I fished this tournament last year with my dad and we had a lot of fun so we decided to do it again this year. Although we had a decent day last year I decided to fish another area of the lake this year. Water temps were in the mid 50's and we had a small breeze in the morning with stronger West winds in the afternoon.
We started our day shallow hoping to find some active fish and we did! On my first cast I caught a 2.5lbs smallie on the jerkbait but it was barely hooked. After seeing a few follow I decided to see if they would bite the crankbait better and they did... I hooked 2 other in the same size and lost a 4lbs+ when she went airborne. I knew they were there so I decided to try a goby immitation. The goby worked really well but for some reason I had a really hard time getting a good hookset. I lost 3 good fish in a row and I decided to give the tube a try since all my tubes are rigged on braid I though maybe I would get a better hookup ratio. Apparently this was the right choice because I didn't lose another fish after that. My dad was also throwing a tube but he wasn't getting nearly as many bites as I was. I usually don't think the color matters much when fishing tubes but apparently my color made the difference because I was catching all the fish!
We switched from shallow to deep almost all day but the better fish came from deep water at a specific dept. We caught our 2 biggest fish at the same time!! I really didn't want to lose any of them so I netted mine and then helped my dad with his. We caught close to 40 smallies today and we had a decent bag but we were missing another good one to have a chance at a top 3. I knew the guys would show up with at least 16-17lbs for 3 smallies...
We weighed in a respectable 11.11lbs and it was good for a 5th place. We finished in 7th place last year so I guess were slowly going up!!
Full results and pictures can be found here : http://www.econobass.com
