Steve Kennedy was one angler who actually had something to gain by the cancellation of the Red River FLW Tour – a couple of days of Bassmaster Classic practice. But if it had been up to him, he'd have been fishing in Louisiana today rather than driving home to Alabama.
"I wasn't for it," he said of the cancellation. "Last year (when the Classic was held at the Red) everything was 4 or 5 inches under water and it was like a carnival ride – you couldn't move without hitting something. This year I took my aluminum boat all the way to the back of Bobo's and everything was so much easier to fish.
"I went all the way down to Pool 3 one day and with that much current, it was easy to read. Coming back, I just stayed on the inside bends and I went right over all the wing dams and all that stuff. It wasn't anything that would be all that unusual for the Red River in February."
He said he got a couple of practice bites at the back of Bobo's, which is where Boyd Duckett fished en route to the day-1 lead at last year's Classic. Skeet Reese's Classic-winning area, which was closer to the main channel, was unproductive for him.
He fished for awhile in Pool 4 on the day he made the long run downriver and got five bites in 30 minutes in one location.
"It was tougher, much tougher," he said in comparing the bite to a year ago. "But considering how much time I actually practiced and how much I spent riding, I didn't think it was all that bad. The experience from last year definitely helped."
He didn't think the conditions were overly dangerous.
"We go to a couple of places regularly that have that much current at the dam or more. Like the dam at Pickwick, where there's rocks sticking out everywhere, or the Niagara River there at Erie.
"My mother's 66 years old and a grandmother, and she's going rafting down the Colorado this year, where the average water temperature is 48 degrees. Some people pay good money to do that."
