BASS Southern Open – Lewis Smith Lake, Jasper AL

Heading into the second Southern Open of the year, I was determined to keep an open mind. I have a pretty good track record on Smith Lake but I know that it can be a difficult fishery. The spotted bass are dominant but there’s a decent largemouth fishery as well and I wanted to give them both a fair shake. Still, I had it in the back of my mind that the spots were more likely to bunch up better and therefore they’d be more reliable.

The other thing that I felt would hurt the largemouth bite is that the water was high. There was so much inundated cover that it was hard to know where to start. Even if you caught a few, they were likely to get pounded.

I had a so-so effort on the first day of practice, but on the second day I really dialed in on the spots. I was catching them in 15 to 20 feet of water and I felt that unlike shallow water fish, bass at that depth wouldn’t react negatively to any changes we encountered. In all, I found 6 or 8 places where they were doing the same thing, so even though things always seem to get tough when the tournament starts, I had enough water to grind out a few good limits.

My practice impressions proved to be mistaken.

All I can figure is that when they started generating and moving water, that moved the fish, but to tell you the truth I don’t really know if that fully explains it. By the time I gave all of my places a fair shot on the first tournament day, I was out of time. I’d probably caught about 20 fish, but only one keeper. Either I didn’t go through my rotation in the right order or else I just failed to relocate those schools that had bit so well just a day or two before. It’s still a mystery to me. Making it even tougher was the fact that my co-angler had three keepers that first day, fish that I really could have used.

As I expected, the three main deals were a jig, a shakey head and a topwater, and I knew that as tough as Smith was fishing I wasn’t out of it heading into the second day by any means. I made a couple of tackle adjustments and changed my rotation.

I started off in a creek where I knew there was a mix of largemouths and spots and right out of the gate I missed three really good fish. I’d get five or six cranks on them and they’d come off. I was using a shakey head. It’s something I do all the time and don’t lose a lot of fish doing it, but these fish were different, and they were laughing at me. Once I exhausted that area, I ran some of my deeper ledge stuff, trying to relocate the schools. When I went to my primary school almost immediately I lost another good one. At that point I began to come a little bit unraveled and I had to take a minute to calm down and collect myself.

It was dead calm with bright sunny skies, so I focused a little deeper. The areas I keyed on had a hundred feet of water on either side of them and the fish were suspended, which made things even tougher. I had to go to a super-light shakey head that took forever to fall, but all of the bites were spots that ate it as it fell. I caught a keeper almost right away and figured I was on to something, but 20 fish later I hadn’t had another keeper bite there.

I went to my next school and within 20 minutes I lost two bass that I couldn’t even turn and that was it. I went to weigh-in with one lonely bass in my bag again.

I don’t want to cry over spilt milk or lost fish. I had the bites but I just didn’t execute. The end result is what it is. It eliminates my shot at making the Bassmaster Classic through the opens, but if I do well at Seminole I still have a shot to qualify for some things that’ll open up my options. So it’s on to the next one and I plan to kick butt at Seminole.

A tournament like this certainly doesn’t give yo ua mental boost, but if there’s any positive that I can take away it’s knowing that after a miserable first day I was smart enough to make some adjustments and get some more bites. It’s not fun to have to come up with rationales like that, but the true pros deal with things during the tough times. Anyone can go through the easy times, but when things aren’t going your way that’s when the weak links wash out.

One other positive note: I was elected by my peers to be the new President of the PAA, taking over for John Crews, who has done a tremendous job during his term in office. I’ve been involved with the organization for a long time and this gives me a chance to work hard to put my personal touch on it. Sure, I’ll be busy, but it’ll keep my mind off of the occasional bad finishes. I’m not like my good friend Shin Fukae who can spend months at a time without taking a day off from the water. Sometimes distractions actually do me some good.

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