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Follow my Fish of 2018
Boy, howdy. Where to start. Where do yall want to start? Let me start off by saying that I managed to get sick some how, so I'm not feeling well and with that and how the weekend went, you can bet that I am not in a good mood.
I think we have to go back to last year. In a very similar circumstance, the first ABT event was moved. Last year, the event on Pickwick was moved to the end of the year, making Guntersville the first event of the year. Most of you read this stuff pretty regularly, so you know how I feel about The Big G. In that event, water levels dropped two feet over night and the fish we found in practice relocated to more wet environments. We weighed in one fish and the very next event, my Mercury blew a powerhead on Wheeler and we didn't even make it back to the ramp. That torpedoed any chance at making our goals. I swore that wouldn't happen again.
Ok, file that away.
I've fished rather well on Smith in the month of February. Brad and I have done well, but we assumed our luck wouldn't last. Last weekend, it didn't. We bombed and you can read about the event in the link below.
No problem, right? Josh and I had been practicing a lot on the other end of the lake and we had been on a really strong bite until the water was dropped. With the water coming up, we assumed the fish would be back. We made another assumption that with water levels predicted to be at full pool by Saturday, we would time it JUST RIGHT.
Storms forced moving the tournament from Saturday to Sunday and with those storms and life in general, we wouldn't be able to prefish the entire week of the event. More importantly, water levels over that critical 24 hours went from full pool to six feet (or more) above full pool.
I hope that I portray myself for not making excuses. If you practice hard enough, you will do well. Normally.
In this case, we were in a situation where we had ZERO experience on this lake with these conditions. We hadn't been able to do simple things like check water colors in various places. We made up our mind to go to the spot where we had caught one five pounder and multiple four pound largemouth as well as a ton of quality fish around Duncan Bridge. What else did we have to go on? After fishing Simpson creek and around the park last week and not having any luck, coming out of the dam and turning left instead of right was an easy decision.
It was also the wrong decision.
Two slot fish and three total bites is all I can report.
Obviously, the fish were biting for some people, just not us. But I don't know what else we could do. We flipped wood. We threw chatterbaits and spinnerbaits in run-offs. I threw a wacky rig half the day around wood, docks, middle of pockets, everywhere. We fished the middle of slews. We fished points. We skipped docks. We ran miles of banks with squarebills. Chocolate milk water. Stained water. Clear water. It didn't matter. We could not get bit. The only thing I could guess is that where we fished was simply dead water, even though that dead water was two entire creeks.
Ok, now to the more touchy-feely stuff. I said earlier how I was determined not to bomb the first tournament of the ABT AND a second straight tournament. I don't think I am a great fisherman and I hope I don't come across that way. I think I am decent and I think I can figure fish out, given long enough. I don't think I've bombed two straight tournaments since I've been writing this blog. Sure, I've not done well in two straight but I've never NOT WEIGHED in two straight. There's a first for everything.
Anyway, like I said. Not feeling well and pretty down about yesterday and I don't think I even know where we went wrong.
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