Forum Tournament

[lizardsrule]

Well JB I did fish for 4 hours, however it was at the Coal pit, since all they have said for the last week is thunder storms. I did not want to be caught on one of the reservoirs in my little boat. So that's my story and I'm sticking to it The good news is it was actually a tough day The coal pit is approx 250 acres, of big channels. It usually is about 25'-30 feet normally through the middle. There are lots of laydowns, both new and old. There usually is lots of vegetation, however none to speak of present on this day. There are several flats, and what I consider 2 ends of the lake. One is usually around 3 feet better visibilty, because it's the lower end of the lake. It's private, and other than holiday weekends, usually doesn't get much fishing pressure.

7/15/05 Fished from 9:30am to 1:30 pm Temp was 72 degrees with very, very overcast skies. The weather has been the same for close to a week, the remnats of the hurricane Dennis has been sitting over the state for that long. The water level was down about 1'-2', and clarity was about 3 feet in most of what I fished. All the vegetation has died I started out with a black buzzbait, figuring dark skies, and low pressure would make them hot. Well I was wrong, so I switched to pitching laydowns, with a Babby Paca Craw. I had no luck with that, so I Mojo rigged a Black Lizard, and worked that. Again nothing. I found lots of fish on the electronics in the 15' range, suspened in the middle I Tried some deep diving cranks on areas around points that I would show fish suspending, and again nothing. I decided it was best to just look for whatever active fish I could coax into biting so I started cranking, with periodically pitcing, and buzzbait. I hit a good flat, and had worked it all the way to the end when I finally got hammered on a Manns -1 crank 11:15am. I got bit at the end of the flat, along the point, where it drops off to 25'. It took awhile to get her to the boat, she put up a heck of a fight. I measured her at 21", scale was not working again(I finally just threw the dang thing away ), which I guesstimate the weight to be high 4lb's or low 5lb's. I then was fired up real quick. I continued to crank along the shoreline, concentrating on any points, timber, or flats. I caught another keeper12:30pm, which again put up a good fight, along a mini flat, around some timber. This one measured 18", probably 2.75lbs or so. I kept trying to cover as much water as possible to get the active fish, and I knew where the points, mini flats, etc were. I switched over to a Weightless Pulse worm, and twitched it around the timber. Hooked my 3rd keeper 1:15pm, another 18" LM and released it. I did catch one other dink in the flats after the biggun. So that was my effort for your tourney. My best gusstimate of weight would be, 10.25lbs for weigh in in the 4 hours. Now I countinued to fish, practicing for my next couple of tourneys, for another 4 hours. I caught 2 more keepers, on the flats, around timber, one on a pulse worm, one on a crankbait. I lost 3 other fish on the cranks. One was as big as the 21" bass I caught earlier. I saw the fight, the whole time. She took me under a big tree, and I tried to coax her out, and after about 30 seconds, she went up, hooked the crank on the tree, and broke free The other 2 fish, I had one next to the boat, and I could see it was barely hooked. As I got it closer, it shook off the crank Again a nice 2lb-3lb fish. I had another one about the same size, that got off probably halfway to the boat. I have a "LOVE, HATE RELATIONSHIP" with cranks. They will get some bites, but man do I hate loosing fish(especially in tournaments) on them. The sun came out once for 5 minutes, but that was it. It rained a little and drizlled some also. The temp when I left was 81 degrees. I must say the bites were tought to come by, but when I got them, they were all very solid fish, only the one dink in the bunch. I was a great day to be fishing, and I would have taken my results in any tourney, anytime. If it was a 8 hour tourney, put my weight at about 15lbs+ for the day. I did get pictures of the three keepers, however they were the first pictures on my new disposable camera. So when I use it up, and get it developed, and get them scannned in, and then email them to JB(if I can figure out how), then he can post them. See what I mean about a pain in the butt. I treated this like a real tournament with speeding up to cover more water towards the last hour and a half, since I didn't have a limit, and the bites were very slow.

Lizards