prong I was throwing a white/chart chatterbait w/ one of the Big Hammers as the trailer.  Within 5 minutes of the tournament start, I had the first fish on the Frenzy Baits Bounty Hunter.  Solid 3lber in the boat.  BOOM, Baby!  I was thinking it was going to shape up to be an umbrella rig kind of day.  Long story short… it wasn’t.  It turned out to be a REALLY tough day.

David soon caught our next fish on a crankbait… another 3lber.  Things were looking good.  He caught it bumping the crank around a shallow stump.  As David was unhooking his fish, I jumped up on the trolling motor to pitch a home-tied mop jig around the stump he had just caught his fish on.  On my third pitch to the stump, I felt it drop down through the roots and *THUMP!*  I set the hook and my rod loaded up with the weight of a big fish.  I felt her start to run, but I felt my line wrapped around the roots of the stump.  She made a hard surge and suddenly my whipped back up as the line went slack.  She busted 20lb test fluorocarbon.  FML.  After talking about it, David and I felt like that the fish he caught off the stump was the male on a nest, and then I hooked the female on the mop jig.  I won’t try to guess the weight of the fish I lost, but David and I both agreed that it was probably a “game changer.”  Heavy enough to have put us in the money, maybe even have given us a win.

The rest of the day was pretty slow.  We had two good fish, so we kept looking for that big one to put us up where we needed to be.  I broke one fish off on a lipless crankbait later, but it jumped a couple of times after I’d lost it while it still had the trap in its mouth.  It didn’t look real big… 2lbs maybe.  That was it…

 

09 Mar 2013 – Big Sandy Creek Bass Club – Lake Austin – ANOTHER WIN!:  First, I need to give a disclaimer.  Even though this one was a win, I’m just lucky it was a team tournament!  My team partner 15 year-old, Nathan Wright, carried us for sure.  It was Nate’s day to shine.  I’ll start from the morning of the tournament since I didn’t do any pre-fishing to talk about…

As I was driving to the lake, I got a text message from Nate, “Sorry man, I’m feeling really sick and my dad is running behind.  We’ll be there kinda late.”  Normally, I’d be annoyed, but it was just a club tournament.  I told myself this year I wasn’t going to be real serious about club tourneys.  I’m just there to have fun.  At the ramp, I prepped the boat as everyone else in the club launched their boats and took off.  Nate came rolling into the parking lot with his dad 10 minutes after the tournament had already started.  Nate’s dad leaned out the window and said, “Sorry we’re late.  Nate is really sick.  He was actually throwing up last night.  His temperature is normal though, and he really wants to fish.  If he was running a fever, I wouldn’t of even considered bringing him out.  Nate says if we give him a priesthood blessing, he’ll be fine though and can fish.”  Here’s a situation I’ve never run across before in a tournament.  Ha!  Nate’s family and I are all of the same religion, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  We’re also known as Mormons.  I won’t explain in detail here what a priesthood blessing necessarily is, but if you want to know, please check out Mormon.org.  Anyways, I don’t think I’ve ever been in a situation to give a priesthood blessing at a tournament, but it was pretty cool and I was more than happy to assist Nate’s dad in giving Nate a blessing.  In short order, Nate got his gear loaded in the boat and we were out on the water.

As we idled out of the no wake zone, Nate and I decided to have a quick prayer together before we took off.  We quickly did so and then sped down lake to our first spot.  By the time we started fishing, it was probably 30 minutes after the tournament had started.  We began fishing a deeper grassline in 15-18ft of water just off of a good grassy spawning flat.  On Nate’s 3rd cast, he sets the hook and is already pulling in his first keeper… 2lber.  I asked Nate if that made him feel a little better.  He said he was starting to feel a little better.  🙂  We kept fishing the deep grass and within another 5 minutes, Nate is setting the hook again…”Oh my gosh, this is a big one,” Nate grunts has he battles the bass.  Sure enough, I see Nate’s line start raising towards the surface and Bassquatch errupts out of the water.  Looks like he was kidding.  After an intense battle with the big girl making several hard runs straight under the boat to the deeper bottom, she eventually finds her way to the net and I heave her onboard.  Nate starts going Ike on us and yelling and jumping up and down on the boat.  I just start laughing and we exchange a few high-5s.  Nate asked how big I thought it was, I told him… “Maybe 6.”  There was another boat or two in the area up fishing closer to the bank.  They heard the ruckus and moved offshore pretty darn quick.  Ha!

