Well, I’ve been wanting to post a blog update after each tournament, but that’s proving to be near impossible! \u00a0Balancing school, work, and competitive fishing is no easy task, but I’m up for the challenge. \u00a0I’ve been doing a good job of keeping the Facebook fan page ( facebook.com\/andermeine ) going strong, but the website here has been getting neglected a bit. \u00a0Here’s a quick run down of all the tournaments I’ve fished so far this year<\/p>\n
(Low) Media Bass \u00a0– Lake LBJ (21 Jan 2012): <\/strong>I had pretty mediocre pre-fishing results for this tournament. \u00a0I was able to get out on LBJ maybe 3 times during the month prior to the tournament, and the last of which was an entire week before the tournament. \u00a0A lot can change in a week, however, the three times I had been out over a period of a month, the bite was very consistent… SLOW. \u00a0January is pretty much the coldest month here in central Texas, and the fish were definitely in a winter pattern. \u00a0I wasn’t catching a lot of fish pre-fishing, but I was catching a limit each time I went out by throwing a drop-shot rig. \u00a0The fish were deep (15ft+) holding along steep bluff\/rock banks and on deep channel points. \u00a0I had also located a pretty good offshore rocky ledge that dropped from about 6ft down to 20ft+ that was right at a bend in a creek channel that I was able to catch quite a few good fish from. \u00a0I thought for sure I could catch at least 3 good fish from it on tournament day.<\/p>\n The tournament was disappointing to say the least. \u00a0Like I said, a lot can change in a week, and the week prior to the tournament was the week things decided to change. \u00a0The offshore ledge that I’d found that had been producing consistently for the past month only produced one squeaker 14″ fish. \u00a0I pounded probably 6 or 7 other spots that had also produced over the last month, and only caught one more fish off a bluff in about 28ft of water (that’s DEEP on LBJ). \u00a0I tried finding something new as well, but it just wasn’t happening. \u00a0I weighed two fish for 2.86lbs and ended up in 17th place. \u00a0Boo.<\/p>\n (High) Faith Angler Network – Belton Lake (11 Feb 2012): <\/strong>Pre-fishing for this tournament was also mediocre. \u00a0My partner, David Bueche, and I were able to both get out on the lake to pre-fish on the official practice day the day before the tournament. \u00a0With both of us having our own boat, it allowed us to split up and cover twice as much water and experiment with twice as many patterns. \u00a0Since Belton is notorious for being won fishing deep, offshore structure, and I’ve been figuring that bite out in the last couple of years on Belton, it was decided that I’d spend the day looking deep and David would run other patterns up shallow. \u00a0We were also both excited to experiment with a new rig that has taken the tournament world by storm because Belton seemed like the perfect place for it. \u00a0By the time David and I decided to meet up at noon to discuss how things had gone thus far, I had concluded the deep bite wasn’t happening. \u00a0The water was much murkier than Belton typically is, and often times that creates a difficult deep bite. \u00a0I’d only had a couple of bites out deep all morning. \u00a0David, on the other hand, had great news and reported a very consistent pattern fishing secondary points in 6-15ft of water in creek arms. \u00a0They were apparently starting to go into pre-spawn mode. \u00a0David even managed to catch one fish on the new rig we were excited to try.<\/p>\n Tournament day worked out great. \u00a0The only thing we were lacking was a kicker fish. \u00a0David and I were lucky enough to be boat #1, and went straight to our primary area where David had found them the day before. \u00a0David caught them during practice on a jig and a t-rigged beaver, so that’s what he started with. \u00a0I decided to start off throwing this new rig (which will remain nameless because a lot of guys around here seem to think it’s a joke, so we’re going to try and use it for as long as we can without everyone around here catching on). \u00a0Sure enough, the fish were on the secondary points, but they weren’t eating David’s jig and beaver as well anymore. \u00a0David caught one of our slightly bigger fish on a jig that contributed greatly, but I ended up catching a keeper on EVERY point we fished that day. \u00a0We caught probably 10 keepers (which is a great day on a normally very stingy Belton) that day. \u00a0We weighed in 10.38lbs which was good enough to cut us a decent check in 5th place.<\/p>\n (High\/Low?) Media Bass – Lake LBJ (18 Feb 2012):<\/strong>\u00a0 Pre-fishing this time around went pretty well. \u00a0It started off really slow, but after catching an LBJ TOAD at 8lbs 11oz, that fish clued me in to a pretty good pattern. \u00a0I caught that fish off a craw colored crankbait on a rocky mainlake point at the mouth of a creek channel (pre-spawn pattern). \u00a0The only problem was I could only find maybe 4 spots on the whole lake that fit the bill of the exact type of point I was looking for. \u00a0Every one of them produced a solid 2-4lb keeper while pre-fishing though. \u00a0I thought for sure I’d be able to sack at least 13lbs, and if I could get a big one, maybe even 16-18lbs.<\/p>\n Tournament day was pretty miserable. \u00a0It was COLD, WET, and WINDY! \u00a0Temps were in the 50s, it was raining ALL day long (often times POURING sheets of rain!), and the wind was a constant 15-20mph gusting up to 35mph all day. \u00a0This made it incredibly difficult to fish my pattern on mainlake points. \u00a0Nonetheless, I stuck it out. \u00a0I managed to catch 3 solid fish weighing 8.42lbs, but just couldn’t scrape out those last two fish. \u00a0I did have one other fish about the size of the other 3 \u00a0that got off at the boat, but that was it. \u00a0Two more fish of the size that I was catching would’ve put me in the money. \u00a0When it ended though, I was certainly glad to get into a warm, dry, truck where there was no air movement. \u00a0\ud83d\ude42 \u00a0Finished 11th place.