Good, bad, and the ugly!

[Chris]

Ok tournament guys lets hear it, what are the things you did durring a tournament that was the deciding factor if you won or lost?

[Pour Dennis]

This past weekend our club had their year end tourney. It was a two day. During the first day I threw mostly the dropshot and the darterhead. After day one I was in second to last place. On day 2 I changed my tactics a bit and started throwing a white crankbait. I caught my first fish on the first cast of the day. I had my limit by 9:30. Then just before 10:00 I landed the big fish of the day at 5.54. I stayed with the crankbait all day and managed to win the tourney by one tenth of a pound.

[Pond-Pro]

         My freinds an I had a small tournament on a puplic lake at a campsite. Bass were wirth 5 points, bluegill were wirth 1,  catfish, 10 points, and crappie,2. My friend had just caught two crappie of a lay down tree and was leading me by three points.  I cuold either go over to his spot, or I could go after bass at a differant area. I ended up catching a keaper bass on a  4 inch stickbait in the final 10 minutes. I won the bragging rights for that highly preasured lake.  ;D

[Chris]

THE GOOD!

Me and a partner where prefishing a tournament and where trying to get a feel for what the fish where doing.  The lake had two sides to it with a dam in between but durring the tournament we could fish either or both sides. We started off in the shallow side prefishing and caught 5 fish between the both of us 4 out of the five keepers so we left to try the other side. We fished our butts off and ended up catching enough fish to each fill 4 limits a peice. The following weekend was our tournament and we desided to fish the shallow side. I caught the first keeper then it started to rain. We continued fishing and caught 2 more keepers then the lightning made up duck for cover under a railroad bridge. We found half of the people compeating under the bridge. I desided to fish while i waited for the lightning to stop and threw a worm. I had three fish pick up my worm and swim off with it so i told my partner "as soon as we can troll out of here because they just started to bite again!" We started to troll off and turned the corner and caught the big fish of the tournament. At the end of the tournament we won second place and big bass.

[Chris]

THE BAD!

 I was fishing my clubs classic I figured i would hunt around with a crankbait and pitch a jig where I could to get my limit. This was a 2 day classic So i figured i would just need a limit to put myself in good standings for the second day.  I fished main lake points and creek channels Without much luck so i figured i would have to re think what i should be doing. One of the guys who i was fishing against asked me where should he fish and me being nice told him what i was throwing and told him to fish the dam there always is a few fish there. I kept chucking away with my crankbait and catching a bunch of fish but all where short. By this time the guy i sent to the dam ran by where i was and told me he didn't catch anything at the dam. So i packed up and made a run to the dam. When i got there someone was fishing it so i went to another area waiting the guy out. When he left i picked up my flipping stick and started pitching my jig. My second pitch i hooked my kicker 4 lbs 8 oz bass. This was my first keeper. That fish was caught at 11 am so i had 4 more hours to fish. Instead of changing locations compeatly i figured where there is one there must be more. I also didn't want to leave fish to find fish. So for 3 hours i stayed at the dam and never had another bite. I ended up having the second largest fish of the classic but second isn't big fish.

[Chris]

THE UGLY!

I was fishing the second day to my classic. I hit my first 3 spots and never has a bite. I desided to find me some timber and fish it for all it was worth. I tied on a balsa crankbait and started making my run down the timberline. About 9am the wind started howling and i was having a hard time hitting the water with my bait. The wind would carry it to the tree limbs. I didn't want to waste time so by the time i was halfway down the timber line i had broken off 3 crankbaits so by now i was not in a great mood. Finally i had a fish so i brought it in and measured it. 14 1/2 inches and threw it in the livewell.  Through the course of the day i hooked and lost 4 big fish on that crankbait. At weigh in we went to measure my keeper and i messed up and didn't know or forgot that that lake had a size limit of 15 inches. This was a two day classic on two different lakes one lake had a 14 inch size limit the other was 15.  oops!

[Fatdaddy150]

> The last tournament of the year where I work was at Hardy Lake " this lake is located in southern indiana and is less than 900 acres" Me and my partner started of strong with three keepers in the first two hours. We decided to move from the grass bed we were fishing to a point with a small creek that runs by it. We had caught several nice fish in this spot and we wanted to have a couple kicker fish. These tournaments have a five fish limit. We didn't catch one fish in this spot. We decided to move back to the grass bed with one hour of fish time left caught one more keeper ten minutes before the weigh-in. We came in second place. I think that if we would have stayed at the grass bed we would have won!! Other team had four fish also beat us by 12 oz. That hurt but I guess I really can't complain about coming in second place I've done a lot worse!!

