Lake Guntersville Elite Series

Brent Chapman

> Day 1: 5, 11-06
> Day 2: 13-07
> Total = 10, 24-13 (107th place)

I wish I could tell you what went wrong, but I'm honestly just scratching my head. In hindsight, when you're fishing a tournament in April and you have a day that's sunny without a lot of wind, you should probably take part of the day and go look for fish, and I didn't do that. At the very least it'll give you some insight into what the fish are doing and whether they're up there or not.

The pattern I'd planned on fishing was a Carolina rig and I thought I could catch some decent fish on it. When you put something like that together for a day or two you're probably have more spots than you can even fish, and that was the case for me in this tournament. I should've taken the other practice day and done something completely different.

The really frustrating part is from what I'm hearing, fish have been caught here in just about every way imaginable. I didn't lose any that hurt me – I just never got into any quality. I caught one 3-pounder in 2 days of fishing, and who'd even think that's even possible at Lake Guntersville? I think I was in some of the right areas because I was around some people who'll finish high.

I really don't know what I could've done differently but I'm definitely ready to put this one behind me.

Chris Zaldain

> Day 1: 5, 16-05
> Day 2: 5, 22-00
> Day 3: 3, 5-11
> Total = 13, 44-00 (50th place)

The tournament pretty much went the way my practice did – I had two mediocre days and one that was awesome. The reason I did so well on day 2 was I fished all new water and established a pattern that worked well under the conditions, which were cloudy and rainy. I threw a Megabass Ito Shiner jerkbait in Tennessee shad, which represents a big gizzard shad, and only the big ones were eating it. That day I knew where and how the fish were positioning.

I went from 60th to 29th that day and I wanted to expand on it on day 3, and I thought I could slow down and slow-roll some swimbaits. The problem was the places I had were all south-facing banks and the north wind was brutal. I started the morning by losing a 6-pounder on the jerkbait and I struggled all day. In hindsight I wish I'd fished some backup stuff, but I'd had such a great day the day before that it was hard to get away from it.

My search baits in practice were 6- and 10-inch Megabass MagDraft swimbaits. Those fish were spawning around docks. The ones I caught on the jerkbait were on humps with grass in 6 to 8 feet of water.

I gave up a lot of (Angler of the Year) points today by going rom 29th to 50th, but I'm excited about the next two events on the Western swing. Thinking about it on the drive home is just going to make me burn hotter to do well at the (California) Delta.

> Day 1: The big thing today was it rained quite a bit this afternoon, but it looks like the weights are definitely going to be good. Of course, we're at Guntersville and there's always going to be some good catches.

One thing I was really shocked by was how little grass there is compared to last year's Classic, which was in February. The grass obviously got knocked back pretty hard, I'm guessing over the winter.

I had a decent day and I've got a couple of things working. Now I've got 2 more days to hopefully go out and figure out a way to catch some of the big ones.

> Recap: I feel decent. I haven't caught the quality I was hoping for, but in practice you don't want to set the hook on that many of them, anyway. I've gotten a fair amount of bites and even though I don't know how big they are, I feel pretty good about it.

There's a night-and-day difference in the grass right now compared to what it was last year. I'm guessing they must've sprayed it or something.

As far as the way I'm fishing, I'm definitely not in my comfort zone. That being said, I'm actually confident even though what I'm doing isn't my favorite thing.

The lake is going to fish pretty small. I love coming to a great fishery like this, but when it's a vacation destination for so many people, it makes it really crowded.

Photo: B.A.S.S./Gary Tramontina

> Recap: I struggled the first couple of practice days when I was doing a lot of the historical Tennessee River stuff. Then I switched to doing what I'd do in April at Clear Lake, back home in California, and I started catching some really good ones.

I'm sticking with big baits. I'm not getting very many bites, but the ones I do get are good ones.

The fish are in a very weird spawning phase and they're not chasing anything down. They're not that active and they're not schooling up. If somebody can find that, that'll be pretty good.