BSCBC Tournament – For the Win! (Kinda)

This year has been a very weird one for me as far as tournament fishing goes.  I guess that overall, it has kind of been a bust.  This year has been plagued with boat problems, schedule conflicts, and sickness.  The plan was to fish the Media Bass and TTZ tournament trails.  However, I only ended up being able to fish a few events in each trail, and because of that, I do not qualify to fish the championships for either trail.  There were also a couple of tournaments that I went to, but ended up having boat problems early on in the day that cost me those tournaments.  If I made it to a tournament though, and didn’t have any mechanical issues or other uncontrollable issues, look out!  I did pretty well in those ones.  Take yesterday for example…

For the first time this year, I was finally able to fish a Big Sandy Creek Bass Club tournament.  It has been at least 2 or 3 months since I’ve fished a tournament at all, so I was really looking forward to it, even if it was just a club tournament.  I was planning on pre-fishing just one day beforehand, but someone ended up scheduling a guide trip the same day that I was planning on pre-fishing.  Pre-fish for a club tournament or take guaranteed money for a guide trip?  Guide trip takes priority, hands down.  I was ok with that though because despite having fished Inks Lake only once in my entire life, I had oodles of confidence going in to this tournament.  First, a little background with my experience on Inks…

A few years ago I used to fish with the ATX Bassmasters club.  There was one summer day where we were supposed to fish a tournament on Lake Buchanan.  When we showed up at the lake that morning, we were greeted with high winds and thunderstorms rolling across the lake.  If any of you know what Buch is like during adverse weather, you’ll completely understand that we did not feel safe fishing the lake that day.  As we stood at the ramp deciding what to do, someone suggested that we go check out Inks.  Inks is a small lake just below the Buchanan Dam and offers much more protection from the wind and from the looks of the radar at the time, looked like it should be clear of the storm.  So we all jumped in our trucks and made the short drive to Inks.  Sure enough, the conditions looked fishable, so off we went!  This was actually one of my favorite tournaments ever.  Reason being, none of us, with the exception of one guy, had ever even seen Inks Lake before.  It was very reminiscent of the old school Bassmaster Classics or the new Major League Fishing events.  The playing field was suddenly leveled with most of us having no previous knowledge about the lake.  Long story short, I got on a decent frog bite and ended up taking second place behind the one guy in the club who did have quite a bit of experience fishing Inks.  In my mind, that was a win.

Now fast forward to this past weekend’s BSCBC’s tournament.  Even with having only one day of experience on the lake from more than 3 years ago, that one day of experience was a good one and really boosted my confidence on the lake.  I knew that it had potential for a good frog bite, and any time there’s potential for a good frog bite, my confidence sky rockets.  I told my wife the night before as I was headed to bed, “I want to win tomorrow.  I think I’ll just do that.”

The morning of the tournament, as my partner and I were headed to the lake, I think I wasn’t totally paying attention to my GPS and I took a wrong turn somewhere.  By the time I realized it, we had already been following the new route that the GPS generated for like 15 minutes, so it wasn’t going to do us any good to turn around.  Either way, I had tacked on 30 minutes to our drive and we were going to be cutting it close to getting there on time.  Luckily we arrived just in time for me to scramble to launch the boat and take off within about 5 minutes of launching.

As we were idling out of the marina, I turned on my fish finder to try and look at a map of the lake to try and figure out where I was headed.  Map wasn’t coming up.  Eh, well, I think I know where I want to go.  I start heading down lake to a cove I remembered from 3 years ago that had some timber and some shallow rock piles in it.  As I pulled in to the cove, I started trying to pull up a map again.  I sat there idling around the cove for about 5 minutes trying to get my map to pull up with no luck.  As I visually scanned the shorelines of the cove, I just wasn’t feeling it.  I told my partner, “Well, with no map today, we will just need to start with what I can visually see.  Let’s find some reeds or grass or something to start throwing a topwater around.”  I pulled out of the cove and started running up lake and quickly saw a shoreline lined with reeds and shoreline grass.  I figured this was as good of a place as any and we got to work.

My partner for today was my buddy, Jeff.  He likes to fish, and can handle a baitcaster well enough, but he doesn’t really have any of his own gear.  He typically just uses mine when he comes out.  I first decided to pull out a River2Sea Rover 128.  It’s a large walking-style topwater, and I figured it’d be the easiest thing for him to learn how to walk-the-dog with.  I fired off a cast towards the middle of a large shallow pocket and proceeded to teach Jeff how to walk-the-dog with a topwater bait.  As I was demonstrating the retrieve, the Rover gets blown-up on that first cast.  A few minutes later, I’ve got a 5lber in the boat.  Good start!

