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Follow my Fish of 2018
I have gotten texts, tweets, calls about why I haven't put out a report for the ABT North Division on Weiss Lake. No, it's not because I am embarrassed that we finished around 100th (which was a new personal best, considering the first two tournaments) but because I have been traveling for work. I mean, yeah, embarrassment is PART of it. 'Cause you best believe that had we finished in the top 10, I'd have this report out by Sunday morning. Anyways....
Weiss isn't exactly close to home, ya know. It's about a 2.5 hour trip one way. Between our other clubs and work travel, I never made it to Weiss until the day before our tournament. Josh was able to go one day over a week before, simply to see what the lake was like. This is gonna sound funny, if you've been to Weiss and Logan-Martin, but we expected the two lakes to fish similar. I mean, they are on the same river, right?
We expected rock piles and offshore. We expected top water on sea walls. We got none of that. It took me about five minutes Friday morning to realize that my preconceived expectations may have really messed me up. And, after what ranks in the top ten hardest prefishing days I've ever had, I laughed in the face of a local who told me it would take 25 pounds to win.
Josh had found fish the week before by throwing a square bill on sea walls. The good news was, there are a lot of seawalls within a mile or so of Leesburg marina. My experience has been that if square bills work in the middle of the morning, top water will also work early. That's based on trips to Logan-Martin.
You can read about some of our trips to Logan-Martin here:
Late Friday, literally the last place we fished, was a main river point. We had the boat sitting in 20 feet of water and had marked fish sitting on the main river drop. Josh caught the best fish of our day on a worm and that fish had at least two other fish follow the worm to the boat. I caught my first and only fish in practice minutes later, though I did have another one follow a crank to the boat. Josh caught two more. We figured we had a good spot to hit around 8AM after the seawall bite died down.
We also found a lot of grass, so naturally our game plan was to catch a limit of spots and go hog hunting the grass. We anchored that by a series of frog blowups we had on a long flat of grass.
So let me stop here at explain something that most of you wouldn't read if I put it at the end of this post. Yes, I realize how bad I'm struggling in the ABT. Don't need anyone else to remind me cause God knows I've been hearing it from literally every angle. I realize this isn't a 15 boat tournament or some benefit derby. I'm used to being in the running for a check. I've spent the last weeks following ABT tournaments over analyzing myself on why I can't even get mid-pack. When you struggle, you really start wondering if you are cut out for this. Maybe you aren't as good as you think, which would be something else cause I already don't think much of myself.
Over weeks of thinking, I've come up with something and I am going to bold it so you can't miss it.
It doesn't matter how talented you are if you can't adapt to fishing bigger tournaments.
That's a combination of things that includes ability, sure, but also prefishing and having not one or two or three spots but ten or more and MANAGING those spots.
Ok, carry on.
So we were boat 176 or so coming out and we quickly ran to the nearest seawall. Josh would pick up a fish on basically every seawall on a squarebill while I tossed a combination of baits behind him, specifically a buzzbait, spook, and whopper plopper. Josh had caught around seven fish and I hadn't had a bite. I began throwing a worm behind him and that didn't work either.
That bite died real quick and we didn't even have a limit out of those seven fish. We began fishing docks and we eventually got our tiny limit in that manner. It was this point we noticed something: every dock and every point was getting pounded. Like, a boat would leave and another would pull up.
In a 225 boat tournament, these is virtually ZERO chance of winning an event by fishing behind everybody else, who is fishing behind everybody else. None.
We retreated to the grass only to find boats doing that as well.
We then went offshore, thinking we might could find fish that hadn't been pressured. We marked some very nice offshore channel swings that were holding fish, but we couldn't get them to bite consistently and found ourselves spending way too much time on areas that were not producing. Not only that, but as we were fishing offshore, we found our assumption that people wouldn't be doing this was also wrong. Every hump was also getting fished.
Although we did make some small culls. we knew we needed two big bites to put us in the money. We found an offshore area that was being ignored and we marked both bait and fish on it. Most importantly, there were active fish in the area.
Throwing a 3/4 ounce swinghead with a big worm, I boated our biggest fish of the day, a three pound spot that was a huge cull for us. That got us to over nine pounds. While we knew that wasn't enough to get a check, we knew one more of those bites would be enough and two more bites might be a top 20 finish.
I had both of those bites in the waning minutes of the tournament.
The first thumped the worm and I leaned on her, but never got the hook through. That one is on me. You gotta give a fish more time to get a 10 inch worm swallowed and with a large gauge hook and a ton of line stretch, you gotta really let them have it.
The next bite, I fought the fish to the boat. This came on the end of a very long cast and there is no question this fish was in the three to four pound range. I fought this fish for what seemed like eternity, got the fish around the back of the boat and around the motor and she simply let go. Between the thump, the load, and the fact that this fish was mean enough to fight me without have the hook in her tells me all I need to know.
That would have been over a three pound cull and would have gotten us to around 13 pounds and firmly where we needed and hoped to have been.
Look, I get it. I can feel the eyes rolling. Every missed fish is a giant, right? This wasn't a giant, but it was the quality fish we needed.
Weiss was really tough, though it wasn't tough to the guys at the top, who did catch over 26 pounds to win, which is insane. We never saw anything to lead us to believe that was possible. We had assumed 18 to win and 12 to cash a check. According to the ABT story, locals believed in similar numbers. And, aside from that monster bag, it was dead on. The ABT is going back to Weiss next year and I really believe we will do well. In the last hour or so, we really learned some important stuff.
In the end, we caught only 15 fish on tournament day with even less in practice. We expected to have a tough go at it simply because we didn't practice and everyone else does....many three and four days straight. Our talent, such as it is, wasn't enough to overcome this, though it has been in smaller tournaments. Gotta adapt to these bigger tournaments. Logan-Martin up next.
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