This past weekend, I got to fish in the first club tourney of the year that was over on the Mississippi River in pools 4, 5, and 5a. The morning started off early and brisk. When we left the house at 4 am the temp was in the low 30's and dropped to into the upper 20's before take off. Luckily with the rise of the sun it was back into the 30's at take off. The water temp had dropped a good 7-8 degrees since my prefishing trip the weekend before so I had my fingers crossed that the fish we had found were at least close to the same area.
The morning definitely didn't start as planned. My motor, was having some issues and a last minute landing change (due to a city ordinance) had over 11 miles of river and a lock sitting between us and our primary area. Someone must have been looking over our shoulder though. We pulled up to the lock just as the doors were opening. Despite freezing our butts off, we made it to our first spot; a very shallow sand flat with current running over the top with a quick drop into deeper water on the back side.
It only took us about 10 minutes before my dad got the first hit on a jerkbait, but missed it and had the same thing happen two casts later. Shortly after that is when the magic happened, we managed to boat 6 keepers off this tiny little stretch with all but two being over 3 lbs. and one of the two that were under was just barely under. We had our limit in just over an hour and caught the 6th shortly after. When things finally slowed down, we worked out way out and went over to another area we were going to hit. We had idled up a creek arm a little ways to another small area that we thought held some fish. We weren't there for more than 15 minutes when I pulled in an 18" smallie that bumped our smallest. Didn't get to cull after that, but that was ok. We ended up finishing in second place with a 5 fish total of 17.41 lbs All the keepers were caught on either a Rapala Shadow Rap, an Xcalibur XCS100, or a Bomber Suspending Long A. Hand an absolute blast and am pumped to get back out again!