[Glenn]

Funny how 2nd is great for most, except when you're 2nd and know you could've done better.  Or, for that matter, when you're 3rd, or 4th, or....  isn't is odd when you place 20th, or 40th, you would've killed for 2nd, but when you end up in 2nd, you're disappointed?  

Chris - great posts!

[Will]

In a 2 day club tournament I took the lead day with a good distance. Day two came and all I had to do would be catch a limit of 14's. Throughout the day I ended up with four keepers, but had lost 4 other solid keepers. Unfortunately I got bumped down to third.Then at a BFL event on the non-boater side I was catching all my fish on eakin jigs and eakin craw trailers. After catching a couple good fish the boater used the same eakin jig, but different trailers and never caught a fish. With 2 hours remaning I ran out of the trailers and couldn't catch the fifth fish. I guess the fish only wanted the eakin trailer.

[Chris]

I was fishing a team tournament on a warm water discharge lake. The wind was blowing hard all day and the lake was packed. We where fishing a large lake that i had never seen or fished before so i asked my partner where do you want to fish. He kept saying i have some spots. So dumb me who was new to the club at the time figured the guy had a handle on the lake so when our number was called we took off.  When we rounded the corner and slowed down to the idle zone one of the guys i was fishing against blew by me and cut me in line to get under the bridge. I asked the guy where the first spot was he said to hang a right and fish the back side of the bridge. When we got to the other side of the bridge the guy that cut in front of me was heading to the spot i was going to. I said well thats taken where is another spot. He then informed me that he only had two spot and never fished the rest of the lake and has only caught one keeper ever in this lake. I though to myself now thats great to know i was kinda ticked. lol Fishing was tough most of the main lake structure or good looking shore cove has someone fishing it. So we hopped around trying to find nothing banks that might have something on them that nobody had found yet. We caught a few short fish so i figured i would try to find some pre spawn fish or fish staging to get into the coves. Still no keepers. By this time we had 5 ft waves crashing my boat and 20 to 30 mph winds. So i hunted for some coves because my trolling motor wasn't holding me out in the main lake. On my 8th cove i told the guy to fish the shore and i'll fish the deeper trees in the center. He hooked a keeper with 10 minutes till weigh in. So i haul butt for the weigh in. Out of 23 boats and 46 fishing the tournament 2 fish where caught and we came in second. go figure.

[bquittem]

thats a crazy story chris

ive never heard of fishing so tuff.

[bquittem]

the first tournament ive ever fished in was on a lake in MN, about 2000 acres or so. it started out I drove me and my parents new startos and when i was backing in this new rig, i forgot the trailer key so the brakes lock and im just stuck i can even go backwards at all. so i pull up and try again and finally i get it into the water after like 5 trys. there was a huge line and everyone waiting to put in at this launch. by this time i look like a jackass so when we are all waiting to start, all the old guys gave me crap and a certain guy really gave me a hard time. when i was entering the big bass for an extra 5 or 10 bucks i cant remember. he wanted to go into another big bass pot just between me and him. I didnt have much extra money with me so i delcined. he said another comment like "too bad i woulda loved to take your money" so now im just ticked and really wanting to beat that guy. i only know of a couple spots and none of them where to hot, it wouldnt of mattered any way because i was drawn last out of like 40 boats. so i just settled with a stretch a docks, i started out good, 3 keepers about 5 lbs. nothing special but in the first hour i was thinking good. i lost a 4+ pounder so i was steaming. the my trolling motor didnt seem to work right, i later discovered it wasnt holding its charge. i left those docks and tried a little bay where i saw a nice lily pad patch i started fishing in there not noticing how shallow it was getting. it was windy so i really couldnt controll myself. got beached and had to use my net to get out, the finally escaped that and when i was motoring out of the bay i hit a sandbar and broke half of one of my blades on my prop. by this time i could only go about 15 miles an hour and that was running at about 5000 rpm.

after this mess i just kept fishing wondering if anything else could go wrong.

i finished the tournament at about 25/40 which i didnt think was so bad after everything that had happened and it was my first tournament.

the guy who really insisted on giving me a hard time didnt catch a single fish the whole day.

sorry for the mouthfull, i had fun remembering the whole day.

