Sten Central at Bull Shoals

[Nick]

Sometimes one wonders why we ever prefish! The weather changed from winter to spring and back to winter again. The winds blew 30-35 for three days and it snowed enough on the final day to throw snowballs!

What amazed me was some bass continued to move shallower, at least the catchable ones. My greatest fear is having a god prefish and two days before the event, I really got on some good fish on jerkbaits.  I left each area quicky, and figured I had a good idea of how to catch them on day one. Uh-oh, after 8 fruitless hours of casting, I returned to weigh in on day one with a zero. I tried to follow the practice fish from shallow to deep, but never found them in any of the tree pl;aces I caught tem in practice.

I pretty much abandoned the channel swing bite and moved farther back in the pockets and get on the board with a total of six keepers over the last two days.  The Kentucky bass were striking lightly and I failed to boat 4 more of them. I'm confident that all were keepers. The water temps stayed in the low 40's, and some fish were caught over pea gravel.  By the third day I was just trying to hit as many untouched places as I could to find aggressive fish in the colored waters around Theodosia.  That plan worked a a little, but I failed to get a check. I did accumulate enough points to feel confident as this series has just four events total before the championship.  I finished 57th.

A longtime asquaintance of mine Tim Fleetwood won the event going away.  He lives on the lake, and no one does a better job eith the jerkbait than he does.  Congrats.