Ramie Colson, Jr. thinks about it every day – the one that got away. But it’s not a 10-pounder coming unbuttoned at the boat that runs through his mind. It’s the 2011 Kentucky Lake FLW Tour Major.
After blasting nearly 45 pounds over the first 2 days and opening almost a 7-pound lead, things took a turn with the help of Mother Nature. A wicked round of thunderstorms blew through the region and his lead virtually evaporated on day 3 when he weighed just two fish. He couldn’t recover on day 4 and settled for 4th place.
“I think about it every day,” he said. “It was pretty heartbreaking. I looked back as soon as the tournament was over and there were some things that I could’ve done and still had a chance to hold on, but that’s just fishing. Sometimes we get hard-headed and I stayed with what I did the first 2 days. The weather didn’t help, especially fishing the ledges like I was. It tends to scatter the fish more than it bunches them up.”
His shot at redemption will come next week when the Tour returns to the lake he’s called home his entire life. He says that if weather becomes a factor again, he’ll make the necessary adjustments even with drastically different water levels and temperatures.
“It’s quite a bit different this year,” he noted. “For 2 years in a row, we’ve had the highest water ever for this time of year and this year we’ve got some of the lowest water we’ve ever had this time of year for both lakes (including Lake Barkley).
“I was talking with Andy Morgan today and was saying with the weights it’s been taking to win tournaments here recently, it seems the big fish are hard to come by,” he said. “There are some 8- and 9-pounders being weighed in, but without the flooding we’ve had the last couple years, the milfoil is coming back in the southern end. I think that’ll be a key next week. We won’t be catching a bag of 6-pounders, but with a couple of those and a few 3-pounders it’ll put you in good shape.”
Fishing his home waters will also give him a chance to punctuate what’s otherwise been a dismal season. After a 50th-place finish at Lake Hartwell, he logged two straight finishes in the 100s at Table Rock Lake and Beaver Lake, before posting a 53rd at the Potomac River.
“It seems like I can have a decent practice and that’s all you can ask for, but come tournament time I just couldn’t put it together,” he said. “You look at guys like Brent Ehrler or Bryan Thrift or David Dudley. They’re all very consistent. That’s something I’ve worked on and worked on, but I haven’t quite gotten my hands on the key to it yet.”
