Beaver FLW Tour Major

Jay Yelas – Competition
Friday, March 4, 2011

> Day 1: 2, 4-06
> Day 2: 5, 11-01
> Total = 7, 15-07 (44th)

It was a pretty frustrating event for me. I had a good day today and a bad day the first day, and what's so crazy is I fished the same water both days and caught them the same way – on a little square-bill crankbait on 12-pound Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon.

I was targeting wood up the White River in stained, dirty water, and the real key today was my Typhoon sunglasses. Without them I wouldn't have been able to see those submerged wood targets.

The first day they didn't bite at all and today I caught six keepers off the same stuff. That's fishing. The only way I can explain it is there's just so few fish in this lake and there's just a handful in each area that decide to feed each day. If you're at Guntersville and you've got 700 keepers in a creek, then it's all about catching the big ones. But if you've only got 20 in a creek, maybe five one day and six the next and two the day after that are catchable.

Today might've been a little bit better fishing day with the clouds and stuff, but t's just weird to fish the same water with the same bait a couple days in a row and not catch them one day, and then catch them the next day. There were other guys who had that happen to them, too.

Jay Yelas – Practice
Wednesday, March 2, 2011

I found some fish. In 3 days of practice I had a decent stringer one day, then there was another day I never had a bite, and I had one mediocre day – three or four keepers. The lake is fishing pretty typical for this time of year and there won't be as many fish caught as normal, although the weights should be better than in April or May.

There will be some bags in the upper-teens to 20 pounds, but the money cut will be low. It's a feast-or-famine kind of thing. If you're in the right area doing the right thing, it could be pretty good. If not, guys will really struggle to catch keepers.

I'm hoping that these several warm days will get the shallow fish kind of stirring. I'm going to fish shallow and we'll have to wait and see if that's the right thing to do. This is the first warm weather they've had, but the fish are still a long way from spawning.

A jerkbait will probably win – that's what's been winning the local tournaments – but I'm not going to fish that pattern. I'm going to go a little shallower.

Beaver has always been a good lake for me and for some reason I've always tended to do well here. I was glad to see it back on the schedule.