Whew! \u00a0What a crazy couple of months! \u00a0I don’t know how the guys that fish tournaments nearly every weekend do it. \u00a0Trying to fish two trails this year was busy enough for me. \u00a0This year’s regular tournament season has come to a close with only the championships remaining to be fished in the fall. \u00a0So how’d things end up? \u00a0I guess it depends on how you look at it. \u00a0Things got a little depressing more often than I would’ve liked it to at each tournament with not as many high tournament finishes as I was envisioning at the beginning of the season. \u00a0However, when you look at the overall picture, things seemed to work out in the end. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Just like I did at the midway point in the season, let’s review each of the tournaments from the last half of the season:<\/p>\n
Media Bass – Lake LBJ (21 Apr 2012):<\/strong>\u00a0 Honestly, I’m having a difficult time remembering much about this tournament, which goes to show it was a pretty mediocre tournament. \u00a0All I remember of this tournament is the last hour of it. \u00a0I can’t remember how pre-fishing went or even how \/ where I fished most of the day during the tournament. \u00a0What stands out is that last hour. \u00a0As I recall, heading into the last hour, I’d had a pretty slow, miserable day, and I don’t think I had a thing in the livewell. \u00a0If I had anything, it was just one small fish in the livewell up until that point. \u00a0Finally, in the last hour as I was running out of options, I resorted to drop-shotting the rip-rap on the dam. \u00a0As I pulled up to the dam, the wind was howling and blowing straight onto the rocks. \u00a0I pulled out my trusty drop-shot, and within 30 minutes I had put 3 or 4 keepers in the livewell and lost two other potential keepers. \u00a0All of them solid 2lb fish. \u00a0With 30 minutes to spare, I thought, I can do this… just one more keeper. \u00a0In just those first 30 minutes, I’d already had 5-6 keeper bites. \u00a0However, with so little time to left, losing those two keepers really hurt. \u00a0And then that’s when it all just went to crap. \u00a0In those last 30 minutes, I lost FIVE MORE keepers; all of them solid 2-4lb fish. \u00a0To this day, I don’t know what happened. \u00a0They’d load up on the rod, solid hook-sets, but then they’d make it to the boat, make a hard dive for the bottom, and the hook would pop right out every time. \u00a0I ended up weighing in 4 fish and finished in 5th place. \u00a0Outside of the money. \u00a0I left that tournament pretty disgusted…<\/p>\n Faith Angler Network – Lake Travis (28 Apr 2012):<\/strong>\u00a0 I remember this tournament pretty well. \u00a0FREAKIN’ TOUGH. \u00a0Neither David nor I were really able to pre-fish for this one, so we went into it pretty well blind. \u00a0David had fished in another tournament here the weekend before, but didn’t do so well and hadn’t learned much. \u00a0Today would prove no different. \u00a0I couldn’t believe how tough it was. \u00a0The morning started off in a cove where we found bass busting shad against a couple of docks. \u00a0They were pinning the shad up against the side of the docks and picking them off. \u00a0David hooked about a 3lber on a senko under the dock, but it pulled off after nearly making it into the net. \u00a0This would prove to be our only pattern for the day. \u00a0I left the senko pattern up to David while I tried to get them going other ways. \u00a0It was slow fishing all day with David picking up a small keeper here and there on the senko under docks. \u00a0Luckily, David put 5 small ones in the boat for us, and I only ever caught a couple of dinks all day long. \u00a0We just couldn’t get dialed into anything all day, and for some reason we were both just drained that day. \u00a0Neither of us were 100% mentally there that day. \u00a0We finished middle of the pack in 14th place.<\/p>\n Media Bass – Lake LBJ (19 May 2012): <\/strong>Another frustrating day. \u00a0Pre-fishing for this event was awesome, and I fully expected a top 3 finish in this one. \u00a0I’d done my homework for this one and scouted out A LOT of offshore spots on Google Earth. \u00a0Pre-fishing, I found a pretty good frog \/ jig bite early in the morning upriver, and then an awesome offshore rockpile bite throughout the lake. \u00a0Every rockpile I pulled up on, I caught keeper fish off of. \u00a0So what happened in the tournament? \u00a0Heck if I know. \u00a0Started the morning upriver trying the frog and jig bite. \u00a0The fish were eating shad like gangbusters in that shallow grass up there at daylight! \u00a0The grass was shaking, shad were fleeing everywhere, and the bass were gobbling them up… but I couldn’t BUY a bite!!! \u00a0I swear I tried everything… except of course for what the eventual winner was throwing (a 3″ shad swimbait… go figure). \u00a0I finally gave up upriver, and started running to the offshore rockpiles thinking I’d get a limit EASY. \u00a0No such luck. \u00a0Every rockpile I hit was full of DINKS. \u00a0Once again, how did I end the tournament? \u00a0Running to the dam to drop-shot for the last hour. \u00a0Once again, put 3 keepers in the boat, and lost one. \u00a0Not as crazy as last time, but still kinda depressing. \u00a0I only weighed in 3 fish and finished in 8th place.