Based on his practice days there, Tommy Biffle had a good feeling he’d catch a good bag on day 1 at Lake Norfork. While the water wasn’t in the bushes like it was at Bull Shoals, he still had success catching fish on his signature series Hard Head free-swinging jig and the Gene Larew Biffle Bug.
“I had a lot of good areas and good banks,” he said. “Bull Shoals was 4 feet high and the water was in the bushes. They were two different scenarios, but I liked them both.”
When the tournament kicked off, however, he went down those same stretches of bank at Norfork and blanked.
“I don’t know what they did,” he said. “They changed and I ended up catching what I caught in the very backs of creeks.”
His four-fish, 8-pound bag left him buried in 89th place heading to Bull Shoals on Friday.
“At Bull Shoals, I had a pretty good practice there, too, but I wasn’t setting the hook on them,” he added. “I tried to raise them out of the brush to see them. I knew some were decent fish.”
He went to town flipping the Biffle Bug in buck brush, mounting a massive comeback behind an 18-07 stringer – the biggest of the day – that brought him up to 18th place entering the weekend.
“I knew I had areas that I had bites in – some I’d seen and some I’d caught in practice,” he said. “It seemed like when I got a bite it would be a good one. I culled several 3-pounders.”
He stuck with the same program on Saturday, confident that he’d catch another good bag and possibly be a threat to make the Top 12. The water had receded some, but was still in the brush and bushes. The fish, though, had repositioned outside the cover and were harder to locate and catch.
“When there’s still 3 feet in the bushes they should be in there, but they didn’t seem to be,” he added. “I caught one early out of the bushes, then ran to a lot of places and never got a bite. I saw some bedding fish, but if I couldn’t catch them quick, I’d move on. As the morning went on, I figured I had to start catching some bedders to have a chance.”
One particular fish gave him fits as he tried to entice it to bite.
“I tried everything in the boat and I couldn’t run it off,” he sad. “It’d spin around and stand on its head, but wouldn’t bite. I messed with it too long and when you do that it gets personal. It becomes, ‘I’m gonna catch you or else.’ I wasted too much time.
He eventually left that fish and ran to another pocket where he worked on another bedding fish. He cut his bait in half to present a smaller profile and the fish bit on the second pitch. He went to the other fish and caught it within three casts.
“I’m not a big bed fisherman, but if they don’t bite, you better move on.”
His 13-00 stringer clinched a 23rd-place finish, a vast improvement over the 107th and 79th he posted to start the season.
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