The lake is super-clear and water temperatures were in the 90s, so like just about everyone else I expected that the dominant bite would be deep. I spent the first day of practice fishing offshore exclusively and I felt like I could catch a limit of spots, maybe a few largemouths or smallmouths too. I knew it was going to be tough but I thought 10 pounds was within the realm of possibility and 10 pounds would be strong.

With just one day under my belt I felt that there was a lot left to learn, so I decided that night that I’d spend part of the second day of practice out deep again and part of it up shallow. Unfortunately, some unforeseeable mechanical problems put an end to my plans. I was able to fish a little bit – maybe an hour – on my trolling motor, but I spent most of the day on the phone trying to find someone to deal with my issues. As a result, it was pretty much a wasted day.

Day Three didn’t start out much better. I did manage to hop in a friend’s boat for a few hours while I was waiting to get some info on my mechanical issues and I caught 3 or 4 bass real quick on top, but I never got to see how that would play out because just then I got a phone call about my boat and had to leave. Sometimes things out of your control take over a tournament and you just have to roll with the punches. It’s not fun, but it’s a fact of life on tour.

That evening we had the pre-tournament registration and there was lots going on for everyone, perhaps a little more for me because of my role as an officer in the PAA, but that kept my mind off the tournament. I wasn’t really able to think about it until very late and it was probably 1am before I made the decision that on the first day I’d fish deep as long as I could. To be honest, based on what I was hearing I felt there was a legitimate chance that a bunch of us would blank, so when I caught a decent spot at 10am, I knew I had some points on the board and that relaxed me, so I went back to prefishing. I probably landed 10 or 11 largemouths and smallmouths on my Lunker Lure football head jigs, but none of them hit the line, so I was left with that one good spot.

In the last hour and a half I went shall and saw one real big bass that I could not get to bite. I also caught some smaller ones that wouldn’t bump. When you got in the right areas, there were lots of bluegills and shad, and that’s where the bass were, too, so I started thinking about a change in game plan for Day Two. Even though I was surprised by how high some of the weights were that day, I also knew that if I caught a few good ones I’d be right back in it.

Given what I’d learned at the end of Day One, I decided that on Day Two I was going to go all the way up the river and just fish everything that looked good. On the way I stopped at a bluff where I knew there was a school of fish holding. I thought I could catch them on a topwater on a fluke, and I managed to get three or four giants to follow the fluke, but I never caught one, so I had to cut my losses after a couple of hours.

Given the tremendous caliber of angler in the field, the shallow fish were simply beat to death by that point and I was lucky to get 6 bites, which resulted in 3 keeper largemouths. I also had one big fish miss a buzzbait, but that’s the way it goes.

The result was that I ended up working the show at Bass Pro Shops on the third day, and while there are rewards in that, I was still frustrated that I didn’t get to keep fishing. Still, my three fish on the secon day really moved me up on the standings, and I have to keep my eyes on the larger prize – qualifying for the TTBC and for next year’s All Star series (top 43 in the standings will qualify).

Next up on the PAA series is Lake Norman in North Carolina, a place I’ve fished several times on the FLW Tour. I thought I’d have a 3 week break, but I got home from Cherokee on Sunday and on Monday I got the call that I’m in the Northern Open on Champlain. Suddenly 3 weeks turned into 3 days. Back to the grind.

While my personal performance at Cherokee was less-than-optimal I can sense right now that the PAA is on a lot of peoples’ radar. We proved that with the crowds and by the high talent level at Cherokee. There were a lot of anglers there who didn’t have to be. Take Tommy Biffle, for instance. He’s already qualified for the TTBC and he has the Elite Series post-season coming up, but he showed up to support the cause and ended up winning the whole deal. We’re on the verge of big things.

61^st Place

4 fish, 6.81

The other change was the fact that the grass had exploded which moved a lot of fish shallow. That gave you two options – stay out and fish the ledges, where I was catching them on a ¾ ounce Lunker Lure football head jig and a Strike King 6XD crankbait, or stay shallow, where I could get a lot of bites pitching a Reaction Innovations Sweet Beaver or a Grass Monster Jig.

Even though the fish were spread among the two depths, it still wasn’t easy. The lake was crowded, and while bites weren’t tough to come by, finding the right school was a needle in a haystack deal. I felt like it would be won on the deep bite so I spent a lot of time with my Humminbird using both the down imaging and side imaging technologies. As a result I felt that I found some schools with potential – maybe not the winning fish, but enough to do pretty well.

On Day One I ran to what I thought was my biggest school and found only one other angler there, my good friend Shin Fukae. For 2 ½ hours we sat there and it was just stupid, a fish on every cast. We both left several times and came back and you could pretty much call your shot. The problem was that the better bites were random. In fact, the biggest bag that came out of there that day was my co-angler’s 18 pounds. It was a hundred yard area so there was nothing you could do to protect it except hope that you put it in front of the right fish. I was severely disappointed by my 13 pound limit, but I felt that just a few more good bites on Day Two and I still had a chance to do well.

On the second morning, I started in the same area and had a limit in 30 minutes, but it was obvious that the school was starting to diminish. In fact, Shin never caught a keeper there. Either we’d damaged the school or else they’d moved on. I tend to think it was the latter. In response, I went shallow for several hours but couldn’t really upgrade much. Finally, with a couple of hours left I made a run up the river to go cranking. I caught my best fish of the day, but also lost two big ones, which really hurt. In this tournament it seemed like whenever I got the right bite, something always went wrong and I couldn’t make it stop. I’m not crying about it now, but it continues to confound me.

