Last year, we started much hotter, finishing 16th on Guntersville. However, over the course of the season, we slowly fell apart including a do-or-die event on Smith that we just couldn't make work. We finished something like 85th in points and just missed out.
I didn't write about it, and I will, but we had a strong start to the year on Pickwick. We finished right around 50th, bombed on Guntersville, did ok on Wheeler, and finished 6th on Weiss lake. Going into this event, we were sitting 35th in the points. Based on historical data for Neely Henry, a limit of any five keepers or a big fish, alone, would likely put us in the Championship on Smith Lake. So there was our goal. It's not fun to fish a tournament and not think about money, but it takes a lot of the pressure off.
Josh was able to pre-fish several days in the two weeks leading up to the event. I joined him Thursday afternoon. We caught two fish. Yack. We did a lot of different things, but we had decided that we would concentrate up river.
Friday, we fished all day and were able to find two stretches up river in pockets that we were able to get multiple bites flipping. I also had a few blow ups on the frog. Didn't catch many, but say enough to know that we had at least a little confidence in those areas, especially considering we flipped miles and miles of over grass without a bite. We ignored areas down river of the Rainbow City bridge where we had caught grass fish before.
However, we did eat a shore lunch at Little Bridge BBQ, which we discovered last year. They've recently gone through a renovation but the BBQ was just as good as ever. I had the BBQ pork plate with baked beans and cole slaw. It was fantastic.
Leaving the marina, we decided to stop off and fish an off-shore spot that Josh happened to find. It was a high spot coming up to five feet from the main channel. We quickly caught a few very small fish, but it was a departure from every other off-shore spot we had fished on Neely Henry. The rest of the afternoon was uneventful.
Saturday, we were boat 224 of 225 but we were pleasantly surprised to find no one in this rather large cove. We pulled up directly to the good stretch of grass, brought out the flipping sticks and the frog and went to work.
Probably the second flip, Josh set the hook on a two-pounder. He worked it out of the grass and the fish simply spit the hook out and stared at us. The next stretch of grass, Josh hammered one, it flew out of the grass and hit the boat and came unbuttoned. It was another solid fish. I caught a short fish. He broke one off in the grass.
We knew that we only had until 9AM or so before the bite died and 9 was rounding the bend on us. We swapped directions and headed towards another smaller cove inside this larger cover. There was a boat that was fishing the far point of that cove, but they were facing the other way. We assumed they were headed toward the main river and started fishing down the far bank from them. Josh boated a keeper and a short in the mean time. As we converged with the other boat in the middle of the cover, I watched with horror as they boated a five pounder on a frog.
Seconds later, I had a blow up on my frog. I waited to see if the frog was gone, but it wasn't. The big fish came completely out of the water but also managed to completely miss the frog. Things had gone sideways on us, real quick.
Our luck seemed to change when we went back down the same stretch and I noticed what looked like a blow up hole in the grass that hadn't been there before. I tossed the frog in and boated our big fish, one pushing four pounds. At that point, we knew were probably in the Championship. But all we could think about was already having missed enough fish to put us firmly into a check.
The rest of the day was absolutely miserable as the rain pounded us. We caught a few short fish, had a couple more blow-ups on the frog, but still had two fish all the way until 2:15.
Desperate for anything, Josh suggested that we fish the spot down river and see if a school of fish had grown.
We ran down and he boated a solid keeper on his first cast. I boated another on my next cast and he followed that up with a short fish. But, we had four fish. And then I got the bite. I set the hook on it and I knew this was the perfect size to be what we needed to get a check.
But it was a 3 pound catfish.
We caught a few more shorts, had a few more bites, but just ran out of time. I wish I had listened to Josh when he suggested this an hour earlier, but I had said we should fish some historical grass.
I watched the results on the way back and I knew we had made the Championship. But what hurt was being told at the dock that if you had five fish of any size, you were getting paid. Sure enough, with our 9.08, any keeper would have put us in the money.
Of course, the missed fish we had likely would have resulted in a Top 10. I can't say that we've ever fished so dirty. I can only think of a few times we've ever lost even one fish that would have helped us, much less four.
But, we accomplished our goal and ended the year ranked 42nd.