<\/p>\n Media Bass – Belton Lake (09 June 2012): <\/strong>I was kind of dreading, but also looking forward to this one. \u00a0I had mixed feelings after pre-fishing earlier in the week. \u00a0While pre-fishing, I had a really quick limit after finding schooling fish in the first hour of the day. \u00a0They were all really small, but still, it was a limit, and on Belton that goes a long way. \u00a0The rest of the day pre-fishing was very tough. \u00a0I figured my best hope for the tournament was to hunt schooling fish early in the day. \u00a0I found the schooling fish on tournament day, but they wouldn’t stay up on top as long as they did while pre-fishing. \u00a0They’d pop up for only 10-20 seconds at a time and they kept on the move. \u00a0I just couldn’t make it to them fast enough before they would dive back down and move on. \u00a0It was a typical tough, hot summer day on Belton. \u00a0I caught several dinks, but that was it. \u00a0Typically the deal is to find schools of fish suspended in the trees in really deep water. \u00a0I graphed a lot of fish throughout the day, but could never get them to go. \u00a0Only small ones. \u00a0Finally, in the last hour, I lost about a 2lber right at the boat that I had drop-shotted suspended in a tree in 35 ft of water. \u00a0I guess I should’ve stuck with that all day and maybe scrounged out a few more bites. \u00a0Since I only lost the one fish, I figured it probably didn’t really cost me much. \u00a0Turned out it did, first place had two fish for 3.05 lbs. \u00a0TOUGH. \u00a0That one fish would’ve put me into 2nd or 3rd place and in the money. \u00a0Boo.<\/p>\n AOY Points Results: <\/strong>By the end of the season, I had moved up to 4th place in the AOY standings in the Media Bass trail. \u00a0Not too shabby. \u00a0This means that I qualify to fish the championship tournament on Sam Rayburn in October for a shot at $10,000. \u00a0Cool. \u00a0However, the gas expenses alone to compete in such a tournament are beyond what I feel comfortable forking out. \u00a0I want to fish it, but I need some sponsor support. \u00a0The only way I’m fishing it is if I get a little help from some companies. \u00a0I’ve thrown the idea around with a few people so far just testing the waters… and well, I just may actually get there. \u00a0We’ll see what happens. \u00a0And in the FAN trail? \u00a0Well, David and I opted not to fish the last tournament of the season. \u00a0It was on the same day as the Media Bass tournament, so we had to choose which tournament to fish. \u00a0We decided that we were already qualified to fish the FAN championship, so missing one tournament in FAN wouldn’t hurt us. \u00a0As a result though, that of course caused us to take a hard hit in the AOY race and we fell to 17th as a result.<\/p>\n Anyway, not the tournament season I was hoping for this year, but you can’t dwell on it. \u00a0Just move on, keep your head down, and fish. \u00a0You can’t let it get you down for too long. \u00a0But hey, things are already looking up. \u00a0I just got 2nd place plus big bass in our club tournament yesterday. \u00a0I lost to David by an ounce. \u00a0I’ll take it though after these last several tournaments. \u00a0Hopefully this is where I start to turn it around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Whew! \u00a0What a crazy couple of months! \u00a0I don’t know how the guys that fish tournaments nearly every weekend do it. \u00a0Trying to fish two trails this year was busy enough for me. \u00a0This year’s regular tournament season has come to a close with only the championships remaining to be fished in the fall. \u00a0So […]<\/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-221","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\/221","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=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":223,"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions\/223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}