Clarks Hill Elite Series

Photo: ESPN Outdoors

I caught 3 pounds more than I did yesterday and still fell a place. I had a feeling that might happen because the fishing was so good.

It's a little frustrating to miss the cut by an ounce, obviously. It's the money. You need about eight checks just to break even this year. Points wise, I wasn't on much to move way up, but it's still sort of frustrating.

But I didn't lose any, and that's always a good thing.

I threw a swimbait all day today and caught about 20 keepers. My partner caught a nice one, and we had a lot of fun. I just never ran into any of the bigger ones.

I've never cashed a check here. I thought I might have broken out of that, but still the jinx continues.

I'll head over to Guntersville in the morning. I think it takes about 5 hours. I've never done really well there, but I've always been competitive. I like fishing there.

> Day 1: 5, 10-01 (50th)

It's the biggest stringer I've caught here, so I guess that's good, but it's pretty sad. I'm just clueless. I had one 5-pounder, and that one fish was bigger than my other four combined.

It's brutal. I didn't have a limit until 1:00, and I only caught six or seven keepers. The few things that I thought were going to happen didn't. I caught that big one on a swimbait.

I'm just going to think about it tonight. I wasn't really wild about anything I saw today, so I don't know what to do. I might fish a little bit dirtier water tomorrow.

My first day was useless – it was too windy. Tuesday was pretty good. I got quite a few bites, but the size just wasn't there for me and I maybe had 9 or 10 pounds.

Yesterday I went to another area of the lake and really didn't find much at all. So I had one decent day where I basically fished the stuff I've fished here before.

The fish are real scattered. There seems to be a couple of groups that I found, but I don't know whether they'll stay, or leave. I've never really caught them at this lake – I didn't get a check last year or the year before – so I'm not too confident.

I think the problem is that I always slow down and try to finesse them, and that doesn't seem to work here real well. You just have to keep going, throwing reaction baits all day, trying to run into them.

So that's what I'm going to do – I'll pretty much throw a Basstrix swimbait all day.