Friday, May 16, 2008
> Day 1: 5, 10-04
> Day 2: 5, 11-08
> Total = 10, 21-12 (14th)
As I said 3 or 4 days ago, I just needed a couple of big bites, and it turns out I was one good bite away from making the Top 10. So it was a good tournament. I just didn't get the breaks.
What's funny is that last year I got so many breaks. At every tournament, I caught a big fish. And I had some real fluky bites that I wasn't expecting. This year it's just the opposite. But that's how this sport it – there are seasons in your career when you get the breaks and the line-drive falls in the gap and hits the wall. Other times you hit it right to the guy.
At Smith I finished 14th too – one good fish away from the Top 10. So this is kind of an off-year where I'm not getting the breaks. But I've been doing this so long, I know that you have to go through times like this. I'm just grateful I had such a great year last year.
Here's an example. With 2 minutes to go, I look across the cove and watch Jimmy Houston catch a 3-pounder on a spinnerbait. I hadn't thrown a spinnerbait in like 4 hours, but I picked it up and threw it. It hits the water, I give it a pull and notice that the blades aren't turning, then a huge bass boils on it. I had a big No. 6 willow on. If the blade hadn't been fouled on the hook, I feel like I would have caught that fish and made the cut.
How many times does that happen? It's like one of every 100 casts where that blade fouls on the hook. That's what I'm talking about. The breaks will come my way soon. They have to. It all averages out in the long run.
I do feel good about this tournament though. The fish changed today, and I was able to adjust. I'd been catching them on a spinnerbait, then this afternoon it got sunny, hot and still, so I went to swimming a Berkley Gripper Flippin' jig that I designed around docks. I caught some pretty decent fish and moved up about 35 spots. I was fishing it on Berkley FireLine and Fenwick's new 7'1" prototype rod, which should be real nice for swimming a jig. I was looking for the dirtiest water I could find. You don't want to fish clear water when you have dirty water available that's almost 70 degrees.
Which is funny, because three-quarters of the field fished the clearer water. But that's how people are accustomed to fishing Beaver Lake. This is a whole new generation of bass pros, and a lot of them have never fished water like this. There are not many reservoirs in the country that flood as high as Beaver does, and a lot of these young guys have never seen conditions like this, so I feel like they really didn't know what to look for.
In fact, I heard Tom Monsoor from Wisconsin, who's famous for swimming a jig, say as he weighed in that the water's too dirty to swim a jig. Most guys have just not had the experience in high, orange mud, and they don't know what to do. But all the experienced guys – they were on my fantasy team this time. I had all the old-timers.
