The BASS CAST

I took out of the launch for the regional.  It is a small 2 single lane ramps and little parking.  I headed up the river and hit a creek.  I had 3 blowups and put 2 keepers in the boat quick.  I marked this area for later.  

Then I hit another section and put a 3 pounder in the boat. I have been hitting some good fish but I have to go through so many bowfin to get them.  And they are so hard on the tackle.  Those things just tear up your stuff so bad.

I kept working up the river and found a few more areas that may pan out.  Today was high blue skies and pretty tough fishing.  But not for the mudfish.  I did manage to pull the lure away from a bunch before they hit it so that help but when you skip it up under some branches and they hit you don't know if it is a fish or junk.

The blue crabs are every where.  I actually caught one on a crank bait today.  I paused the lure and as it floated up he grabbed it and I pulled it in.  Man these little buggers are mean.  I tossed him in the livewell to show the Wife when I got back to the camper.  You can only imagine the feasco of me trying to grab that crab out of the livewell.  My fishing pliers are pretty short and I know how bad these guys can pinch so it took me a while to get him out.

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I got up early and jumped in the boat and went out of Shull Island. I started looking at my saved spots on my Lowrance GPS.  I knew I was not going to run too far today.  I hit a small rock line on a small point with a drop shot and hit a 2.5 right off the bat.  The point ran down to about 25 feet and it is only 4 feet wide.  It is an old rock retaining wall that I found when the lake was low.

I then went to a small ditch that ran through a cut and picked up a good fish on a shaky head.  So after that I started running around a little looking at some different areas.

I only fished till about 1:30 or so.  I then came home and started to do some work around the house.  I mowed, trimmed, edged, and blew the lawn.  Of course I was in shorts and it tore up my legs pretty good especially when I went through the pampas grass.

The in-laws were flying in to Charlotte at 10:30 so we left the house around 8:30 to go pick them up.  The flight came in on time and we got back to the house around 1:00 AM

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First I would like to thank my Mom and JC for the comments keep them coming…

Now for my day, it did not go to well I only had 1 bite all day long and I actually thought it was a big panfish and it turned out to be a 10" bass.  I ran around fishing some areas down lake and just really did not find any thing good.

I am going to run up the river tomorrow to check water quality and see what it looks like.  I have not been seeing a lot of boats around the main lake so this may be where they all are so I better take a look and be ready for that kind of fishing. 

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• description: My first day of practice for the Forrest L. Wood Cup. I am looking for what the fish will respond best to and not trying to find fish.
• keywords: FLW, Forrest, Wood, Cup, fishing, bass, Craig, Fredrychowski, Lake Murray
• title: Practice for the Forrest Wood Cup

I finally got back out on the water, boy did that feel good.  In this tournament I have no control over anything about where or what to fish.  I can not even give the anglers any information.  So my practice is a little different than normal.  Right now I am working on trying to figure out how the bass are reacting to colors and styles of lures.  I am not worried about locating areas or fish just what they want to bite on.  

I have to work everything from shallow to deep to cover all my bases, depending on who I draw as the angler I may be fishing deep or shallow.  

I went out of Shull Island and headed up the twin fingers, there were a lot of boats out there.  Not much going on there though.  I did reach one section that put 3 fish in the boat quickly on a Trigger Shad.  

Everything was fine until about 11:30 then it got slow.  I started working deeper and had a few fish hit but no hook ups.  I did have a fish on a crank bait that I would love to have during the tourny.

I stayed out until 4:30 then packed it in. 

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Well I worked on the site until about 3:00 AM this morning, so I did not jump right out of bed.  I got up and had my daily dose of oatmeal and got ready to head to the lake.  Brian Travis was heading down from NC and I was just going to meet him and show him some deep stuff.  We started around mid lake on an island point and it had everything it needs there: deep water close by, structure on the break, bait in the area but no fish to be had.  Of course we were fishing fairly fast and if we would have slowed down we probably could have found a few.

The next spot was a woody hump.  I missed a pair of hits on the jig and do not know why.  We jumped around the lake and hit a few spots here and there.  I did manage to put a small keeper in the boat on a drop shot with a Cache Custom Lures finesse worm.  That was our only keeper of the day.  We hit a bunch of spots that had rocks and boulders with x-mas trees planted on them but no takers.  We ended up in a cut that has about 60 yards of trees planted in there that were pushed in by a dozer.  They are sitting in 8 to 12 feet of water with bait, bream and turtles everywhere but again no takers.

I think right now if I had to be a boater I would stay shallow with a shaky head, jig and frog.  Just cover as much water as possible and keep moving.

