J. Todd Tucker was the 11th-place finisher at the recent Okeechobee FLW Tour Open – the first angler outside the Top-10 cut for the final day. He'd compiled 20-pound sacks on the first 2 days by fishing eelgrass on the outside edges of reed lines, and then flipping during the afternoons.
His eelgrass bite was over on day 3 and he spent the first part of the day flipping. He caught four keepers, including a 4 1/2-pounder, but opted to spend the last hour and 15 minutes throwing a rattlebait in pursuit of his limit fish.
He never got it, and he came in with a four-fish stringer that weighed a little less than 10 pounds.
"I think I sold myself short," he said. "I should've kept flipping and tried to bang out one more fish.
"You try to be as confident as you can in your decisions and I felt real confident about (throwing the rattlebait), but it just didn't work out. In practice it was easy – you could find any Kissimmee grass point around Horse Island and catch a couple no problem.
"We had to be in at 2:45 that day, so it was a short day, and I'd had mechanical problems that morning," he continued. "With all those things involved, you start worrying about catching a limit and it affects the decisions you make."
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