Not sure what I did wrong.

[Ski]

Fished my second tourney of this season as a co-angler. The boater told me up front " be prepared to throw deep crank-baits. 

So the days leading up to the event on a N Fl. lake named Sante-Fe, I came prepared with 5 and 6 strike King XD baits.

While other anglers pounded the shore line, I found myself well offshore looking @ the side scan @ a large piece of cover.

The boater after his 3rd cast  bows the rod up and says "here she comes, net please" so I scalped a large sow and we knuckle bumped.

This got me going and we proceeded to make cast after cast. Make a long story short, he caught 9 fish  I caught 0 !!! @ one point he even gave me the same color and size bait he was throwing. I changed presentations several times throughout the day including rattle-trap, C-Rig lizard, C-Rig 10 inch culprit, C-Rig finesse worm, Shakey head worms, and even lightly weighted Senko's to no eval. He ended up winning the event with 5 fish for 18.5 pounds, big fish pot, and lunker pot with his 8.5 while I posted a goose egg "embarrassing" and I still do not know what I did wrong. 

A good angler put me on good fish, on his spot, and I made nothing work. And yes I am better than that but not that day.

R/Chris 

[Choporoz]

Some days we're the nail....maybe your boater owes you a cut....for avoiding those fish for his benefit...pretty nice of you

[Ski]

Trust me, it was not intentional!

[InfantryMP]

I would say congrats for being on the winning boat!

 

Yea it is tough to get skunked, when you see your partner there catching a bunch, and some decent ones. I think days like that really are just a way to innovate your game a little more. Think about what happened, what else maybe you could have done. When I have a great day, I never think about what else I could have done better. 

[Logan S]

One of those times where having all the physical things correct like location, bait, color, depth, etc, are just not enough.  He was probably doing something subtle in his presentation that was trigging the strikes.  Or it could have been a matter of making more precise casts to track his bait exactly on a line that was more likely to get a strike, as the boater he can set himself up for that...You wouldn't be able to from the back.  

 

Keep on that guys good side and and see if you can draw some tips out of him on how/why he was doing things, sounds like someone to learn from .  

[GReb]

Was he doing anything different with his retrieve?  Cadence, stop/start, twitch, etc?  Could also be something minor like line diameter or cast angle placing his lure in the strike zone longer. Or it could be just a bit of luck. 
 

Sounds like you need to get back in his boat for more derbies!

[A-Jay]

 Since you had 'the bait'  . . now if you were using similar gear - line type/size

AND

making 'that exact same cast' - 

and I mean The Same cast - direction and length, and you didn't get bit

THEN

I would say you had some seriously bad luck.

Otherwise I'm willing to say that you might have been 'close' to those fish,

But from the back of the boat, casting in a different direction,

if those bass were 'On' a hard bottom or shell spot and you weren't hitting it with your bait every cast, might not have matter what you threw, you probably weren't near the fish - 

End result - you lived it - no bites. 

Any of that ring true ?

A-Jay 

[TnRiver46]

That happens to me every year since like 1997 on my Alabama trip with spinnerbaits. 23 years later I still ain’t got it. I REALLY hate a spinnerbait. I could also throw a 5 or 6xd until rapture and never catch a fish, some things can’t be explained 

[Fishes in trees]

He knew something you didn't, that's for sure.  The optimist in my says that those were just his fish and you couldn't catch them.   The pessimist in me says that you just got back-boated.  The realist in me says that somewhere in the middle of those options is the truth.

[RichF]

Like @Logan S said, it's all about the getting a good line on the spot the bass are holding.  This is the hardest thing about deep cranking.  You have to hit the exact spot they're sitting to trigger a strike.  You can make 30 casts to the same spot, be "off" just a hair (I mean by inches), and never get a strike.  Once you hit that exact line/angle, it's like magic.  This is almost impossible to do when you don't have control of the boat, unfortunately. 

[scaleface]

Its happened to me too .