I’ll make a quick post about how my last club tournament went on Lake LBJ back on October 25th. \u00a0Long story short, I got third, won a little cash, and gained some major ground in the point standings for the season. \u00a0Here’s the breakdown:<\/p>\n
Pre-fishing: <\/strong>Generally speaking I like to give myself three days of pre-fishing before I fish any tournament. \u00a0I’ve always felt like if I can have three days of fishing, I can get the bass figured out. \u00a0Often times I will get them figured out faster than that, but sometimes I don’t quite catch on to what the fish are trying to tell me until that third day. \u00a0However, this month was different. \u00a0All of the gas money that I spent on pre-fishing for the Fishing for Freedom tournament pretty much drained my budget for fishing money for the month. \u00a0Because of that, I was going to have to survive with only one day of pre-fishing for Lake LBJ, a lake that I have never seen before in my life. \u00a0I lucked out and got a pattern dialed in quickly. \u00a0This time of the year is fairly predictable. \u00a0The weather is cooling, so the shad are migrating to the shallows with the bass hot on their tails. \u00a0I happened to find a decent topwater bite first thing in the morning along the dam for some bigger fish, but the main pattern was very similar to what I was doing at Lake Belton recently. \u00a0They seemed to be in shallow, muddy pockets of water that were loaded with shad.<\/p>\n Tournament Day:<\/strong> Now, I must mention that in these club tournaments, there is an off-limits period for one week prior to the tournament date, and none of the participating anglers are allowed to fish on the tournament waters. \u00a0A lot can change in a week. \u00a0Well, we received some very heavy rain the days just prior to this tournament causing the lake level to rise a bit, the water to muddy, and lots of floating debris throughout the whole lake. \u00a0Much different conditions than what I faced a week earlier pre-fishing. \u00a0Upon seeing how muddy the water was, I had a pretty good idea that my topwater bite on the dam would be over, but I decided to start there anyways just in case. \u00a0Just as I expected, that pattern died. \u00a0After fishing half the length of the dam with no strikes, I ran down to the other end of the dam where there was a shallow pocket of water with some shallow weeds in it to try really quick. \u00a0That’s where I put my first keeper in the boat and then decided to target shallow pockets for the rest of the day. \u00a0On my pre-fishing day, I had found one pocket in particular at the back of a slough where I had gotten lots of bites and a couple of decent fish, so that’s where I ran next. \u00a0Unfortunately, as I got there, I could see one boat already in the back of the slough fishing, and one right at the mouth of it waiting for his turn to fish back in there. \u00a0I maintained my distance, fished a few nearby docks, and carefully watched the other anglers fish the slough and back pocket. \u00a0Both boats fished the slough quickly and came back out without catching any fish. \u00a0My turn. \u00a0As I made my way back in, there was a small pocket off to the side of the slough where I landed my next small keeper. \u00a0I ended up spending the next few hours fishing the pocket at the back of the slough nice and slow and managed to catch the rest of my limit out of there by 11:00. \u00a0That was pretty much the end of my day as far as catching fish went. \u00a0After that I moved to go fish some more shallow pockets, but as I arrived at my next location, I opened my livewell to see two of my bass floating belly up. \u00a0Something had clogged my livewell lines preventing fresh water from being pumped in. \u00a0From that point on, my day was pretty well shot with just trying to keep fresh water flowing into the livewell to keep my fish alive for weigh-in. \u00a0Kind of a bummer, but at least I ended up in third place on a lake I’d only fished once before. \u00a0As a result, I stayed in the number four spot in the point standings, but I drastically cut the ten point gap the top three guys had on me to just one point. \u00a0After last month, I had all but given up on being able to actually catch the guy who is in the #1 spot. \u00a0He still has a pretty decent lead, but there is definitely at least hope of catching him now. \u00a0If he stumbles in one of the next two tournaments, I have a shot at catching up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ll make a quick post about how my last club tournament went on Lake LBJ back on October 25th. \u00a0Long story short, I got third, won a little cash, and gained some major ground in the point standings for the season. \u00a0Here’s the breakdown: Pre-fishing: Generally speaking I like to give myself three days of 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