Big day tomorrow.

[carolina-rig-01]

tomorrow will be my third tourney of the year with the anglers in acion trail. i went prefishing earlier in the week and found a great pattern, finally i am on fish. the first 2 tournies of the year were kinda rough on us because mother nature threw a wrench in our patterns but i think this one will stick. i only have to rods on the deck of my boat and both have the same crankbait tied on, you tourney guys know what it means when a guy only has 2 rods out and both have the same bait tied on and how good a feeling that is. now lets just hope she holds up for me.

[MississippiBoy]

See your "End of an Era" thread for my opinion about your tourney tomorrow.

Do me a favor...instead of having those particular crankbaits tied on at the launch, put on the wildest, goofiest, most off-the-wall lures you've got, and let everybody see what they are. If they ask, swear up and down you've been raking them in like leaves in the fall with whatever it is.

[Jim80]

i'm glad your dialed in c-rig good luck in the tourney .

Jim

[bamabassman]

great to hear kory. go out there and hook em pal. post the pics ok?

[JB]

Good luck and if the pattern does change stick to the area that held fish in pre fishing

[Bassboss]

Great! Good luck on the tourney! And what sippy said sounds like a good idea to me!

[bamabassman]

dang it ssissippi, i SHOULD'VE given kory a helicopter lure huh? THAT would send em all in orbit, hahahahahaha.

[Bubba_Bruiser]

You took the words right out of my mouth Bama.

[bcklash]

Originally Posted by bamabassman

dang it ssissippi, i SHOULD'VE given kory a helicopter lure huh? THAT would send em all in orbit, hahahahahaha.

only certain people can use the world famous Bamabassmans go to lure. He has to be a real man.

[JB]

Kory, how'd your day go today on the water? I hope the gameplan and prefishing hard work paid off! What ya weigh in

[carolina-rig-01]

while pre-fishing we had around 10 keepers with the best 5 weighing a tad over 15lbs by noon. (we got chased off the water at noon by a thunderstorm.) we were throwing crankbaits on points that had chunk rock or rip rap. we were able to eliminate a ton of water and that is very important in tourney fishing. we could run down a bank on plane that had pea gravel, stop and hit a 50 yard stretch that had chunk rock and move on. this bite seemed strong lake wide and i caught 2 that were right at 5lbs while pre-fishing. we didn't fish any of our areas all that hard because we didn't want to wear them out. we would catch a keeper or 2 and move on to another spot. we had probably 5 spots that we wanted to work really hard, another 10 or 15 spots that were backup spots incase our others were being fished when we showed up, and on this lake you can find these kinds of banks and points all over so we could hit even more spots if we needed to. one thing that i kept saying during pre-fishing is that with this pattern there didn't seem to be any secret to finding the big bites, you could fish a bank or point and catch a bunch of solid keepers and then stick a big one in the same place. i kept saying all we can control is numbers, if we make enough cast we will catch a limit but we would just have to get a little luck getting the big bites.

TOURNEY DAY:
we didn't get the big bites. we weighed in a solid limit going right at 13lbs, but never did get that kicker we needed. we culled 4 or 5 times but it was always just gaining ounces, i caught one fish that let us upgrade by more than a pound but other than that we were just culling ounces. we stuck to our pattern and caught a lot of fish, and a lot of keepers. we ran all of our spots and even some spots that we just found on the way to other spots. but we never did get the big bites we really needed. i did miss a few bites that felt like good fish but on a crankbait it is hard to tell. i did catch our biggest upgrade on a jig but that was the only jig bite we had all day. there really wasn't a big fish pattern yet on this lake. the fish are post spawn and they are just making their way to their summer homes and stopping on points along their way, and feeding on chunk rock and rip rap to feed up after the spawn (at least that is all i could figure out). there wasn't a flipping bite or a deep jig bite that would allow a guy to go looking for only big fish, we just had to hope for a kicker bite at some point through out the day and it never turned up. there were 68 boats in the tourney and i would guess us to have finished somewhere between 15th and 20th (we didn't hang around to see the leader board after the weigh in because i was exhausted and my wrist was swollen up and hurting me from burning crankbaits all day, i had this problem last summer too and i think i need to go see a doctor and see if surgery would get rid of this problem). anyways, not a bad tourney but we were just 1 or 2 bites short from being in really good shape.

[nofearengineer]

I know finishing 15-20 probably doesn't light your fire, but I'm still impressed. There will always be a bit of luck involved, as to who gets the big bites. One or two bigger fish and you would have been right up there in the money. Keep up the good work, C-Rig.

[JB]

Hey Kory wtg!

Sounds like ya have a great day even with some less weight than expected,I've been in enough tournies to know ya gave it your best shot.
I went through the sore wrist before and now see Denny go through it alot.
His is due to massive amounts of drumming and then along with working out all the time and fishing tends to aggrravte the wrist. I had the wrist supports on my casting arm for a year or so, the doctor told me to try to give the wrist a rest ever 20-30 minutes with a dif technique of using it, like switching from casting alot to some other form of activity. You've seen ppl with carple tunnel wearing those blk supports, thats what I had and it really works. Denny wears a wrap on his wrists and it helps.
The thing you want to avoid is tendonitius from overworking that area of the arm. Lucky for us the steel workers safety guy has a locker full of all kinds of wraps and supports and we get them free, and of course I take advantage of this. I'd pm 3dKicker and see what he can advise, thats his field of expertise.
Getting back to the tourney it sure sounds like what you went through with prefishing and then the actual day out there is fairly typical to me. Homework pays off doesnt it. I think in the past sometimes that kicker fish ya need can be caught with just a slight adjustment in the presentation, either going a lil smaller or bigger after you've got your limit and looking for fish to cull. Its def. wears on ya trying to get a bigger fish when you know the area you've picked out to hunt does yeild fish.
I'm glad ya had a steady day of picking up fish, proud of ya!

Sometimes its only a dif of a slight presentation to get that bigger one to hit, you go through the motions of picking up fish the way you did in pre fishing, then sometimes a slight dif will get the fish to bite the second time around, like the often talked about bass tourneys where a jig fisherman hops the jig one pass, then drags it the next time.
Of course all this is arm chair theory from the next day kind of mentality,
but it beats second guessing what "should of could have" worked if only I'd try it type thinking.
I got in the habit of talking to winning anglers if possible after the tourney and comparing notes. Most won't talk about what they did to just everybuddie but when they recognize you had some weight at the weight in, you kinda become one of the guys that knew what was going on, just didnt get that big kicker you were looking for. After that type of info is obtained you can always file it under your cap for the next time a similair pattern occurs. At least you're out there trying!

[bamabassman]

listen to jb here kory. i already got a bad elbow and wrist. gonna have surgery more than likely one day. building up time now for it. maybe 2 winters from now.

[carolina-rig-01]

jb thanks for the advice, you really are right about the making slight changes. but i tried everything i knew to do. i would work over an area really hard with a crankbait and then comb over it really hard with a jig while my partner would use a 10" powerworm. we did pick up a few bonus fish doing this but it didn't really help a lot so i would work it really hard with a few different size crankbaits in a few different colors but this too didn't seem to make any difference. i just say that the big fish were in with the smaller fish and the big ones just didn't bite for us. it's really frustrating seeing other guys who always seem to figure it out but i guess that's all part of it.

and bama the problem went away over winter when i wasn't fishing as often and i thought it was gone. if surgery would fix it then you can sign my butt up, but i won't do it until fishing slows down.