Things slowed a bit after that.  We started moving back and forth from shallow grass to deep grass.  Nate put another small keeper in the boat on some deeper grass again about an hour later.  We made a move up lake a bit to an area Nate wanted to fish.  As we fished down the shoreline I saw an empty bed and kept my eyes on it as we passed scanning for a fish.  Nothing.  Just as I passed it, Nate exclaims, “There’s a fish!”  He points at the bed just behind the boat, and sure enough, I see a 3lber move up onto it.  He flips to it and suddenly exclaims… “Fish on!”  That was quick.  3lber in the boat, and now Nate has 4 keepers to my zero.  I was all about it though.  🙂  He was having a great time and no signs of feeling ill.  We continued to fish down the shoreline, and I see a small male on a bed that MIGHT keep.  I flip my 4.5″ PowerTeam Lures Food Chain Tube on the back side of a small grass mat next to the bed.  As I’m looking at the small male, I feel something start loading up on my rod.  I set the hook and boat a 2.5lber.  Surprise!  It was the little fat female sitting just outside of the nest in the grass.

By this point, I had been really trying to swing for the fences for a big limit, but it just wasn’t happening.  I started thinking maybe I needed to start just trying to catch a limit to go with the good sack Nate has got going.  We ran to several spots that I expected to possibly catch some keepers on.  No go.  With an hour and a half left to go in the tournament, we ran back to our starting spot where Nate caught the big one.  Things were pretty dead elsewhere, so I decided we were going to grind it out there.  Well, by this time, there were probably 5-6 boats all fishing that spot.  We squeezed in with a boat to our left and right each about a long cast away.  I started firing off a deep-diving jerkbait as there was some good wind-blowing.  Within a few casts, something whacks my jerkbait and put keeper #2 in the boat for me… probably 2lbs.  A few casts after that, Nate puts his fifth and final small keeper in the boat.  That was all she wrote for us though.  I broke off one more fish on a hook-set, but that was it.

Heading to the weigh-in, Nate was excited about his bag, but I was less than optimistic about us placing well as a team.  After all, I only had two fish to go with Nate’s limit.  Surely someone whacked ’em.  We weighed our fish and I went back to the boat to start cleaning up.  As the last few bags were getting weighed, one of the guys in the club comes up to me and says, “You guys might take it.  I haven’t even seen a team weigh in a 10-fish limit that was as much as Nate’s 5.”  Apparently it was a REALLY tough day for everyone.  This piqued my interested, so I moseyed back to the weigh-in with Nate.  They started reading the weights for 3rd and 2nd place and I just started laughing.  Sure enough.  We won it, and even got Big Bass with Nate’s fish weighing 6.97lbs.  Pretty cool.  Nate was pretty much walking on a cloud.

Nate and I would both like to thank God, first and foremost, for allowing us to have an awesome day out on the water together and for answering our prayers to heal Nate to allow him to fish well.  We’d also like to thank a common sponsor of ours, PowerTeam Lures.  They make THE best plastic baits around, and my bed fish caught on the Food Chain tube proved to be a key fish in our win (we didn’t win by much!).  We were both soaking all of our baits in their Hog Tonic fish attractant which we also felt was key to our success on such a tough day.  Most of the day we were fishing in a crowd, and we were getting bit more than other guys for sure.

With all the being said… the momentum continues to build… we’ll see how long I can ride it!