“Karma. Bad luck. You weren’t holding your mouth right. Just not your day. Wrong side of the boat. Different baits. Different techniques.” Those are just a few of the comments I got about my fishing last Saturday.
I had posted “How is it possible to fish 7. 5 hours, get three bites and land one fish while your partner using same baits throwing at rock banks and points catches 12 keepers?????? And caught them on four different baits!!”
Ignoring the comments that apparently did not see that we were fishing the same way with the same baits, that basically leaves “luck.” There is some amount of luck when fishing a club tournament. Although I was obviously around fish all day, they just did not hit my baits, waiting on my partner’s baits, apparently.
In the Potato Creek Bassmasters February tournament at West Point last Saturday, 21 members fished from 7:30 AM to 3:30 PM to land 73 bass weighing about 143 pounds. Most of the bass were spots with a 12-inch size limit but there were some largemouth over the 14-inch minimum length. One person did not catch a keeper but eight members landed a five bass limit.
Lee Hancock won with five weighing 11.25 pounds and his 4.16 pound largemouth was big fish. My partner Robert Howell, insulting me from the back of my boat, had five weighing 10.66 for second. Third place was taken by Russell Prevatt with five at 10.20 pounds and Doug Acree rounded out the top four with five weighing 9.02 pounds.
I came in 19th out of 21 with one fish weighing 1.55 pounds. Fishing will definitely keep you humble!
When Robert caught his first keeper, a small spot that hit an underspin on the first place we stopped, I thought it was a bad start for me. Then an hour or so later we went around a small rock point and he caught his second fish on a shaky head worm. That got me worried.
We went back around that point and I caught my one keeper on a shaky head then Robert got another keeper on his shaky head. The third pass around that point Robert got his fourth keeper, his biggest at 3.79 pounds, on his shaky head.
Robert and I were fishing the same bait the same way, but he was using lighter line, something I did not think would matter in the stained water, but I dropped back to the same weight line just in case.
On one rocky bank we fished about 150 yards and Robert got his fifth keeper on his shaky head then culled with another keeper. He switched to a wacky rigged Senko and caught three more! I never had a bite.
A little later Robert caught three more on a Carolina rig, a method and bait I had tried off and on all day. I fished a wacky rigged Senko some, too. He even caught a four pound blue catfish!
It did not seem to matter what I did. I guess it was just “one of those days” for me, for whatever reason. I just hope it does not stay the same for me in the Sportsman Club tournament at West Point this weekend and I am not making excused for not catching fish!