<\/p>\n (High AND Low!) Media Bass – Belton Lake (17 Mar 2012):<\/strong>\u00a0 Pre-fishing for this tournament was perfect. \u00a0The week before the tournament just happened to be Spring Break at school, so I had oodles of time. \u00a0With the tournament on \u00a0a Saturday, I took off Thurs and Fri from work so I could pre-fish. \u00a0I stayed at friend’s house up in Killeen (who is also a tournament angler, Mike Pulido) to cut down on gas expenses for the weekend. \u00a0It helps a lot when you can sleep in a warm bed and shower every night. \u00a0Mike is pretty experienced on Belton and pre-fished with me both days. \u00a0Thursday, we found a very consistent pattern on the lower lake in clearer water throwing flukes near the backs of creek arms. \u00a0However, we only caught small keepers in the 1-2lb range. \u00a0I figured it could produce a small limit of maybe 8-10lbs, which isn’t entirely bad on Belton. \u00a0On Friday, we decided to run up the lake to where I can sometimes catch bigger limits in the 15lb range. \u00a0However, with the conditions, I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting much up there. \u00a0I was really expecting to just eliminate water. \u00a0We found the opposite. \u00a0We were shaking off fish all day…and GOOD fish (2-4lbers). \u00a0We were flipping flooded brush in the backs of creeks. \u00a0I was pumped. \u00a0THIS was a winning pattern.<\/p>\n Tournament day went pretty well. \u00a0I had decided on one creek that I would spend most of my day in. \u00a0The wind was blowing pretty hard at about 20mph, but I was pretty protected where I was at. \u00a0It started off slow and I didn’t get my first keeper until around 9:45. \u00a0That one sat alone in the livewell until around 11 when the clouds finally cleared and the sun came out. \u00a0Then it was game on and I had my limit in the livewell by 12:00. \u00a0Today was different though. \u00a0The bigger fish \u00a0we’d been getting bit from the day before weren’t biting anymore, and the bites weren’t as aggressive. \u00a0The day before they were biting hard and as soon as the bait hit the water. \u00a0Today they were very subtle bites and I really had to coax them into eating the bait. \u00a0Anyways, I ended up culling up to a 10lb+ limit before it was time to head to weigh-in. \u00a0I jumped in the driver’s seat… and the boat wouldn’t start. \u00a0My heart sank. \u00a0I frantically scrambled about cursing under my breath trying to get it started. \u00a0Finally 10 minutes later, I found the problem, got it started, and screamed down the lake. \u00a0I was 6 minutes late to the weigh-in. \u00a0I was DQed. \u00a0I had them weigh my fish anyways just to see. \u00a0There were only two limits weighed in the whole tournament. \u00a0I had the third. \u00a0It weighed 10.16lbs. \u00a0Enough for third place, a plaque, and a decent check. Instead, my score was 0.00lbs and last place. \u00a0I still feel sick about that.<\/p>\n (So, so) Faith Angler Network – Lake LBJ (24 Mar 2012): <\/strong>Pre-fishing for this tournament was non-existent. \u00a0Neither David nor I were able to get out and pre-fish at all for this tournament. \u00a0The closest thing we had was that David had fished the Bass Champs tournament on this lake just a week earlier. \u00a0He didn’t do so hot in Bass Champs though and only weighed in a small limit for 9 something pounds. \u00a0He said they caught a lot of fish, but no size. \u00a0He did, however, say he learned a lot. \u00a0He knew where the winning team was fishing, and that most of the top contenders were sight fishing.<\/p>\n Game day didn’t go so hot. \u00a0It was pretty tough going and David was complaining that the fishing was even tougher now than it was during Bass Champs. \u00a0He said they had a limit pretty early on last week, but we struggled to get out limit. \u00a0We tried a little bit of everything and ended up catching our fish on a little bit of everything. \u00a0It was a definite junk fishing kind of day. \u00a0We managed to catch all 5 of our fish on completely different baits, fishing completely different cover\/structure for each of them. \u00a0It was a real nail biter too because we caught two of our five in the final 30 minutes of the tournament. \u00a0We managed a small limit for 10.50lbs and ended up finishing in 14th place.<\/p>\n Halfway Point in Both Trails, So Where does That Put Me? \u00a0<\/strong>Actually, I’m doing pretty well in both the Media Bass and FAN Angler of the Year standings. \u00a0Media Bass I’m currently in 8th place out of 30 anglers. \u00a0However, I calculated out the points, and if I had actually made it to the weigh-in on time and didn’t get DQed at the Belton event, I WOULD be sitting in 5th place in the AOY standings for Media Bass. \u00a0Which is interesting, because 5th place is exactly where David and I sit in the AOY standings for FAN out of 43 teams. \u00a0I’m ok with this. \u00a0I am now at the halfway mark of both tournament trails. \u00a0I’m ready to start gaining ground in the second half of the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well, I’ve been wanting to post a blog update after each tournament, but that’s proving to be near impossible! \u00a0Balancing school, work, and competitive fishing is no easy task, but I’m up for the challenge. \u00a0I’ve been doing a good job of keeping the Facebook fan page ( facebook.com\/andermeine ) going strong, but the website […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-211","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-fishing","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215,"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions\/215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}