Post by schodackbassman on Jun 30, 2020 15:25:57 GMT -5
Sunday was the first club points tournament I made this year having missed the first on Dunmore. I went down on Friday to check out lake as I hadn't been on it in 5 years. Also, my mom lives over the mountain from the lake so got a visit in too. Friday I put a plan together in my head as I fished. Got a good idea what bass were feeding on and caught a bunch but catching anything bigger then 1-2 lbs was difficult. In fact I only caught one that probably approached 3 lb between 7-1:00.
When I got back to camp after my visit, I put my rods and baits together with a plan in mind. I didn't know who my partner was going to be because one young man was supposed to fish CBS tournament out of Plattsburg but they didn't confirm the tournament was on or not until late Saturday! Had a back up plan and Don Adams ended up fishing with me. He's a good stick and guide on Champlain if anyone is ever looking for one.
Sunday TX started at 6am. We started frogging and had a couple hits in first group of pads but nothing the rest of the pretty large area of pads/scum patches. We tried open water near by to pick up a couple 1 lb fish on top water. We headed to my second spot where we both fish pads and open water or weeds. Picked up 3 more small fish and Don lost a nice 3-4 lb on a spook then things died. I really expected to get our limit there but came up one short.
We went to my 3rd spot earlier then I planned and was worrying at that point I'd run out of spots before 11:00! Third spot was dragging jigs through deep weeds 7-10' off a point, Don's favorite way to fish. We picked up several LM and some ran bigger 2 to almost 3lbs compared to 1 to less then 2's we were catching. We culled a few small ones. Was time to go for big fish. Don stayed with jigs, I went with large Senko in color I was sure was the ticket and we went to fish docks. There were a bunch of docks with 3-8' of water. I was skipping up under docks and around wood lay downs and Don with a jig. All we got was dinks, nothing to help. We tried deeper weeds with jigs or big worm no good. Don says, lets go back and try that patch of pads with fished first thing. Said Ok but wanted to hit a rock shoal I knew about with weeds. That was a waste of time as was fishing around island shore with deep water.
Went to pads and had a sniff or two but no fish. It is very shallow maybe a foot of water around pads and docks. Told Don I wanted to try Senko around docks even though it's super shallow. But it's also away from likely fishing pressure and boat traffic so worth a shot. Like 2nd skip cast between dock and pontoon boat my line starts moving steady and I set the hook. LM come charging out from under dock for deeper water. I saw it and thought 3 1/2 which is just what we needed. Girl went deep and we couldn't really see her but she was putting up a fight plus I had it on a rarely used spinning rod (I can't skip a bait caster to save my life). I had thoughts of boat flipping her until it came up for a closer work. I said to Don as we both said Holy $@*^ "I think you need to get the net!" She went under the boat and fought some more before we got her in the net. We didn't weigh on water but we both thought it was a 5 for sure. In the live well she touched each kitty corner end to end. We had a chance before this fish to win but this one I thought would seal the deal. And it did. She weighed 5.32 lbs and we weighed 15.62 beating second place team by over 3 lbs. It was a great day and most of my plans worked. Don and I ham and egged it with my plan (he had never been on or even heard of the lake before) and he caught a couple of the bigger fish up until that point. Only thing not in my plan was the big fish came from a shallow dock and not a deep one as I had expected but I knew that bait/color should work to find a couple bigger fish because I also knew a lot of small fish were going to get weighed. On this rare occasion, I was correct! My first five of the year was well timed I would say. I'll try to remember how to put a picture up.
When I got back to camp after my visit, I put my rods and baits together with a plan in mind. I didn't know who my partner was going to be because one young man was supposed to fish CBS tournament out of Plattsburg but they didn't confirm the tournament was on or not until late Saturday! Had a back up plan and Don Adams ended up fishing with me. He's a good stick and guide on Champlain if anyone is ever looking for one.
Sunday TX started at 6am. We started frogging and had a couple hits in first group of pads but nothing the rest of the pretty large area of pads/scum patches. We tried open water near by to pick up a couple 1 lb fish on top water. We headed to my second spot where we both fish pads and open water or weeds. Picked up 3 more small fish and Don lost a nice 3-4 lb on a spook then things died. I really expected to get our limit there but came up one short.
We went to my 3rd spot earlier then I planned and was worrying at that point I'd run out of spots before 11:00! Third spot was dragging jigs through deep weeds 7-10' off a point, Don's favorite way to fish. We picked up several LM and some ran bigger 2 to almost 3lbs compared to 1 to less then 2's we were catching. We culled a few small ones. Was time to go for big fish. Don stayed with jigs, I went with large Senko in color I was sure was the ticket and we went to fish docks. There were a bunch of docks with 3-8' of water. I was skipping up under docks and around wood lay downs and Don with a jig. All we got was dinks, nothing to help. We tried deeper weeds with jigs or big worm no good. Don says, lets go back and try that patch of pads with fished first thing. Said Ok but wanted to hit a rock shoal I knew about with weeds. That was a waste of time as was fishing around island shore with deep water.
Went to pads and had a sniff or two but no fish. It is very shallow maybe a foot of water around pads and docks. Told Don I wanted to try Senko around docks even though it's super shallow. But it's also away from likely fishing pressure and boat traffic so worth a shot. Like 2nd skip cast between dock and pontoon boat my line starts moving steady and I set the hook. LM come charging out from under dock for deeper water. I saw it and thought 3 1/2 which is just what we needed. Girl went deep and we couldn't really see her but she was putting up a fight plus I had it on a rarely used spinning rod (I can't skip a bait caster to save my life). I had thoughts of boat flipping her until it came up for a closer work. I said to Don as we both said Holy $@*^ "I think you need to get the net!" She went under the boat and fought some more before we got her in the net. We didn't weigh on water but we both thought it was a 5 for sure. In the live well she touched each kitty corner end to end. We had a chance before this fish to win but this one I thought would seal the deal. And it did. She weighed 5.32 lbs and we weighed 15.62 beating second place team by over 3 lbs. It was a great day and most of my plans worked. Don and I ham and egged it with my plan (he had never been on or even heard of the lake before) and he caught a couple of the bigger fish up until that point. Only thing not in my plan was the big fish came from a shallow dock and not a deep one as I had expected but I knew that bait/color should work to find a couple bigger fish because I also knew a lot of small fish were going to get weighed. On this rare occasion, I was correct! My first five of the year was well timed I would say. I'll try to remember how to put a picture up.