We continue to work our way down the shoreline fishing the reeds and water willow with our River2Sea Rovers and a few other baits with no luck.  I turn around and decide to start fishing the other direction from where I caught the first one.  We were cycling through baits trying to get dialed into something, but they just didn’t seem to be up shallow.  Just as we reached the end of this main lake shoreline and the shore started taking a turn into a cove, I told Jeff, “Ok, one more cast and we are going to go start messing around offshore for just a little bit.”  I fired off a long cast with a hollow-bodied frog that landed just around the corner as the lake turned into a large creek arm and into the edge of some water willow.  The rising sun was right in my eyes blocking sight of my frog, but as I was trying to shake it through the water willow I just heard a HUGE explosion and felt my line tighten up.  Boom!  I put a solid 3.5+ lb fish in the boat.  I guess we should continue into this creek arm a bit and fish some more of this water willow…

We keep fishing into the creek arm, and I keep chucking my frog around this super shallow grass that is in less than two feet of water.  About 15 minutes later, another fish slurps down the frog, and I’m horsing in 5 pounder number two.  Now I’m getting pumped up.  It’s probably around 8:15 in the morning, and I’ve already got two 5 pounders and a heavy 3 pounder.  Let’s do this!!!

We finished fishing the rest of the water willow on that stretch and I said, let’s go find some more of that stuff.  We head uplake just a bit and find another cove with lots of good stretches of water willow in it.  The wind is picking up a bit, and I start getting worried that it will kill the frog bite.  We make it all the way to the back of the cove having fished lots of good-looking grass with nothing.  As we reach the back, there’s a good over-hanging tree putting some good shade over some grass.  I skip the frog back there and put fish #4 into the boat.  It’s smaller at about 2lbs, but still it’s fish #4.  I flip the boat around to start fishing out of the cove, and just as I do so, I put fish #5 in the boat.  Another 3lber on the frog.  It’s about 9:15 AM, and I’ve got about 18lbs in the boat.  Boo-ya.  I’m feelin’ pretty good about my odds.

The only problem is, this is technically a team tournament, and I still haven’t been able to get Jeff on a fish.  The club does the pay-out for the tournament based on combined weight for each of the angler’s five-fish limits.  However, the point standings towards Angler of the Year are based upon your individual placing in the tournament.  So in essence, there is kind of two tournaments taking place at the same time: a team tournament, and an individual tournament.  If we want to take the first place pay-out, then I need to put Jeff on some fish.  Time to really focus on putting Jeff on some fish.

We start running around trying lots of different things to just try and get Jeff on some fish.  The fish want nothing to do with it.  After doing this for a couple of hours with nothing to show for it, I start realizing that aside from my shallow frog fish, it’s a pretty tough bite.  We tried about everything I could think of to try and put him on some fish, but they just weren’t cooperating.  At around 11:00, I decided we needed to just try and commit to the shallow grass and hopefully Jeff would put a fish or two in the boat.  On our first stop back to some water willow, I promptly put a fish in the boat close to 3lbs once again on the frog.  This one would cull my smaller 2lber and bump me up around 19lbs.

We spent the rest of the tournament just running from one patch of water willow to the next, and we never caught another fish for the rest of the day.  With the exception of a short fish or two caught by Jeff.  With how tough it was to get Jeff on a fish, I knew that most of the field had probably struggled.  As we made it back to weigh-in at 2:00, the chatter starts floating around and sure enough, it was a tough day for most everyone.  As the fish start hitting the scales, it looks like it’s going to come down to whether or not my bag alone was going to hold off a father and son team that only had four fish, but two of them were toads, a 9lber and a 7lber.  Sure enough, their combined team weight was about a pound more than my limit, so they took the first place pay-out.  Jeff and I took 2nd.  I did, however, have the largest individual bag.  So, in my mind, it was a win.  🙂

I was glad to see the father and son team win though.  The kid was celebrating his 10th birthday that day, and he actually caught the 7lber on a little Zebco rod.  Freakin’ awesome.  I will gladly lose to a kid on his birthday any day.  Great job, guys.