FLW Event on Ft. Loudoun

This wasn’t the tour’s first time at Ft. Loudoun – Tellico, and I thought I understood what was likely to happen there. That belief persisted through practice, but in the end, I didn’t have a clue.

I started off practicing on Tellico, in areas where I’d done well before, doing the things I’d done to catch them previously. As hoped, I had a really good first day. My best five probably would’ve weighed somewhere in the 12 to 14 pound range, and just as importantly I was catching really good numbers of fish. They weren’t on the beds. They were getting set up to come up to the beds and they were sitting ducks. The weather was projected to be stable and I figured they’d be easy pickings.

With that established, I decided to spend the second and third days on Ft. Loudoun, one on the upper end of the lake and the other down lake. On that second day it seemed the same thing was going on on both lakes – the size was about the same but in Loudoun I was catching better numbers.

The final day of practice I went up the river and this is where it got interesting. I didn’t get many bites up there, in fact I didn’t know if I could catch five up there, but when I got a bite it was a quality fish. Here’s the kicker – eventual winner Glenn Browne was practicing up there with me. We had one little creek that was best and he was getting bit even better than I was in there. So I went into the tournament excited, with both deep and shallow fish. I’m telling the truth when I say that it was nothing to catch 50 or 75 fish a day, and you could catch them on just about anything you wanted. In my case, the top producers were a jig and a Gambler Big EZ swimbait.  

On the first day of competition I started on the lower end of Ft. Loudoun and had four keepers in the boat quickly, so I bailed on that and ran out to Tellico to upgrade. In three hours of fishing Tellico, though, I didn’t catch a keeper. In fact I barely caught any short fish. I headed back to Ft. Loudoun, filled out my limit and then culled out two limits in the last two hours. I only ended up with about 9 ½ pounds, but it was the easy type of fishing that I expected.

Heading into Day Two, I was done with Tellico and fully committed to Ft. Loudoun, but I was rethinking that strategy at noon when I’d caught 15 short fish but no keepers. I simply didn’t understand it. Nothing had changed to turn the fish off, but they were clearly in a funk – at least for me.

I needed to come up with a new plan. The pockets and the docks had been beaten to death so I tried to relocate my staging fish and ended up with only one for the day. Lots of other guys – Stacey King, Dion and Guido Hibdon – tried the same stuff and also came up short. Meanwhile, Glenn had caught 17 the first day and 16 the second day, so there was no way that I could head back up the river on Day Three and keep my conscience clear. He had a good shot at winning so I didn’t want to screw that up for him.

Instead, on Day Three I committed to the swimbait bite on Tellico. I figured that it was the best way to get a bunch of big bites. All three bites I got on it were big smallmouths, but they didn’t meet the lake’s 18-inch minimum size. I tried it slow, fast, deep and shallow, but couldn’t get anything going. I didn’t have any located on beds and there didn’t seem to be any more moving up. For the first time in at least five years, I just ran out of options and ideas.

If I had this tournament to do over again, I’d start up in the river and never leave. I’d take whatever punishment it could dish out, but at least I’d be around the right quality fish.

In hindsight, I also should have thrown a shakey head when things got tough. I refused to do it because I’ve vowed to fish more aggressively this year, but it’s always a balancing act and I didn’t do a very good job of adapting to conditions. I simply never dreamed that I could blank on that lake. Nobody had a sicker feeling than me on Friday.

I don’t know where this leaves me in the points race and to tell you the truth I don’t care. I’m fishing each event on an individual basis, shooting for the win. If I manage to win one, the Cup will take care of itself.

We have two tough tournaments coming up. At Ouachita, it’ll be hit or miss. Some guys will catch good bags and others will struggle. At Guntersville everybody will catch them so it’ll be a matter of finding where the big girls live. The past is the past and there’s nothing I can do about it now, so it’s time to move on to the next one.

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