Member Login

Date:4/26/2011

  The spring Big Bass Bash is a few weeks removed and I have had time to reflect the 3 days we spent on the water.  We put in early friday morning at the Coffman ramp and started out fishing in Lick Branch.  The morning was spitting rain and was overcast so I decided to start out with a squarebill in a spring craw pattern and my buddy started out with a wigglewart.  After 5 or 6 cast I bumped a rock and as soon as I pulled it free a largemouth nailed it.  The first fish of the day was a fat spot and number 2 and 3 followed very soon.  My buddy also boated his first keeper of the day, so we decided to leave the area and fish another secondary in a different pocket.  We were able to duplicate our results in the second spot.  The last cast I made on the spot I felt the lure deflect off a rock and wham...it just doubled the rod, I swept the rod back reeled a few cranks it pulled back and came off.  We left the area with plans to revisit it on saturday.  By this time the sun was poking out, so I put the crankbait down and decided to stick with a jig the rest of the day.

  I worked all the way to the back of a pocket and put all the rods on deck away except for two, a 5/16oz Omega Custom Tackle Baby J and a 1/2oz Omega flipping jig.  I started out with the flipping jig in the Chobee color with a Case Plastic Curly Craw behind a dock in 3-4 feet of water.  I pitched under the walkway a few times with no takers then made a pitch to a seawall with large chunk rock and drug it out to about  8 feet when I felt a tick and I set the hook on a good 3 1/2 lb tournament fish.  I then picked up the Baby J and pitched it up by a walkway float sitting right above a pea gravel bank and pulled in my second keeper within 5 minutes.  It would have been a decent tounament day as I ended with my 5 best going 16 to 17lbs.  We decided to call it a day after that and headed back to the house and talk about our plan of attack for the next day.

  The saturday morning of the tournament it was overcast, windy and rainy.  We started fishing some areas we found the day before and with the conditions I decided start with a 100 series Bandit crankbait on windy secondaries I boated 3 keepers within 20 minutes, but they were 3 1/2lbs and under and I knew it would take around 5 lbs to get a check.  I decided to change to a Strike King 1.5 KVD squarebill because it has a larger profile and started catching fish as soon as I switched.  I caught 2 more keepers and made another cast between a set of docks and had another bite.  It didnt feel very big so I wasn't playing the fish much, whenever I had the fish within a few feet it came and rolled and unhooked itself, it looked to be about a 4 1/2lb fish.  We started jumping around fishing secondaries with a mixture of chunk rock and pea gravel with jigs after that and still caught good numbers of fish.  I stuck with the 1/2 oz Omega flippin jig and boated another 8-10 keepers throughout the afternoon.   The fish were biting the jig great, although I couldnt believe with the number of keepers we caught we didnt catch any big ones.  We missed an exact weight fish by .02 lbs in the last weigh in period.  In all it was a good weekend of fishing we caught big numbers each day but were unable to get a big bite.  I would like to thank all of my sponsors for all of the help with all the great products Ardent Outdoors, Omega Custom Tackle, Vicious Fishing, Case Plastics, Powell Rods, The Rod Glove and of course my wife and kids for all of their support.

  The gear I used this weekend for my squarebill setup was;                                              Ardent XS1000 6.3:1 spooled with 14lb Vicious Elite on a Powell Max 702 7' medium action rod

  The gear I used for my jig setup was;                                                                             Ardent XS1000 6.3:1 spooled with 14lb Vicious Elite on a Powell Endurance Series 723 7'2" medium heavy rod with a 1/2 ounce Omega Custom Tackle Flippin jig and a Case Plastics Curly Craw trailer.  And of course every rod had a Rod Glove on it in the rod locker so I didnt have to worry about tangles.

 Choking the Omega Baby J