When I got back Travis was there to spend the night so that means all play and no work but I love it.

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Last night Brian Travis (TBf National Champion Boater side) came down from Lake Norman and stayed at our place so we could go out and look for some fish.  We hit the water at light and we worked a few areas looking for a morning bite.  We took one b ut nothing special.

Brian is a dock fisherman and we started working them and hit quite a few over the next few hours.  We mostly junk fished and just kept moving around looking for clues.

The lake was getting pretty packed and he was heading to Kerr for a prefish there tomorrow so we cut out around 4:00.

We had a good day and a good time.

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I had to run into town for a few errands today.  I had to mail my Mom her big head and a breakdown of the circuits I fish.  I also had to fax an insurance claim in and an insurance application.   I accomplished all of this at the UPS store.

Next was a stop at Home Depot to pick up a few items to fix a leaky hose bib on the house.

After my running around I picked up the PC to catch up on my blogging.  I left off on the last day of practice for the Southern Divisional so I had about 15 days to make up.  The pictures and videos of the event take the longest.

I also received a call from my banker Tim Langfort at First Community Bank and said that the papers were ready for my new boat and I will stop by tomorrow to sign them.

Then we were invited to John and Lori Moroz of Pine Press Printing for dinner and we had a good time catching up and just relaxing.  They had a surprise for me a box of victory cigars for my win at the Nationals.  It's been a while since I had a good cigar and boy did I enjoy that one.   

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• A. Circuit: Other
• B. Location: Lake Norman
• C. Conditions: Cloudy morning, Sunny Hot AT 90 WT 80
• D. Patterns: Skipping brush under docks with a green pumpkin purple trick worm on a 1/8 oz screw lock shakey head
• E. Results: 7 fish 9-05
• F. Hindsight: The 150 marina has good fish and I am not working it long enough this is 2 days of hindsight the last day I should have been here earlier and fished it longer
• G. Extra:

Right off the bat I noticed that the water seemed better.  It was kind of a feeling that the lake changed back toward the way it was during practice and I was correct.

I started off that morning the same way and headed toward the the Explosion Marina but it was still not accessible.  So I skipped the sailboat marina and headed to some of the docks.

I picked up a quick fish on the shakey head and just kept on working my areas.  I re-worked a few docks from yesterday and pulled afew more keepers off them.  I also hit some of the docks that I did not hit yesterday.  Just about every dock that I had on my GPS gave up some kind of fish not all of them were keepers but at least there was action.

By 12:30 I had my limit and started on the kicker fishing.  And as soon as I stopped throwing the finesse stuff  my co angler picks up a pair that I could have culled with.  SoI pick up the skipping rig and cull a couple pretty quick.  I don't want to catch fish that I may need for tomorrow that is my theory on throwing the big swim bait.

My co angler was happy to fish my waters and I made certain that I put him on fish.

I knew the weights were going to be pretty good today and I ended up slipping to 2nd place overall.

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• A. Lake:
• B. Conditions:
• C. Trying to accomplish?:
• D. Notes:

I drove the truck and boat down to the official boat landing at Blythe to get a feel for that area.  I started at a few community holes and did not have much luck.  I then traveled to the closest marina, Westport.  I worked my way in throwing a big Cache Custom Lures Swim bait in sexy shad color.  As I worked to the main marina docks I had three fish come out from the docks engulf the bait and pull it under the docks for 8 to 10 seconds before releasing the lure.  These fish were big all in the above 4 pound range.

This was a morning bite and they were quality fish.

I worked out of that marina and hit a sailboat marina that also gave up a nice fish to the CCL swimbait.  I saw a couple of Teammates and told them of the swim bait success and showed them the lure.

I hit a few more areas and found 3 good docks that I shook fish off of on the shaky head.

Can't wait for tomorow! 

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• A. Lake: Norman
• B. Conditions: Hot Sunny
• C. Trying to accomplish?:
• D. Notes:

I worked over a lot of new water today and it was slim pickens.  I did not find a morning bite at all in the area I was in.  I kind of forced the jig bite the majority of the day.  I wanted to see if I could get 10-12 bites in less than 4 hours on the jig.  I was hoping for a better quality of fish on the jig but I only had 5 solid bites in about 5 hours.  So with this being a share the front of the boat for half the day format I may not be able to do it this way.

I then kept working toward the dam and just covered a ton of water that was unproductive for the most part.  Then every once in a while i would find a section that held numerous fish.  I will keep looking for these little pockets of fish tomorrow. 

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