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Follow my Fish of 2018
About half of you come here looking for a little knowledge to help you on your next fishing trip. That's great, that's what I am here for.
The other half of you come here looking for a little more than that. You want to read the story. That's great, that's ALSO what I am here for.
Saturday morning in McFarland Park, we already knew what the day had in store for us. After months and months of record flooding, TVA had dropped the water to the point that they really couldn't drop it any more. Current was cut off for most of the week. Brad had fished the weekend before. One fish. Josh and I fished Friday and the fishing wasn't good. But my friend Naaman had fished the previous Monday and had found something special. Something that was NOT current related. I had other friends that had similar experiences. Fishing was super tough for anyone who could only put a day or so of prefishing together.
So, come blast-off time, Brad and I had largely conceded that we weren't going to win. But we had decided that we were NOT going to let the previous few tournaments get us down. Facts are facts: this has been the worst start to tournament fishing that I've had since 2010, my very first year fishing tournaments. You can click some of the links below to read just how tough it's been. I haven't sniffed a check since December, which hurts even worse than you would think considering just how Josh and I ended the year.
Fishing Report for Alabama Bass Trail on Wheeler
The other thing we had conceded was that Naaman was going to win. I didn't say that to him because I genuinely wanted him to do well and I didn't want to put that pressure on him. But I knew that he knew that he could get 12 pounds without much trouble and if he could get some better bites, he had it made. I sure knew we weren't.
Let's go back to the weekend before. Current was low and Brad had one bite fishing for smallmouth. Now, it was a good one, but that's not how you win tournaments. Friday, current was projected at between 9,000 and 12,000 CFS. Basically, that's ZERO. We decided that we would spend the entire day looking for stuff for next month's Alabama Bass Trail tournament. We found a lot of off-shore stuff and actually caught several fish on these new spots, just not good ones.
Around 2PM, current was kicked up to around 30,000 CFS and we fished a community hole around McFarland that produced a decent bag in about 30 minutes. Nothing huge, but the bit was consistent and good. We ended up catching around 10 in about a 30 minute spread.
On Saturday, Brad and I decided to fish something completely new to us that wasn't as current dependent. We figured everyone would stay close to McFarland and hit all the community holes. We decided to do the opposite. We would run all the way to Big Bear Creek. Now, we knew there was a BFL out of Mississippi, but we didn't think it would affect us much.
Wrong. We literally ran all the way down there to find that we could not find a single place to fish. Not one. So, we missed the morning bite completely before deciding to head back up river.
By the time we did this, it was approaching noon and we had caught two small fish all day and those were the only bites we even had.
Eventually we punted and decided to fish where Josh and I had found fish the day before. The issue was that there wasn't nearly as much current and the fish weren't nearly as active. I ended up catching a few fish, one of them being a keeper, but it was too little too late.
Naaman ended up winning it with around 16 pounds. He had a tiny spot and a very specific bite. By mid-morning, the bite was over. But, he did enough damage to win. There were a couple of other limits, but the weights were very poor.
The good news is, my buddy won and we didn't take it terrible that the fishing was off. The bad news is, the struggles continue and the more that happens, the more pressure I will put on myself. I need something to go right, real soon.
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