Day Three was a short day on the water for me. In order to reduce fish mortality, FLW decided to have us weigh in at 1:30. Once again I hoped that my starting spot would pay off, but those fish were gone. I never got a bite there. With the short day, I didn’t really want to make the 30 mile run up river. ON top of that, I fished a little fast. As I said before, something I can’t figure out must be wrong with my mechanics because I got 30 good bites in a 2 ½ hour period and only boated four of them. In a word, it was horrible.

Still, I didn’t give up hope. I had one spot near the launch that I’d save, a shellbed maybe 50 or 75 yards long, but when I got there the tournament leader, Brent Long, was camped on it. So much for that idea. In short, I was around the right fish but I suppose I didn’t make the right adjustments. There were good stringers caught both shallow and deep, but I couldn’t make it happen this time. Less than 40 pounds over three days on Guntersville is simply not good.

That disappointment marks the end of a disappointing FLW Tour season, but I’m going to keep my chin up. I learned so much about the lake this year and I was so close to putting it all together on the 3^rd day that I felt like I was ready to start over again as soon as it was over – and this time the result would be different.

Now it’s off to start the PAA tour and to finish up the Bassmaster Opens, and perhaps fish a few other tournaments too. This is what I do for a living and the more I fish the better I feel. FLW has announced their 2011 schedule, and it’ll have us going back and forth across the country several times, along with increased entry fees, but I’ll worry about that when it gets here. Right now, I need to get back to business as usual.

Mother Nature threw us a curveball heading into the tournament – right before practice the lake jumped up about three and a half feet which put the water in the bushes and gave it some color. There was a lot of newly flooded cover and I’m a sucker for that, but I also suspected that things would change again by the time the tournament ended….and they did. I wanted to chase that shallow bite but with the water falling again it was a guessing game as to how long the fish would be there.

There didn’t seem to be many fish deep so I stayed shallow and by the end of the practice period I felt that as long as the water didn’t drop too much, the lowered level would actually help me. The fish wouldn’t all move out deep – instead they’d travel right to me. I was betting on the come.

One other pattern that’s no secret this time of year at Ouachita is the bluegill spawn. It’s a key deal. The bass hang around those bedding spots and if you get into the right bunch of them it can be a winning pattern. I had some of that going on so by the end of my three days of practice I felt that I had my bases pretty well covered.

I was banking on an early morning topwater bite but on the first day of competition we had a two hour fog delay, which pretty much took that out of play for everybody. I still spent about two and a half hours chasing it but with only two bites it just wasn’t going to happen. Then I went flipping bushes and that wasn’t going on either. Both the numbers and the average size were way down. With Plan A and Plan B pretty much done, I went to Plan C, my bluegill bedding areas. I went into what I felt were some of the better ones and started to explore and what I saw just about drove me insane. There were lots of really good bass around, but it was hard to get them to bite. I messed around with them the rest of the day but only managed to catch eight pounds.

On the second day I changed up my areas, still chasing the bass around the bluegill beds. We didn’t have a fog delay, but I still couldn’t get any meaningful topwater bite going. With that gone by the wayside, I moved out a little bit deeper and the bite was better. I improved upon my Day One catch by just under two pounds and moved up several places, although still not enough to make it inside the money cut. I knew that I’d have to step up my game even more on the third day. It was going to take a big effort to get a check, but I knew that I was around the right fish to get it done.

With respect to my tactics, once the topwater deal fizzled, I spent most of my time fishing an El Grande tube and a Lunker Lure jig and by the end of the second day I’d started to get dialed in on the particular sizes and colors that worked the best. I also caught a few out deeper, cranking a DT16 and throwing a Carolina rig, but I was banking on the jig to get the job done and on Day Three it lived up to my expectations. I finally found some quality fish in the right mood and finally got a 5 ½ pounder to eat my bait. With that I culled up to 12-07, well within the money cut. I’d had a dead fish penalty on the second day and while it didn’t cost me a lot of money it did cost me quite a few places, since the weights were so tight, but on the whole I feel that I fished a good, clean tournament. My weight went up every day, which is a sign that I fished intelligently.

My only disappointment coming out of Arkansas is that I’m pretty sure I can’t make up enough points in our final Tour event to make the Cup. While that might be bad news, it also presents an opportunity to swing for the fences at Guntersville, to really gamble for a win in a big fish event. I’m ready to take some chances.

We left Ouachita for Alabama to get some pre-practice in before the lake went off-limits and I am just amazed at the quality of the fishery. If it’s not the best lake in the country right now, there can’t be many that are better. You can catch them in all sorts of different ways, and catch big fish doing all of them, but I’m 99 percent sure that I’m going to stay deep on main river channel structure. I’ll definitely have a big jig and a big crankbait tied on, but I’ve also got a couple of tricks up my sleeve, including some swimbaits.

It’s going to take mid- to upper-twenty pound limits every day to be in contention. Typically, I’ve been more successful in the “grind ‘em out” tournaments, fishing with a finesse jig, but I’ve done OK in some slugfests, too, and this is one I feel good about. I know what lives there and I like the way it’s setting up. I don’t necessarily have as much experience on the lake as many of the other competitors, but that can be a positive, too. The lake has more community holes than any place I’ve ever seen but I’m hoping my lack of familiarity will lead me to something off the beaten path, the type of spot or pattern that can produce a tour-level win.