This was a rough one.\u00a0 I weighed in 2 little fish for like 2.8 something pounds I think.\u00a0 I don’t even remember how I caught those fish.\u00a0 I’ve blocked it out of my memory.\u00a0 Ha!\u00a0 I had a pretty good pre-fish too.\u00a0 One day I caught an 18lb bag on a jig fishing deeper rocks and docks, including a 7lber.\u00a0 Tournament day though, that bite was gone.\u00a0 I’m not sure what happened.\u00a0 Not much to talk about with this tournament other than… it sucked.<\/p>\n
TTZ @ Lake LBJ – January<\/strong><\/p>\n This was actually our best TTZ finish so far this season, although we’ve really only fished three TTZ events this year.\u00a0 My partner, Stephen Malina, and I ended up cutting a check in 11th place.\u00a0 It was a total junk fishing kind of day\u00a0though.\u00a0 After having sucked in the Media Bass tournament on this lake just one week earlier, I was clueless with where to start or what to do.\u00a0 I left our starting location\u00a0decision up to Stephen, which was good.\u00a0 It started off with me catching\u00a0a 5lber\u00a0on a Rapala Shad Rap on 8lb test on a spinning rod off of a dock.\u00a0 Pretty intense.\u00a0 That got us pretty pumped up and I was hoping the Shad Rap would be the deal.\u00a0 Not the case.\u00a0 We ended up catching all 5 of our fish on different baits and all in completely different depths and structure.\u00a0 Stephen caught another good 4+lber on a Biffle Bug on some deep offshore rock later in the day.\u00a0 So basically, we got lucky and just happened to get the right bites in the boat.\u00a0 I don’t think we would’ve had a repeat performance the next day, but luckily this was just a one day tournament.\u00a0 Our season was off to a decent start.<\/p>\n Media Bass @ Lake Austin – February<\/strong><\/p>\n BOAT PROBLEMS.\u00a0 I had a pretty great pre-fish and was whacking fish left and right on a jerkbait.\u00a0 I was ready to tear into ’em and had an awesome prespawn staging area where they were ganged up on.\u00a0 Probably only a 4-5 minute run from the boat ramp too.\u00a0 As I was running to that spot first thing in the morning, I made it maybe halfway there and my motor instantly shut down and was making a terrible racket.\u00a0 I was dead in the water.\u00a0 My heart sank, and I just felt sick for the rest of the day.\u00a0 I spent the day on the trolling motor trying to make the best of a horrible situation in unproductive water.\u00a0 I think I caught two fish on a jerkbait, lost one on a Shad Rap, and broke one off on a PowerTeam Lures Finicky Tickler on their Peahead Shakyhead.\u00a0 With only 2 fish in the livewell towards weigh-in time, I figured it wasn’t worth trying to hitch a ride back with someone back to the weigh-in, so I just loaded it up on the trailer and took a zero for that tournament.\u00a0 And oh, it was a lower unit issue.\u00a0 Got it replaced and was back on my way thanks to Gary and the guys over at Tracker Marine here in Austin.<\/p>\n TTZ @ Lake Austin – February<\/strong><\/p>\n Just a mediocre finish here.\u00a0 We decided to take a risk and see if we could avoid the crowds that we knew were going to flock to the grass on the upper end of the lake, and we took our chances on the lower end since both of us had caught good fish down there pre-fishing.\u00a0 We ended up catching a lot of fish, but we simply could not find those bigger bites.\u00a0 Lots of fish on a jerkbait.\u00a0 It was a lot of fun, but we completely missed the target by not heading uplake.\u00a0 There was a ridiculous amount of 20+lb bags weighed in and the tournament was won with a nearly 44lb bag!\u00a0 INSANE!!!\u00a0 I don’t even remember what we had.\u00a0 It was like 13-15lbs or something lame.\u00a0 At least it was lame compared to the scores of 20lb bags.\u00a0 Boo.<\/p>\n Media Bass @ Lake Austin – March<\/strong><\/p>\n This was the month when there was a conflict with TTZ and Media Bass and I decided to fish Media Bass.\u00a0 I had points I needed to make up after my boat problems at the last event in February and my terrible finish in Janary.\u00a0 Time to make up ground.\u00a0 I did it with a 3rd place finish weighing in 22.75lbs with a big fish of 9.5lbs.\u00a0 I had a 7lber in my bag as well, but the other three were dinks.\u00a0 I just needed to swap out one of those dinks for a 3lber and I would’ve been in great shape for a shot at the win.\u00a0 Cut a check and put myself back into the point standings to qualify for the championship.\u00a0 Mission accomplished.<\/p>\n Even got some GoPro footage at this tournament:<\/p>\n![\"In-the-money](\"http:\/\/www.andermeine.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/TTZ-Trail-LBJ-Jan-2014.jpg\")
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