Jay Yelas – Day 3
Friday, May 28, 2010
> Day 1: 5, 13-01
> Day 2: 4, 6-12
> Day 3: 4, 9-05
> Total = 13, 29-02 (50th)
I was disappointed this week. I had it going pretty good in practice and on day 1. My deal was fishing a big topwater up shallow and out deep, and I caught them the first day doing that. Then I never could keep it going. I only caught two on topwater yesterday and one today.
I talked to Ish Monroe at weigh-in and he told me he caught everything he weighed on a Spook-type bait. So I know that bite was out there to be had. I just couldn't make it work where I was fishing. I never saw Ish – he was in a totally different part of the lake. Where I was fishing, the fish got off the topwater bait, so I had to resort to worm-fishing just to catch some fish.
It's frustrating, simply for the fact that I was dialed in and knew the right thing to do well in the tournament. It was just real hard to make it work for 3 days. A few of the guys are doing it, but it was tough deal. My hat's definitely off to those guys who can catch them every day on a topwater. It's a great piece of fishing to be able to do that.
Jay Yelas – Practice
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
I had what I thought was a good practice. The fish are there, and the lake's a lot better than it was in 2007 for the Forrest Wood Cup. They're not easy to catch right now, but if you figure out the right little deal, I think you can catch them pretty good.
I'm thinking any stringer in the teens will be a real good bag in this tournament. When they had the Stren (Now AFS – Ed.) here a month ago, the fish were on beds and they caught them real good. It took 17 1/3 pounds a day to win, and that's as good as it gets for a 3- or 4-day tournament here. The fishing's not that good by any means, but it's good. There's a lot of fish in this lake and I was able to figure a few things out. Hopefully I'll have a good tournament. I think it'll take about 14 pounds a day to win, maybe 15. If a guy can hit 60 pounds, he'll be right at the winning mark.
The water's in the mid-70s and the lake's up real high right now, so the fish are doing lots of different things. There's fish in the brush, and fish out deeper, and a lot of different patterns can work, which is typical of post-spawn. This time of year, there's probably more patterns working than at any other time of the year. The trick is to figure out how to focus on the better-quality fish.
I'm not catching any out of the deep trees with the water bring so high. The trees top out in 30 or 40 feet now. I think the lake crested on Sunday or Monday, and it looked like it fell an inch or two yesterday. If it starts falling real hard, it could affect the shallow fish up in the bushes. It remains to be seen how that'll play out, but there hasn't been any rain since I've been here, so I don't think the lake will continue rising. I see falling water conditions for this tournament with some of the fish in the bushes moving out into a more typical post-spawn.
There are millions of sunfish in this lake – I don't think billions would even quantify how many sunfish are in here. I've never seen so many bluegill. But because the lake's up, I haven't seen any bluegill beds. With the full moon coming though, they'll be thinking about spawning, so the bluegill spawn could be a factor in the tournament.