[Chris]

Ugly, ugly, ugly! We where fishing another warm water discharge lake called lake Newton. Two weeks before me and a freind where prefishing and ran around looking at what the lake had to offer and desided that deep might be the way to go. We never caught a keeper all day. During the tournament i got teamed up with a guy who had won on the lake three other times before. So i felt good that he might know some places i didn't find prefishing. We headed north to where a creek dumped into the lake and pulled up into a north cove. The guy told me that the lake had big fish in it so i was kinda pumped up. We flipped and pitched all day and never caught a keeper of 18 inches. Caught a bunch of fish just not the right size. Then we pulled up on a point that had a creek channel right up against it. We noticed a 10 inch redshad worm torn up floating. So we dug in our bags and started throwing the same thing. No keepers. Then we took off to another area and right infront of me a guy that i was fishing against caught a keeper right where i was going to hit next on a redshad worm.lol It turned out that he was the only one that caught a keeper and won 1st,2nd,3rd, and big fish.

[bquittem]

thats insane

[Chris]

I was fishing a local lake one day and a guy from my club called my cell phone and asked me if I wanted to fish a thursday nighter open tournament. I asked where? He told me and I said I was fishing it now. So I aggreed to fish.  When he showed up I told him what I had been doing and asked if he had any of the lures I had been throwing. He said yes but he wanted to throw something else. Well when we took off for the tournament I told him that the island all day never got fished so I said we will start there. The island is chuck full of wood so I pulled out my crankbait and started casting. I told the guy that I had been catching fish on a bass pattern lure. The next thing I knew I hooked up! It was bubba! A few more casts later I stuck another fish. This time I had to do the oh crap dance trying to keep it out of the trolling motor. That fish snapped my line. I then tied on an old Big O that I repainted and turnned around and caught 4 more fish. All the fish came off a very small stretch of the island. The other bait I was using was the larger bass pattern shallow Fat Free Shad. Just incase you wanted to know.

[Orabbit]

Not a tournament story but humrous - could have been BAD!

I fish regularly from a 15-foot canoe.  One of my favorite local lakes, a small man-made lake, has a fair number of nice (3-5 pound with the occasional 7 pounder) large mouth bass.  It is also stocked with muskie.  While I do not fish for muskie, it is not uncommon for one to follow and occasionally strike a bass lure.

My lady friend, who is a non-swimmer, enjoys fishing but is somewhat nervous in the canoe.  Therefore, when I take her out fishing, I normally find a quiet cove, anchor and fish for pan fish.  She catches many small blue gill but frequently laments that she never catches the big fish that I often come home with pictures of (I practice catch and release but frequently photograph my prizes!)  I explained to her that in order to catch large bass, we would need to fish differently.

One day she decided she wanted to catch a big fish.  I tied a top water buzz bait to her spin casting rod and rig my spinning rod with a similar lure and we paddled off toward a timber area where I have been known to catch several nice bass.  While the water was fairly deep (about 16 foot) it was a calm day with completely flat water.  She soon got warm wearing her PFD and, since it was so calm, decided to remove it and lay it at her feet.  We had fished for about an hour and I had caught two bass running around 4 pounds each.  She had only caught one about 12 inches long and was getting frustrated.  I pointed toward a particularly dense brush area and suggested she try casting right against the brush.  She made a perfect cast and began the retrieve the buzz bait making it's tell tale sputtering noise as she brought it toward the canoe.  As the bait approached within 6 feet of the bow of the canoe she turned to me and said, Well, I guess you don't know where the fish are after all.  I never even got a bite!  Just at the moment a muskie, approximately 36 inches long, came clear out of the water as it attacked her lure less than 6 feet from her seat!  She jumped so hard she shifted her weight and the canoe jerked to the left.  We began to take water over the left gunwale and I immediately shifted my weight right to counter what I feared was an inevitable capsize.  I was able to correct enough to prevent a capsize and eventually she calmed down enough to sit still.  With about 4 inches of extra ballast I paddled to shore where we emptied the water from the canoe.  She downed her PFD and we paddled out to resume fishing.  Oh and the muskie?  He did not get hooked when he attacked the buzz bait and apparently swam off, satisfied in his revenge on the fishermen!

[crankbait]

The Good----Always have fun fishing tournaments, luv the competition....The bad------Hooked my foot one time when I was wearing sandles.......

The ugly-----My non-boater fishing partner..... ;D